Let’s face it, we knew this was coming but didn’t realise the iPhone Dev Team would have been able to wave their magic wand this soon.

The hack, code-named yellowsn0w, is currently being packaged into a user-friendly application with the simplicity provided by similar tools such as the PwnageTool jailbreaking assistant and BootNeuter baseband unlocker.

A public release is slated for December 31st, New Year’s Eve, just in time to celebrate the New Year with an unlocked iPhone 3G!

iPhone jailbreakers who have been following us will have read from our firmware 2.2 jailbreak summary that the 3G unlock will require a jailbroken iPhone 3G that’s running baseband version 2.11.07 or earlier. To ensure that an iPhone preserves an unlockable version of the baseband, the Dev Team recommends that users refrain from using the QuickPwn tool or applying any of Apple’s iPhone software updates that aren’t already supported by the PwnageTool jailbreaking app (which is currently only on Mac).

[via iPhone Dev]