For those of you who have been patiently waiting to unlock your iPhone 3G or iPhone 3GS currently on the 3.1.2 software, today is your lucky sn0w day as blacksn0w has been released one day ahead of schedule. It was just 3 days ago that iPhone hacker, George Hotz, announced via his Twitter account that he had found an exploit to unlock any iPhone with the 5.11.77 radio baseband.
blacksn0w is the unlock for the latest 05.11.07 baseband, and will also enable official tethering. blackra1n, a jailbreak for 3.1.2, has been updated to RC3, with hacktivation support, 15 second speed improvement, Tiger+PPC support, and installation of the latest blackra1n.app.
iPhone hacker extraordinaire, Geohot, blaming successful initial testing, has moved up the release for blacksn0w, his new iPhone 05.11.07 unlock tool, to… today! More specifically, noon today (Eastern time). And it looks slick:
If you are a loyal blackra1n user who kept the blackra1n.app on your iPhone, run it. You will see Icy replaced by an option “ra1n”. Install this to upgrade your app. After upgrading, run blackra1n.app again. You will see “sn0w”. Install this, and enjoy your unlocked iPhone.
He has notes up for new jailbreakers, pwnagetool users, and iPhone 2G owners as well (who don’t need blacksn0w but rather BootNeuter, as always).
(If you’re a Twitter user, show him love by helping #blacksn0w trend.) Lastly, a warning:
Also, a note. This may be the best iPhone users ever have it. Be sure, if you have a 3GS or iPod Touch 3, to use Cydia’s “On File” or Firmware Umbrella in order to be able to restore to 3.1.2 in the future. And as always, the baseband cannot be downgraded, so be super careful with updates if you need the unlock.
George Hotz, aka geohot, posted on his Twitter account that he has found an exploit to unlock any iPhone that contains the 05.11.77 radio baseband found in the 3.1.2 iPhone software. This new unlock tool, blacksn0w, will be released to the public on November 4th and yes, it does contain hackivation!
Something else that everyone should take a look at is a post that Hotz wrote up on his blog regarding all of the websites out there that sell unlocks and jailbreaks to people who don’t know any better. These tools that jailbreak and unlock are a simple google search away and don’t cost a penny. These people who run these sites truly are scum that are simply ripping a lot of iPhone owners off.
All we can do to help shut these sites down is to just spread the word. The more of us who are aware the better.
Are you looking for some good iPhone conversation? From the Forums is a great way to see what all of the current hot topics are on the TiPb forums. In order to create any new threads of your own or reply to any of the existing threads, you must be a registered member. Becoming a member is a simple process that will only take a few minutes out of your day, so if you have not already already done so, head on over and register now.
First topic up for today, App Store Genius and how is it working for you? Rene doesn’t seem to be having the best of luck with his Genius, for me it started out pretty so-so but it seems the more I delete the more accurate it seems to get. Perhaps my mind is playing tricks on me, how is it working for you?
iPhone OS 3.1.2 was released yesterday and we are assuming most of you jumped right in and updated your phones. Cdudek was wondering, how is your battery life on the 3.1.2 software? Anyone notice a significant change for the better or for the worse? Check the thread out to see results from other forum members and while you are there, post your own.
This next thread for today comes to us from naviwilliams and he offers up a question that we hear quite often – do you leave Wi-Fi on or off? It is a fact that using Wi-Fi over 3G will save you a decent amount of battery life so I have a tendency to leave it on since Wi-Fi is available to me at work and at home. How about you?
Last up for today is one of my personal favorite forums to check out – the iPhone Jailbreak and Unlock forum. This is the place to check out if you are interested in jailbreaking or unlocking your device. Most of the time you can find the answers to your questions within minutes.
It was just one day ago we mentioned that a new PwnageTool was on the horizon and for those iPhone 3GS owners who stayed on 3.0, your patience has paid off as the latest PwnageTool for Mac OS X has been release by the Dev-Team. If you couldn’t wait and you updated your iPhone 3GS to 3.1 via iTunes, you have a slight problem as you will not be able to jailbreak.
The iPhone 3GS is now supported in PwnageTool 3.1.3, assuming the phone was pwned at 3.0 or 3.0.1 – PwnageTool does not support the 3GS out of the box. If your iPhone 3GS has 3.1 preinstalled and is not Pwned then there is no tested jailbreak solution at the moment.
For the full details be sure to check out the Dev-Teams blog and make sure you fully understand what you are getting yourself into before attempting a jailbreak.
