Ask HN: Why does it take Apple so long to unlock an iPhone? - akaa
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1123581321
Is this in reference to a news event? Apple has people who coach law
enforcement on accessing iPhones, and one of the things they do is get them to
access the phone quickly before one of the security time delays set in and the
phone can’t be unlocked without bypassing the hardware encryption, which is an
expensive process. One of the big mistakes the FBI made in the San Bernardino
case was to ignore Apple’s direction and accidentally lock themselves out.

I don’t know what the response time is for Apple to return customer records
such as purchase dates, iCloud login times, etc. Again, I’m interested to know
if this in reference to a particular incident.

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akaa
1 point by akaa 0 minutes ago | edit | delete [-]

No not really. I was wondering how the process works since it takes 72hours
from requesting an unlock at the provider until the unlock itself. I read
online that the request gets pushed to the unlock servers in intervals and
wondered why.

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simonk
All my unlocks have been pretty much instant. I think its that provider
pushing unlock to Apple at intervals. AT&T does they 3 day thing but that
again is AT&T time to send it to Apple.

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Rjevski
iPhones are not really "locked" like traditional phones are when you need to
submit an unlock code (essentially a password) to the modem to allow it to
connect to non-whitelisted networks.

iPhone modems are unlocked by default (so a locked iPhone will still connect
and get internet access just fine) but the OS will check-in with Apple and
submit the first digits of the SIM's ICCID to check if it's allowed to operate
with such a SIM.

I would thus expect an unlock to be immediate, unlock request sent to Apple, a
row is updated in the locked devices database, and next time the phone checks
in, it gets a positive response and the OS lets you proceed. Most likely it's
the carrier's stupid & outdated systems that only submit unlock requests in
batches every X days or so. Could even be manual with a spreadsheet being
written up by a poor slave somewhere abroad.

