How to “safely” update (not restore) your unlocked iPhone 2G to OS 2.0.1 (update 1)

by Alex Zaharov-Reutt

Tuesday, 05 August 2008

Page 2 of 3 The iPhone Dev Team advise that the new firmware loads an updated 3G baseband into iPhone 3G models, which could make future unlocks even trickier than the unlock is proving for the now superseded iPhone OS 2.0. The team only advises iPhone 3G owners to update to the new 2.0.1 software if they are happy to continue using their iPhones with their existing official carrier, and in the knowledge that if they have used the PwnageTool 2.0.1 or WinPwn they’ll lose, at least for now, the ability to run jailbroken software. The team is expecting to release a new PwnageTool relatively soon, without giving any specific dates, promising it will arrive “when the testing has been completed and all applied changes have been checked for safety.” When it comes to the original iPhone 2G, however, the iPhone Dev Team says: “If you absolutely can’t wait then original (2G) iPhone owners can update using iTunes if they really need to, but you’ll lose third-party applications that rely on the Jailbreak, although it is reported that the 2G device remains activated, we have not clarified this.” After reading a few reports at the iPhone Dev Team’s blog at and Hackint0sh.org of iPhone 2G owners who had jailbroken and unlocked their iPhones using the PwnageTool or WinPwn successfully updating (not restoring) to iPhone OS 2.0.1, keeping the unlocked and activated status, I decided to give it a go, too. Now, one key thing here is that the “update” button in iTunes is the button to be pressed, NOT the restore button, and for those wondering, I am using the latest iTunes 7.7.1.11 version. Updating is meant to just upgrade the firmware, whereas restoring is supposed to wipe your iPhone completely, and potentially wiping out the BootNeuter changes that the Pwned iPhone OS 2.0 baseband on 2G models had made. This I’ve just done, upgrading the iPhone to 2.0.1, and for me, at least, it has worked perfectly. Whether it works perfectly for you is unknown, but I only proceeded down this path because I’d read other reports of success, and I really wanted to have a much smoother OS 2.0.1 experience. Once the update had fully downloaded, a 242.3MB file, iTunes proceeded to back up my iPhone, something that took about 20 minutes. After that, it loaded the update in a few minutes, after which the iPhone rebooted, and I was back into the home screen! The Cydia application was gone, but as I hadn’t as yet used any of the jailbroken apps there I’m not too concerned, and the iPhone Dev Team promises a new jailbreak soon, anyway. UPDATED section: And yes, everything at first glance seems to operate faster, but as others have reported, SMS text typing is fast at first, but then the responsiveness of the keys popping up is slows down tremendously. However I've noticed that if I keep on typing and am accurate with my two thumbed typing, there is a few seconds delay as it processes all the keypresses, but the iPhone text autocorrection system fixes usually fixes all the errors and my text is there. Slow one fingered typists probably won't notice. That said, fast two thumbed typing is a skill many have, and 1.1.4 firmware was at normal with SMS text typing, so there's still a bug there even after the 2.0.1 "bug fixes" update, and Apple needs to fix it fast, otherwise it makes SMS quite annoying. After all the keyboard works properly in Mobile Safari, Notes and elsewhere. Given that AIM users seemingly anyone can send free SMS messages using the freely downloadable iPhone AIM (AOL Instant Messenger) app, Apple's slow texting keyboard is probably giving AIM users many more reasons to open up the program - after all, receiving SMS still happens as a background task no matter what you're doing, so reading text messages is no issue. Apparently some in the US and elsewhere pay to receive emails, but that's certainly not the case in Australia and other countries... But aside from the slow texting, other bugs have been fixed. So far I've noticed that most programs start much faster after the slowdown on the iPhone 2.0 OS, which is a relief! An example is the clock, (which contains a stopwatch, timer, world time and alarm) is something that took several seconds to appear previously, now appears in about 2 seconds (which is still not "instant" but a LOT better). The iPhone camera comes up in 4 seconds and there's a 4-second wait after you've taken a photo before you can take another, contacts takes 3 seconds to load initially but is instant after that and other examples. Safari handles some websites better (ones that 1.1.4 was having trouble with, causing delayed responses to finger movements to drag a page around a screen or zoom it in or out), which is great to see, too. And while Safari hasn't crashed on a site yet throwing me back to the home screen, if the bug fixes do end up reducing those incidences, then great, but if it does reappear Apple will need to keep working on that. And so, that’s how you update your unlocked and jailbroken iPhone OS 2.0 to the new iPhone OS 2.0.1 – just hit the “update” button and let iTunes do the rest, which will result in an unlocked iPhone 2G but no jailbreaks until the new PwnageTool is released. Make sure you don't hit "restore"! If you do, you'll format the phone and load a locked vesion of 2.0.1 onto your iPhone 2G, which can't be pwned at the moment. You'll then be forced to downgrade it to 1.1.4 again, using the iTunes 7.5 and ZiPhone technique, (remembering to save a copy of your iTunes Library.itl files before deleting them from the iTunes folder under Music so iTunes 7.5 can install properly). One restored to 1.1.4 you can install iTunes 7.7 back, copy your .itl files back, then restore to a pwned iPhone 2.0 firmware, then "update" to 2.0.1. I know because after I wrote this article I tried to restore back to 2.0 and couldn't do it. I'll cover this in an upcoming article but I had to go back to 1.1.4 to get back to unlocked 2.0.1 and it worked. Unlocking the iPhone 3G itself is proving more difficult, although we must remember it took around 3 months for the original iPhone 2G to be unlocked via a hardware method first, and then via software methods. What is the status of the iPhone 3G unlock saga thus far? Please read on to page 3. << First page <   1 2 3 Next page > Last page - Post your comment >>

 

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