How to 'œsafely' update (not restore) your unlocked iPhone 2G to OS 2.0.1 (update 1)

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Tuesday, 05 August 2008 16:18

Your IT - Mobility

(Updated since publication:) iPhone OS 2.0.1 has arrived, promising faster surfing speeds, snappier program operation and lots of other as-yet unknown bug fixes, but the big question for unlocked and jailbroken iPhone owners on OS 2.0 is whether or not it’s safe to upgrade. Here’s what I did to make it work, although any attempt you do at trying the same is at your own risk!

As soon as word that iPhone OS 2.0.1 started coming through in the last few hours, my first hope was that Apple had cleaned up many of the annoying bugs in OS 2.0, especially considering the update only tells you it has “bug fixes” – and doesn’t say much else!

UPDATE: On page two there are more details of what has and hasn't changed in 2.0.1 which I've noticed using the new firmware, and there are instructions on how to restore from a locked 2.0.1 back to 1.1.4 if needed).

So annoying are the iPhone OS 2.0 bugs that many have complained – I even wrote an article telling Apple just how much I thought OS 2.0 sucked.

But knowing that new OS updates from Apple have, in the past, rendered existing unlocks and jailbreaks inactive, there was no particular desire to turn my iPhone into an iBrick, only to then have to figure out how to downgrade the iPhone back to OS 2.0 or even 1.1.4 instead.

I originally updated my 1.1.4 iPhone 2G (which had been unlocked with Zibri’s ZiPhone unlock tool) to iPhone OS 2.0 using the instructions from BigBoss, seeing as I’m using a Vista PC and don’t have a Mac, which meant that I couldn’t use the PwnageTool 2.0.1 released by the amazing iPhone Dev Team.

Since then, the WinPwn tool has been released, giving Windows users an easy way to upgrade their iPhone 2G’s to an unlocked and jailbroken status on iPhone 2.0.

But now that 2.0.1 is here, the allure of bug fixes is almost irresistible, although upgrading comes with the loss of the jailbreak, at least for now.

So, off to the iPhone Dev Team blog and the Hackint0sh.org forums to see what others had already discovered.

The iPhone Dev Team has advised in its blog in a post called “To update or not to update” that updating either the iPhone 2G or 3G to the new 2.0.1 firmware will cause you to lose your jailbroken status, which means no more Cydia or Installer 4 (when it arrives).

The iPhone Dev Team say they don’t see anything in particular that would prevent them from creating a new PwnageTool to support iPhone OS 2.0.1, but that the existing PwnageTool 2.0.1 was not compatible.

So, what else did they say, and how did I safely update? Please read on to page 2.