Sherif Hasim has figured out an easy way to activate iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS and iPhone 3G without needing the official iPhone carrier SIM.

Please note it doesn’t unlock your iPhone but it activates it. But it helps you to hactivate your iPhone without the need to hack your iPhone.

Sherif had also discovered an exploit in the baseband (05.12.01) that was bundled with iPhone OS 3.1.3 earlier in the year.

Activating your iPhone means giving it access to the Home screen by telling your iPhone that you are using one of the iPhone’s official carriers. Activating your iPhone is done through iTunes in order to use it with an official iPhone carrier.

Hactivation is the process of activating your iPhone without using an official iPhone carrier SIM. Until now, you needed jailbreaking tools like PwnageTool to hactivate your iPhone. With Hasim’s method, you can hactivate your iPhone using phone book sim card, without actually going through the pains of hacking it.

Sherif Hasim has also posted a video to show you how it activate your iPhone without the official iPhone carrier SIM:

Sherif has provided some useful information about the phone book sim cards:

Use any phonebook sim card, they are there in radioshak, mobile phone shops or any mobile tech moles , any phone book simcard will do the trick, no need for programmable sims, all those phonebook sims used to save ur contacts and transfer them have a universal ICCIDs preprogrammed so they all work.

To all those asking, I use this one Phone book Test card from DITS – Cdma Gsm Forum Mygsmindia. Yet, I used three other types and all work the same.

Please note that the phonebook sim cards will work as is in iPhone 3GS and iPhone 3G but you’ll need to convert it into a micro-SIM in case of iPhone 4.

So with this activation solution, iPhone users will be able to use this method to activate (or hacktivate) their iPhone and use tools like Spirit or Redsn0w to jailbreak (which can’t be used for hactivation) their iPhone and then use Ultrasn0w to unlock their iPhone.

As always, please let us know how it goes.

[via Sherif Hasim’s Twitter]