The second type of unlock, often confused with the first, is the . In the early days of the iPhone (models up to the iPhone 4), baseband exploits sometimes allowed software unlocks via tools like ultrasn0w. These tools modified the iPhone’s baseband firmware (the chip that manages cellular communication) to accept any SIM. However, starting with the iPhone 4s and continuing through the iPhone 7 Plus, Apple dramatically hardened the baseband security. The iPhone 7 Plus, equipped with either the Qualcomm MDM9645M or Intel XMM7360 baseband chips, has never seen a public, reliable software unlock. The baseband is cryptographically signed and isolated; flashing a custom IPSW has no effect on it. Consequently, any website or “unlock hub” claiming to provide a custom IPSW download that can carrier-unlock an iPhone 7 Plus is either technically ignorant or deliberately deceptive.

While these methods claim to offer a "permanent unlock," they are rarely endorsed by security experts or Apple for several reasons:

If you don't want to risk a custom IPSW, here are three proven methods to unlock your iPhone 7 Plus for real.