I'm getting kindda impatient with waiting for the official Pawnage 2.0 release (not that I think they are somehow doing something wrong with holding off - who am I to tell them how to spend their free time).

So while in a perfect world there would be an official release, I'm thinking of working on doing it on my own (which should be loads of fun too) with the info MuscleNerd posted in the dev team wiki:

Simple Unlock [iPhone Dev Team]

He gives the info as far as patching BootNeuter's resource files to load an unlocked baseband assuming a neutered bootloader. I have two thoughts that need to be sorted out before I can go about self-unlocking:

(1) If the phone has loaded an unlocked baseband, does it still need to be activated?

(2) How can one use pwnage 1.1's IPSW creator on the 2.0 firmware release when it doesn't recognize the firmware as one of the "known" firmwares? If I edit pwnage's resource files to trick it into thinking that the 2.0 firmware is really the 2.0 beta that it will recognize, will it end up screwing up the ipsw when it creates it, or will it all be fine as long as I don't check anything other than asking it to load bootneuter?

I'm more than willing to test 1 assuming I can figure out 2, but I'd appreciate any input on #2.

Also, for anyone looking at this as a "work around" for an official release -- you'll probably screw up your phone if you don't know what you're doing (I only sortta know what I'm doing, and I still run the risk), and also, this will not jailbreak the phone -- just unlock 2.0 on a 2G device (assuming it worked perfectly).

UPDATE:
Hmm...nevermind.

(2) is a bit simpler of an issue.

I could just upgrade to 2.0, downgrade back to 1.1.4, and then I'd have the 2.0 baseband. Using MuscleNerd's unlock for a custom 1.1.4 ipsw, I could have BootNeuter fix the baseband using the neutered bootloader, and end up with an unlocked 4.05.04 (2.0's baseband).

The question then becomes:

(1) Can I keep the 2.0 firmware from re-loading a locked 2.0 baseband?
(2) Will an unlocked phone still require activation?

UPDATE:

For anyone interested, yes, an unlocked 2.0 firmware will remain unlocked when upgraded.

However, the 2.0 firmware will still need activation. There's a thread on Hackint0sh about this very issue right now.