How I Bricked then Fixed an iPhone

How it all got started

My wife Julie asked me to put some more music on her cracked 1.0.2 iPhone (running on T-Mobile in the UK) last night. While I was doing that I thought "I know, I'll put the app installer on there and configure it for email, give her the full iPhone experience". Well, the problems started when the App Installer crashed part way through and the phone just died.

Simple enough: a reboot, restore the firmware and re-sync should solve the problem. The phone had been synced fully when I put the music on there so she shouldn't lose anything (bar her call log, SMS messages and notes - but I'll come back to these). So I set about the process of Option-clicking Restore in iTunes to restore 1.0.2. That completed without a problem so it was time to crack the iPhone for a second time (activate, jailbreak and AnySIM).

This is where the problems began. First off iNdependence wouldn't let me do it with iTunes 7.5 (and as I'm a good Apple fanboy now I'm running a completely up to date Leopard system). So I downgraded iTunes to 7.4.3 using a dodgy .dmg I found on the net. Then whenever I tried to Jailbreak with iNdependence (1.2) it crashed (asking if I wanted to relaunch it).

Maybe iNdependence 1.2 doesn't work with leopard or maybe there was some other conflict. Still not panicking, I downloaded the beta of iNdependence 1.3. I ran the Mob Tool (you have to do this after installing iNdependence 1.3 to copy the "Mobile Framework" in to it). There came my problem, it couldn't find the Mobile Framework within my iTunes.

A short bit of Google searching later (getting slightly nervous saying to Julie 'Erm, I'm having a little problem, just give me a minute') I found the version of Mobile Framework to download so I did that and iNdependence accepted it as being right.

Reboot (ad infinitum)

So I tried to Jailbreak the phone at last. After a minute or so the phone rebooted. And rebooted. And rebooted. It never got past a quarter turn of the spinning indicator before the screen corrupted (the best way I can think of describing it is different colour horizontal lines up the screen for a split second, followed by a white flash, then all black, then reboot).

OK, now things were really getting warm where I was sitting. Still, there's an easy option - just do the whole "Connect to iTunes" thing, restore the phone and try again with the right iNdependance/Mobile Framework voodoo. Uh-oh! I couldn't get it to go in to recovery mode. No matter how many times or how long I held down the Home and Sleep buttons, it wouldn't do it (it would either ignore me or just power off).

At this point I had to go and have the sheepish conversation where you explain to a woman who has just fell in love with a gadget for the first time that it is now a £200 paper weight. I offered to get her a new one (I've been working a LOT recently) but she said that was a waste of money and would prefer to just spit at me every time she saw me. Well, she didn't actually use those words, but I think that covers the jist of the emotion behind the conversation. I said I'd keep trying...

After 45 minutes of constant reboots, eventually I managed it (and I think this is the trick that may help someone else if they ever get in this situation). The key move seemed to be holding down the home/sleep button just as the screen corrupted. Holding them down while the screen was black or at the apple logo (even keeping them held down if they started being held at that point) did nothing. When I held them down as the screen got corrupted (that took a bit of timing) the corruption slowed down Matrix-style and was flashes of varying colours and then after it rebooted it went in to recovery mode.

So back to 1.0.2...

Now being back to where I started (and after rebooting my Mac, you never know, and getting completely fresh copies of iTunes, iNdependence, App Installer, etc) I thought it should be plain sailing. No such luck. After every restore the phone would just reboot in to "Connect to iTunes".

Running out of ideas, my last gasp idea was "maybe if I can upgrade to 1.1.1 that may flash stuff that restoring to 1.0.2 hasn't". So, I downloaded 1.1.1 (from a link on iphone.unlock.no) and upgraded to that using an Option-click on Restore within iTunes. Yay! At last the "Activate through iTunes" screen, along with a message about the incorrect SIM.

Cracking 1.1.1

I won't go in to detail for the instructions on how to crack firmware 1.1.1 at this point, just point you to the world's best iPhone cracking resource iphone.unlock.no. I have no association with them, I am just an exteremely satisfied visitor to the site.

I did have an extra step to perform, basically after activating the phone I had to "re-virginise" it using the 0.4 version. This is all detailed on iphone.unlock.no, but it's so easy it's untrue. After that I had a virgin 1.1.1 phone so I set about activating/jailbreaking/sim-freeing it.

Comparison of cracking 1.0.2 and 1.1.1

When my friend got his iPhone (about 2 weeks before me) we had to use some SSH voodoo and a command line ./iunlock command. It took ages and was very finicky. When it came time to do mine, things had advanced and I used AnySIM. It was much better, but still a laborious technical process.

Cracking 1.1.1 was quite simply child's play! With the instructions at unlock.no, you can go from Unactivated, Unjailbroken and SIM-locked to completely wide open sim-free with nothing more than a Wi-Fi connection. There are some complex key strokes to get you in to setting up Wi-Fi and adding a contact (using the Slide for Emergency option at the Activation screen) but it works like the instructions detail.

After setting up Wi-Fi and visiting http://jailbreakme.com on your iPhone your phone reboots and has been jailbroken, activated and automatically has the App Installer on it. It still hasn't been SIM-free cracked, but that's as easy as adding a new source to the App Installer, installing AnySIM from the installer and sliding the slider.

After doing all that, I connected it to Julie's Mac account and iTunes 7.5 (I'd re-upgraded) and it happily told me that I had a backup of an iPhone in the account, would I like to restore it to the connected iPhone. After doing that and a sync I was amazed to see Julie's phone back in all it's glory - wallpaper changes, all contacts, SMS messages, notes, everything back how it was just 4 short hours earlier!

I'm not touching my iPhone (I was tempted for a moment after seeing how easy it is to revirginise, install, crack, sim-free and resync - but considering the panic before that point, HELL NO!). I may wait until 1.1.2 is cracked (if it's as easy) and then go for that if it has any killer features, but other than that I'll just have to accept that my Wife's iPhone is more up to date than mine. As a geek it's hard to do, but I'll live with it...

• Share:
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
•