iPhone Jailbreaking

A new utility has been developed by iH8Sn0w for users interested in figuring out whether they can jailbreak or unlock their iPhone or iPod Touch. F0recast will check your device using the USB connection and examine the baseband and bootloader versions.

Jailbreaking and downgrading have become more complex as different versions of hardware and software are constantly released by Apple. F0recast will tell you if your iPhone is unlockable, if you can downgrade your software, and if your specific model requires a tethered jailbreak.

Five days after Apple released the 3.1.3 iPhone OS update the Dev-Team has countered with PwnageTool version 3.1.5, making a jailbreak of the latest firmware possible. This software currently only runs on Mac OS X, and works by updating your firmware to 3.1.3 with a custom IPSW file.

If you are already running the official 3.1.3 firmware on your device the jailbreak will not work. Dev-Team also reports that unless you have a problem with the reporting of your battery percentage, there's probably no good reason to update. If you're already jailbroken/unlocked with 3.1.2 you can use PwnageTool to safely update to 3.1.3.

Unbelievable that it's already been three months since the release of PwnageTool 3.1.4 for Mac OS X. The latest installment in iPhone Dev-Team's jailbreaking arsenal makes it possible to execute a tethered jailbreak on the iPhone 3GS fresh out of the box. This hardware is running iPhone OS 3.1.2.

Windows users have been waiting for a an update, and now it may be on its way. MuscleNerd has announced via Twitter that the team is working on redsn0w 0.9, a fast jailbreak solution for Windows and other platforms. No word yet on when this new version of redsn0w will be released.

Worried that upgrading your shiny Mac to Snow Leopard (OS X 10.6) for $29 will screw up your iPhone? No worries. Dev-Team has announced the Snow Leopard upgrade does not affect the redsn0w jailbreak or the ultrasn0w unlock.

Next on the horizon from Apple is the iPhone 3.1 update, possibly coming our way this month. AT&T is expected to release an MMS update on September 25 using iTunes.

You may be in the market for a good iPhone unlock. Everyone likes to save money roaming overseas. Some of us just can't stand our current wireless carrier and want to break free. Turns out there's more than one solution available.

Two of the top competing software packages have been released and they are very similar. Even their names, purplesn0w and ultrasn0w are so alike it can be confusing. Turns out that geohot, the developer of purplesn0w, released his source code.

The crippling of Bluetooth functionality on the iPhone is another one of life's mysteries. As users are painfully aware, the only thing Bluetooth is capable of doing in firmware 2.2 is connecting to a wireless headset. Fortunately for those with jailbroken devices it appears that all of this is about to change.

The iSpazio Repository will soon host software from the iBluetooth project allowing users to unlock Bluetooth on the iPhone and transfer files using a computer or another Bluetooth-enabled phone. This is only the tip of the iceberg. The Bluesn0w project promises to allow developers full access to Bluetooth on the iPhone.

Last night, iPhone firmware version 1.1.2 became available. Though available for download here, the firmware is still not available via the iTunes auto-update feature. Strangely, however, if performing a restore on your iPhone via iTunes, iTunes will download and install the 1.1.2 firmware. Clearly it is only a matter of time, likely within the next few hours, before 1.1.2 is fully integrated with iTunes.