Vinko’s Thoughts On…

As rumored Apple has released the iPhone firmware 2.2 today.

This is a warning to all users who had either jailbroken or unlocked their iPhone or iPhone 3G, this warning even goes for anyone using the iPhone 3G who had not done either, but may want to unlock in the future.

I strongly advice these users not to upgrade their iPhone firmware to 2.2 until the iPhone Dev Team had released an updated version of their PwnageTool.

This applies to the new version of iTunes 8.0.2 also, as we currently do not know if the latest version of iTunes will be compatible with jailbroken or unlocked iPhone and iPhone 3G.

I will update here when it is safe to upgrade your iPhone or iPhone 3G, please stay tuned.

Even though I am not in Hong Kong and on vacation in Beijing I am blogging and keeping an eye on the iPhone hacking community.

In the past 14 months I had unlocked/restored my iPhone over 30+ times, and documented my experience and findings with fellow readers. Much of these repeated unlocking and restoring was because I was testing various “unauthorized” 3rd party applications (”hacks”) for the iPhone, and some of them were not as stable as they should be. Even with authorized 3rd party applications my iPhone was sluggish and crashes when I run some of the applications.

When Apple claims that the iPhone firmware 2.1, released on September 12th, will correct much of the problems I’ve been encountering, I was again excited for the possibilities of returning my iPhone (1st generation) to its efficient spiffy 1.x state. Unfortunately, since my iPhone is unlocked and jailbroken I had to wait for the iPhone Dev team to upgrade their hacking tool, Pwnage Tool.

The iPhone Dev Team  released their new version of Pwnage Tool 2.1 (Bittorent download) on Sunday (September 14), but I did not have time; rightfully, to check it out. I was planning to visit the Forbidden City this morning, but it is raining heavily in Beijing, so I decided to upgrade my iPhone (1st generation) instead.

I had wanted to hold myself back for 24 hours to give iPhone web sites: ModMyiFone, Hack the iPhone, MacGeekBlog, etc. time to refine the procedures and all the possible things that may go wrong during the process.

Now I am happy to say that I have now successfully unlocked my iPhone running firmware 2.1. The process went without a hitch.

I did not have to do anything to my already unlocked iPhone running firmware 2.0.2. All I did to prepare myself for the unlocking was the following:

1. Upgrade my iTunes to 8.0
2. Download the firmware 2.1 (5F136) (for 1st generation iPhone), placing this firmware (IPSW file) in ~/Library/iTunes/iPhone Software Updates/ folder on your Mac.
3. If you had not already done so, you will need to download the 3.9 and 4.6 bootloaders. onto your computer.

The rest is simple. You can choose the well written tutorials from Hack the iPhone.

Enjoy and do share you experience with rest of the readers here. Particularly iPhone users from Hong Kong.

Yesterday the iPhone Dev Team released QuickPwn (the Torrent link) for Macintosh. This is the Macintosh OS X version of the same tool they released for Windows users several weeks ago.

The different between this tool and the Pwnage Tool the iPhone Dev Team has also released for the Macintosh is that the QuickPwn will not require a restore using iTunes, therefore a bit friendlier to layman iPhone users (junior hackers) who need to unlock and jailbreak their iPhone (1st generation) or jailbreak their iPhone 3G. iPhone Dev Team says the Pwnage Tool will still be enhanced and supported as it will be the tool for iPhone users who like to customize their .IPSW package for the iPhone.

I personally have not yet use this tool as my iPhone has already been upgraded to iPhone firmware 2.0.2 using the Pwnage Tool for Macintosh.

Please feel free to share your experiences; either good or bad, here via comments.

I should add “YET!”.

Apple made available firmware 2.0.1 for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

iPhone Firmware 2.0.1 Availability

If you have an iPhone 3G (non-jailbroken), original iPhone (non-jailbroken and locked) or a pristine iPod Touch, then you should definitely upgrade to this latest firmware. So far all reports show that applications runs faster, quicker synchronization with iTunes and spiffier overall functions of the iPhone or iPod Touch.

WARNING: if you are not in the above group of Apple device owners, meaning you have jailbroken and/or unlocked your iPhone or iPod Touch you should NOT upgrade. You will need to wait for the hacking community to update their hacking methods (currently Pwnage Tool) before doing any firmware update.

The only exception will be the iPod Touch owners who had jailbroken their device and do not mind returning their iPod to Apple factory condition (ie. no more unauthorized 3rd party applications).

BTW: As I have reported on Twitter and other Social Networks, I am experimenting with a method to resolve much of the frequent crashes on the iPhone with firmware 2.0. I will be reporting here on my blog as soon as I have definite results. Please stay tune.