Users with developer firmware on their iPhones today are waking up to bricked phones, completely unusable. Reports are starting to trickle in, and there are even threads being started on the Apple discussion forums. Unfortunately, Apple is locking out access to these threads.

What appears to be going on is that the beta licenses for the 1.2.0/2.0 firmware released to developers expired this morning at 12:01AM. This means that users with said phones will receive a display with a pink background indicating that "This device is expired. Please install a newer version of the OS." Apple is expected to release an updated SDK fairly soon if not already. Browsing through Apple’s website, there’s no indication of an update at the time of this writing.

This expiration is affecting all iPhones running on the 1.2.0/2.0 firmware, whether users downloaded the firmware for official software development or just to use the new features and hack around. Apple’s Developer Connection support confirms that this is a known issue and users can remedy the problem by restoring to an old firmware.

Those users who wish to remain on the current firmware will have to bypass the lock by using a the iPhone Pwnage tool released by iPhone Dev Team. Users report that using the Pwnage tool restores the working condition of the phone.