Upgrade an old Jailbroken iPhone to firmware 3.0: Part 2

Download of 3.0 version might take a lot of time depending on you internet bandwidth.

Once the download of OS 3.0 completes, the installation process will start automatically. The installation seems to be doing lot of things and I have been patiently watching it doing things.

For most part the installation process, it has been showing a message "Restoring iPhone firmware..."

OK, after showing the above status message for long, the iPhone has got restored and it's in a completely locked state and asking for a valid SIM. The SIM that I use is not iPhone supported and that is the reason I had jailbroken it when I had started using iPhone.

So, with this exercise,one thing is verified that a jailbroken iPhone cannot be directly upgraded to another jailbroken higher version of firmware. And an upgrade of firmware will always take you to a locked state and you will have to go through the jailbreaking exercise all over again. I had jailbroken my iPhone using ZipPhone utility 18 months back. I am not sure at this point if the same ZipPhone utility is going to help me jailbreak again or not. I am going to try it out and update the blog soon....the struggle to bring the iPhone back continues..........

While I look around for options to jailbreak and then unlock, some of us confuse about the terminology. Let me define the terms for everyone's clarity:

Jailbreaking: make the phone able to accept 3rd party application.

Unlock: make the phone work with other carrier beside AT&T.

In other to unlock, one must jailbreak the phone first, so that you can install an application, to make the phone work with all carriers.

So here you go with unlocking the updated software.

Prepration:

1. download "redsn0w.exe" from dev team blog ( official blog of apple developers)
http://blog.iphone-dev.org/post/126908912/redsn0w-in-june

2. download an appropriate boot loader file from http://www.quickpwn.com (*.ipsw file)

3. download BL-39.bin and BL-46.bin (iPhone bootloader 39 and 46) ( search google and you will get lot of sites from where you can download it.

4. Launch redsnow.exe from your windows machine (downloaded in step#1) and follow the instructions CAREFULLY.

Part 1

Upgrade an old Jailbroken iPhone to firmware 3.0: Part 1

ohhhhh I love my iPhone. I have a 2G iPhone which I got just before 3G was about to get launched and I jail broke. It has been close to 18 months that I have been using this jail broken iPhone without any issues. I have been running it on 1.X firmware which it came with and never had any pressing need to upgrade it so far.

But today the lazy me have decide to either break it or upgrade it successfully to firmware 3.0. I am not sure what's going to be the outcome of this process but I am going to try it.

And I will keep updating this blog as and when I proceed further and keep documenting whatever issues I encounter for the benefit of all the other people who would like to try doing the same thing.

1. Upgrade to latest iTunes 8.2 : As a first step, I am going to install latest iTunes on my Win XP laptop. AFAIK, firmware 3.0 is supported by iTunes 8.2 only.

So, I was so far running on iTunes 8.1 and I have just kicked off the iTunes update process. The update process is downloading the update bit which is 83 MB in size. So, I guess it's going to take little time before I have iTunes 8.2 installed and then I will embark on my risky journey of 3.0 upgrade with a potential danger of loosing my beloved iPhone for always :(.

Ok, so after a few kinks, I could upgrade my iTunes to 8.2.0.23. I had few issue in upgrading iTunes. Just a note of advice: Close you iTunes after you have launched the iTune updater.

2. Backup you iPhone: take a backup of your current iPhone. In-case things go drastically wrong, you should not loose the many contacts and pics that you have in your iPhone.

Taking iPhone back is easy. Use the following steps to take a backup:
1. Connect you iPhone to laptop with iTunes running.
2. Once iTunes detects your iPhone, right click on iPhone appearing on left hand panel in iTunes under "Devices" category. You will see an option to backup your iPhone.

3. Upgrade to firmware version 3.0

Let's start the risky journey. While you iPhone is connected to iTunes, you would notice that iTunes in the "summary" tab have the details of what's the current firmware version that your iPhone is running and what is latest one available.


My iPhone is currently running 1.1.4 firmware ( how outdated I am :( ). I am going to click on the "Update" button that you see in the image to start the upgrade to 3.0 process ( and god knows what will happen to my iPhone after this, Let me have a last look at it ;) )

1 ....2........3.......... and I have clicked on the "Update" button

I am not sure, how much time this download and install process is going to take. Let's see, it's 1208PM local time that I have kicked in this process. I am hoping that at the end of it, I should have an iPhone running on firmware 3.0 and locked all over again which then I will have to jail break again.

And It the download got over at 1.30PM local time.

Part 2