Just slip your SIM card into the device, hide it out of sight, and dial your phone number from another phone. It's that easy—you will hear what's going on in the room from the headset. Sure, there are probably legitimate uses for a device like this—but I'll bet that most of you are not considering them. [Brando via Crunchgear]

The target release date for the official unlock is New Year's Eve. The unlock will only be available to iPhone 3G owners that have 2.11.07 baseband or earlier (jailbroken). As you can see in the demo the hack is finished—Dev-Team members say all that's left to do is package it up into a nice, user-friendly package. [Dev-Team Blog]

Breno MacMasi, one of the Brazilian guys who achieved this, told us how it works:

Our procedure consist in using one SIM adapter to simulate a fake IMSI test card. Instead of the AT&T IMSI like in the universals.

In other words, like the original SIM card hacks for the iPhone classic, this method forges the International Mobile Subscriber Identity, making the phone believe it's working in the network in which it's supposed to work. There's no word yet on the availability of this hack, but we will keep all of those who don't want to pay roaming charges updated. [Techguru]

It is a nice touch, for that we salute you, AT&T. However, it is possible to get a shitty new phone for free with a two year contract, and then prostitute your SIM card around as you please. So, you know, it is a positive symbolic move at best, but we're still wanting more freeness. [AT&T via BGR]

First on the list, predictably, is copying the interceptee's SIM card, sending all of their phone calls (if you're on the same tower) and texts straight to you. The second method uses a (very illegal) firmware update to turn your phone into a radio, picking up "all the texts broadcast on a given channel," though obviously you'd need to know the network and be close to the base station for it to work. While less precise, it's also cheaper than buying the equipment to clone your mark's phone.

Lastly, you could get ahold of some actual Bond-style toys used by the DHS and other three-lettered agencies, but that sounds like a ticket straight to either the front page of the NYT or the bottom of some classified prison in a country whose name we can't pronounce. Not that the first two methods are any less illegal, so get your Linda Tripp on with caution. – Matt Buchanan

How Do You Intercept a Text Message? [Slate]
Image via Kiefer Sutherland 24

We once knew this girl whose boyfriend was such a controlling creep that he insisted on reading through her email and checking her cellphone call and sms logs to see if she'd been in contact with anyone he didn't approve of. Instead of dumping him like any sensible person would, she decided to create a super sekrit email account and to delete calls and sms he wouldn't like from her phone as soon as they were done. Had it existed at the time, we're sure the creep would've just loved the Deleted Text Message Reader. £149 and all he would've had to do to read her last 20 sms was insert her phone's SIM card into the device, plug it into a Windows 2K or XP machine and run the included software. Dear readers: don't be a creep.

Deleted Text Message Reader [via The Red Ferret]

With 3G (supposedly) coming up quickly here in the US, it's nice to know that Intel is thinking fast on its feet and talking about equipping future laptops with a SIM card slot to add easy WAN connectivity.

The idea was launched by the GSM Association (GSMA) and Intel plans on working with them to develop guidelines for manufacturers intent on incorporating 3G support as well as the next-generation High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) technology. Now if we could just get that 3G up and running, I'd be happy to discuss the rest of it.

Intel looks to SIM cards for universal wireless access [reghardware]

Out of Sync

Syncing contacts is an issue that has affected nearly every mobile phone user, even if they haven't realized it. A lot of the talk about syncing involves business types trying to move their contact info from Outlook to a Treo, but the average Joe faces considerable syncing woes, too, when attempting to move numbers from old handsets to new ones. While there are solutions phone companies could implement right now—if they really cared—users basically remain on their own when it comes to moving numbers around.

Most of us have been there at some point: our old phone craps out, leaving us high and dry. The problem isn't just not being able to make and receive calls, it's that the address book on our phones has taken over for the one in our brains or elsewhere. How many numbers do you still have memorized? The last time you got a new number from someone, what did you do with it? Chances are you just entered it into your phone, typed in a name, and never really thought about it again. Is it convenient? Absolutely. But when you lose that book, you're kinda screwed.

