Art Of Geek

1.1.3 iPhone jailbreak released, iHackers rejoice!

January 26th, 2008 at 02:30pm madgunde

Disclaimer of liability: The information provided in this article is provided as-is and without warranty for information purposes only. Art Of Geek is not responsible for any damage you may cause to your hardware or software as a result of this information. Also please note that performing any of the steps outlined in this article will very likely void your iPhone’s warranty. It’s recommended that you sync your iPhone and backup any photos or other data before performing any firmware updates or restores. Proceed at your own risk!

News broke late Thursday night on TUAW that a 1.1.3 jailbreak solution for Windows had been released to the public by Nate True, a former iPhone dev team member who went rogue. About five hours later, they reported that a Mac solution had been released by Nate.

This most recent jailbreak solution is probably the easiest yet, although there’s good reason for that: it requires that your iPhone be running either firmware 1.1.1 or 1.1.2, and already be jailbroken with Installer.app already installed. Also note that as of this writing, the Mac version of the jailbreak is compatible with Intel Macs ONLY, so if you have a PowerPC Mac, you’ll have to wait until a universal version is released, or borrow a friend’s Intel Mac or Windows PC. Regardless, I highly recommend that you read the appropriate article for your OS of choice, as well as all the user comments before undertaking it yourself. Could save you from making a big mistake.

The jailbreak and instructions are available on Nate True’s blog, but I found a great tutorial on iClarified.com for both Mac and Windows which I used to do my upgrade. Fellow Canadians and others wishing to use their unlocked iPhones on non-approved carriers will be happy to know that this jailbreak solution also handles activation, and software-based sim unlocks remain in place. I can at least confirm that the iPhoneSimFree unlock I used to unlock my iPhone is still in place.

Before performing the update/jailbreak, I uninstalled any third party software leaving only SSH, BSD subsystem and Intaller.app on. I recommend doing the same if you’re planning this operation as it appears that any software left on the iPhone will need to be uninstalled and installed again to function. I also made sure to sync my iPhone one last time with iTunes to backup any data. Once done, I began the update/jailbreak process.

For those interested and haven’t been following my experiences from day one, here are the deets on my iPhone:

• 8GB model, firmware 1.0.2 out of the box.
• Jailbroken, activated and unlocked with iNdependence and iPhoneSimFree.
• Updated to firmware 1.1.1 and jailbroken/activated using iNdependence.
• Updated to firmware 1.1.2 and jailbroken/activated using the iPhone Dev Team solution.
• Operating on Rogers in Canada with a current Rogers SIM card.

During the upgrade, when the jailbreak terminal script was attempting to download the 1.1.3 firmware from Apple, as well as the patch file, I got a curl error and it appeared as though the download failed. Then, uploading the modified firmware to my iPhone completed nearly instantaneously, instead of taking minutes as per the instructions. I confirmed my suspicion that something was wrong when I checked my Mac’s /tmp/data directory for the firmware file and patch files, and found both were 0KB in size. Suspecting that the company firewall I was connecting from behind was preventing the script from downloading the files, I deleted the entire /tmp/data directory and started over from the beginning using a different internet connection and the files downloaded normally.

So if you are seeing curl errors and/or the firmware upload to your iPhone is happening too quickly, you might be having internet connectivity issues. This is proof that this initial jailbreak solution doesn’t have many checks in place to make sure each step is successful before proceeding to the next step, which means you need to be extra vigilant that you’ve read and understand all the requirements and follow the instructions carefully!

My upgrade went pretty much as detailed in the iClarified tutorial, including the “Main script execution failed” error while installing the 1.1.3 soft upgrade, which many users are reporting, after which it appeared as though my iPhone was trying to shut down (got the spinning cogwheel). After waiting at least 10 minutes for it to reboot, I force rebooted it by holding the sleep/wake and home buttons. After rebooting, I was greeted with a friendly message explaining how to edit the home screen. My iPhone was successfully updated, as can be seen from the Settings–>General–>About screen:

Post update, these are the issues I ran into, and how I solved them:

• EDGE settings got wiped and Settings would crash when attempting to re-enter my Rogers EDGE APN info. Resetting the network settings in Settings–>General–>Reset–>Reset Network Settings solved this issue and I was able to enter my EDGE and WiFi settings without issue afterwards. EDGE and WiFi both work fine.
• The OpenSSH server didn’t work. I reinstalled the BSD subsystem, rebooted my iPhone and then re-installed OpenSSH. Had to do this twice to get it to work, but it’s fine now.

Otherwise, everything is working great and as expected. Here’s what I’ve tested:

• I can send and receive telephone calls normally and I get notification of missed calls.
• Voicemail notification continues to work, pressing the voicemail button dials my Rogers voicemail number as it did before.
• I can send and receive SMS text messages, sending to multiple recipients work!
• Seems to sync without issues using iTunes 7.6.
• Safari works fine, including the new web clips on the home page feature! All my bookmarks and cookies are still there.
• Mail works fine and all my mail and settings are still there.
• iPod feature works fine, music, video podcasts tested OK. All my content was untouched.
• The wiggly icons/icon rearrangement feature on the home screen works great!
• Calendar and reminders work fine. My Calendar data was intact after updating.
• Stocks & Weather widgets functioning fine. My settings were untouched.
• Google Maps works, but locate me doesn’t function at all (expected and noted by others). My map bookmarks are intact. The new hybrid view seemed not to be working at first, but I suspect it was displaying cached information or was a problem on Google’s end as it’s started working fine.
• Camera, Photos, Contacts, Clock, Calculator, YouTube and iTunes WiFi store work fine. All my settings and data are intact.
• Installer.app works fine as do the third party programs I’ve installed and tested so far, although there are some minor glitches I’ve encountered, which are to be expected. Some apps are no doubt going to need to be updated, but my most important ones, iSolitaire, Converter, Books and mobileChat seem to work fine. The HP series of calculators work mostly, but don’t display the options correctly when you tap the HP logo.

So that’s it in a nutshell. I hope I haven’t forgotten anything. Please post your own experiences and/or questions in the comments.

Entry Filed under: Apple, Gadgets, iPhone