I've been out of the loop for awhile now ever since i got my 2g unlocked and working all fine and dandy. but now a friend wants to buy a new 3g iphone from the store (is this possible without signing up for att contract? more importantly, would the firmware/baseband from an off the shelf iphone right now be unlockable to be used with tmobile? thanks

Most likely NO.

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any details? when is it likely to be unlocked?

any new iphone 3g at the store will have 2.2.1 fw with 2.30.03 Baseband.
And on top of that, they will have 5.9 or 6.02 BB bootloader.

Don't know when those can be unlocked (may be never).
We probably have to wait after June, after firmware 3.0 is released to get some news from Dev Team.

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i see... how long have those been in stores now? did they just transition to that upgrade? what is the version prior to that is unlockable. i wonder if getting an older version on ebay is possible.

ONLY iphone with Baseband 2.28.00 can use yellowsn0w.
Baseband 2.28.00 came with firmware 2.2.

Any iphone updated with firmware before and after 2.2 cannot be used with yellowsnow.
Actually, you can have fw 2.2.1 with BB 2.28.00 if you use pwnagetool.

The main thing here is baseband 2.28.00

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