The same goes for buying a new handset. Any joy at having a shiny new phone quickly disappears when you realize you've got to re-enter, by hand, all those names and numbers. Some phones can send business cards by infrared or Bluetooth, but they generally only let users send them one at a time. One of the supposed benefits of GSM phones (like the ones from T-Mobile or Cingular) is that you can copy contacts to the SIM card, then just swap the card into a new phone. But that solution is equally as half-assed as all the others: while most new phones can hold multiple numbers and e-mail addresses under one contact, most SIM cards still can only associate one number with one name. If a user switches carriers, of course, the SIM cards aren't much use at all, as locked handsets won't recognize SIM cards from other operators. Likewise if a phone is lost or stolen.

There are a few solutions out there that aren't totally pathetic. On the T-Mobile Sidekick, for instance, contacts on the device are synced to a user's web account. They can enter contact info on the site (or sync from a program like Outlook), and the information gets sent automatically to the device. And when a user enters new information on the device, it gets synced to the website. The backup is always there should the phone disappear or if the data gets corrupted.

These types of services exist for plenty of other types of phones, but few carriers implement them, presumably to save a few pennies. FusionOne makes one such solution it markets to both carriers and consumers, and Verizon announced last year it would offer the service—for $2 per month. If you re te DIY type, FusionOne does sell a $35 consumer version called MightyPhone, which promises to bring some iSync-like goodness to Windows users and have online backup as well. It uses a standard called SyncML that's appearing in more and more phones. It's intended to take away the compatibility problems that plagued the syncing of yore, allowing different devices from different manufacturers to share contacts.

If you're waiting for carriers to spend some cash on backup software to make your life easier, it's probably going to be a very long wait. But that doesn't mean there's no hope for the unwashed masses that go around sans Blackberry. How's that? From internet companies that seem to have a slightly better understanding of usability than mobile operators, and the emergence of the "buddy list" as the central contact info repository.

Take, for example, yesterday's news that Yahoo! is working on a phone with Cingular parent SBC. It'll be a Nokia phone that runs on Cingular's network, with Yahoo! services that people already use on the Web—like e-mail, IM, news, and all that personalized My Yahoo! Stuff—tightly integrated into the phone's software. So, if you use Yahoo! e-mail, your address book will be available, and all your preferences will carry over to the phone from the web.

The idea is service convergence. Users have all these different communications platforms they use, and they should span both the phone and the web. I might have 30 people I talk to via IM, and I probably talk to those people via phone and e-mail at times, too—so my contacts application or address book or buddy list or whatever should let me do that all from one place. I scroll down and see Tom's name, and I can then decide how I want to contact him and click accordingly. Where sync comes back into the picture is that since these services span both fixed and mobile networks, all the information has to be updated and available from any device at any time. Phone numbers are no longer isolated on an island; instead, they're part of an integrated set of communications services.

The problem, of course, is that if you don't use Yahoo! for anything, you're still out of luck. But that should change fairly soon, particularly as high-speed 3G networks become more pervasive. As mobile technology improves further, carriers implement IMS and move to all-IP networks. Communications will become more like IM—a packet-based connection between two people&mdashalthough the medium won't just be text, it could be voice, video, messaging or anything. And being able to easily communicate with people over all these different media, from a single point of contact, will be key.

Or, if you're an impatient GSM user, you can try one of those sketchy SIM card reader/writers. Maybe if you're lucky, you can find a keychain version that allows for that anywhere/anytime sync that the rest of us are waiting for.

Carlo Longino is a writer and analyst that follows the mobile industry. He's co-editor of MobHappy, and also an analyst for Techdirt. He can be reached at carlo@mobhappy.com.

Read more Airtime. The column appears every Tuesday on Gizmodo.

Product Page [SuntekStore via GadgetMadness]

Update: Just a comment on SIM card readers...
They are much, much less useful than you might think initially...
(more after the jump)

1. The SIM card stores a string and a number, with no meta-data. No
information about whether it's a cell phone number, or home number, etc.
No custom ring tones or other stuff. You can't easily adjust first name or
last name sorting order since it's just a single string. No addresses for
people.

2. Many smart phones don't like to directly use the SIM card address book.
You can copy the address book from the SIM card to your phone, and back,
but the standard address book isn't directly used in many cases.

3. Many phones have internal SMS storage as well; SIM cards don't store
that many messages. Thus, you will likely find that your SIM card doesn't
have all your SMS messages.

So, if you have an old, lame phone, then it might be very handy. If you
have the sort of phone that any self-respecting gizmodo reader would
have, you'll find that this setup is vastly inferior to the USB or
bluetooth sync stuff.

[Thanks Gopi!]