If you don’t understand the process, do not attempt it, and as always – TiPb takes no responsibility for the outcome. Need help? Check out our iPhone Jailbreak and Unlock forum.
For those of you who have patiently been waiting to jailbreak your iPhone 3GS with the 3.1 software, your patience is about to pay off. According to MuscleNerd all of the testing is complete and the new PwnageTool is almost ready to be released to the public.
Regarding the iPhone 3GS 3.1 software unlock, if you have already updated to the official 3.1, there still is no known way to unlock your device. In order to unlock the 3.1 software on a iPhone 3GS, this next version of the PwnageTool will be needed to make a custom IPSW file to preserve the 04.26.08 baseband firmware. Again — that older baseband is needed if you plan on unlocking your device successfully.
Stay tuned as we will bring you the news when the latest PwnageTool drops.
Now that the dust is starting to settle after the return of Steve, we would like to take a moment and issue another friendly reminder to all of you who currently using an unlocked iPhone 3G or the 3GS – do not install the iPhone 3.1 update via iTunes. You will lose your unlock and it may be permanent as Dev Team’s MuscleNerd stated on Twitter earlier today:
3G+3GS unlockers..you must not update to official 3.1! unlock needs pre-hacked 3.1 with 04.26.08
So what does that mean, well like I mentioned earlier do not update via iTunes. You must first hack the 3.1 software to include modem firmware 04.26.08. If this confuses you, please do not attempt to unlock your phone until an easier way is released.
We here at TiPb are wondering, what about iTunes? Have any of you with unlocked iPhones updated to iTunes 9.0? Let us know how it went in the comments!
As always, be safe out there, as we are not responsible if you blow up your iPhone.
On Friday, Apple launched their new Mac operating system, OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, and whenever that happens, Mac iPhone Jailbreakers everyone wonder if, on purpose or by accident (oh, hi DFU bug!) Apple will somehow break the Jailbreak. Well, good news this time around — Snow Leopard looks to be Jailbreak safe according to the Dev-Team:
Snow Leopard, the OS released for Mac on Friday, poses no new wrinkles for the redsn0w jailbreak or ultrsn0w unlock. [...] We’re glad to see Apple joining in on the “snow” theme. If only Apple had called their new OS “Sn0w Leopard”!
It was just this past Thursday that the Dev Team updated their software unlock, ultrasn0w, to version .09. While this update seems to have eliminated most of the issues some users were experiencing, the Dev Team have been nice enough to post some pro tips for unlocking your iPhone 3G/3GS with ultrasn0w .09. The following are just a few:
Unusual battery depletion is almost always caused by people choosing to “Restore from backup” instead of “Setup as new iPhone” when iTunes asks you. This isn’t caused by either the jailbreak or the unlock, but it’s a common 3.0 snafu. The fix is to just re-run the official 3.0 restore and choose “Setup as new” this time. Your music and apps and all that will still be synced, but you’ll get rid of any conflicting wifi, bluetooth, or carrier settings. Then just re-run redsn0w and install ultrasn0w.
T-Mobile in the USA doesn’t use the 3G frequencies that the iPhones support, so turn off 3G in Settings->General->Network. (Some T-Mobile territories gracefully hand down to Edge mode, but most do not).
So there you have it folks, two very important tips for the unlockers of the world. We here at TiPb can not stress exactly how important that first tip really is to “Setup as new iPhone” within iTunes while restoring your device. Not doing so can and will create issues for you somewhere along the way.
In the past 24 hours we have seen major updates to not one but two software unlocks for the iPhone 3GS. Who says competition isn’t a good thing and who doesn’t love a good old fashion hacker fight? Let’s get it on:
In the red corner we have George Hotz along with his fresh version of purplesn0w RC2.
3G(the network speed) issues fixed
Now only patches one file, CommCenter
Leaves no traces on your baseband after it runs.
Much more clean and reliable.
In the blue corner we have the iPhone Dev Team. And since Hotz released his source code, his competition used it to create their latest version of ultrasn0w .09.
Works on both 3G and 3GS
Doesn’t patch any mach-o binary whatsoever. (Doesn’t require a separate patch as each new firmware comes out).
Has no race conditions, no popups about “Missing SIM”, no network issues
Is almost 7000 times smaller than its nearest competition
So there you have it – two software unlocks for your iPhone 3GS and one update for your iPhone 3G unlock. You have to credit George Hotz for stepping his game up when the Dev Team has been dragging their feet. It really seems to have sparked up a good rivalry that we can all benefit from.
There is one major question though, how do you score the match?
