It seems there may be a line being drawn between the Dev Team and Geohot when it comes to working together to bring what is best for the end user as a whole. While some may argue that them working together is for the best, I would argue that competition between the two may end up bringing the end user slightly better tools.

Of course, my opinion is just that — my opinion. However with that, Geohot has recently released his own solution for unlocking the iPhone 3GS which has been dubbed purplesn0w. And yes that means we have yet another strange name to remember when it comes to iPhone hacking tools.

Anyway, purplesn0w is the “geohot 3GS unlock solution” and is noted as being able to help prevent you from worrying about “Wifi fails? Battery fails? Unlock fails?” after you unlock.
Basically, what purplesn0w will do is unlock your iPhone 3GS after you have already jailbroken it using purplera1n. According to Geohot, purplesn0w is;
“A soft unlock for your 3GS that I’d actually use day to day. It’s not a daemon that takes any resources, and it doesn’t add a task to your baseband. It’s very close to a true unlock. All it does is patch three files, CommCenter, lockdownd, and your wildcard activation plist(which you need, activate w at&t sim first, no hacktivation support yet). That’s it, no other files are installed.”

As always it is suggested that you back up your iPhone before beginning, but otherwise here are the steps you need to follow in order to use purplesn0w. Keep in mind, this is also assuming that your iPhone 3GS is already jailbroken.

Be sure to have legit activated 3GS
Disable 3G if you don’t have it(like T-Mobile).
Add apt.geohot.com to Cydia
Install com.geohot.purplesn0w
Watch for success output in Cydia
Reboot, and enjoy your unlocked iPhone

At this point, it almost goes without saying that if you are planning to jailbreak and/or unlock you should always wait for the green light from the Dev Team. Anyway, due to the recent release of iPhone OS 3.1 we have yet another warning coming courtesy of the Dev Team
“ultrasn0w users *must* stay away from official 3.1 (incl. betas) until we release the tools for it, or you’ll *lose* unlock!”
Basically, if you are looking to unlock your iPhone at anytime in the future using ultrasn0w then you need to hold off on updating to OS 3.1 beta, and once the final version is released, OS 3.1 (the non-beta).