Apple released iTunes 7.6 today along with the much anticipated iPhone & iPod Touch firmware 1.1.3. It’s worth repeating that if you have hacked your iPhone or iPod Touch (jailbroken it, unlocked it, etc.), then you SHOULD NOT install the new 1.1.3 firmware. Use common sense and let the experts have a crack at it first.
Now iTunes 7.6 appears to be safe. I’ve installed it and have synchronized my jailbroken and iPhoneSimFree unlocked 1.1.2 firmware iPhone without any apparent issues. Might be a good idea to hold off a few days just to be sure, but so far so good. If you have a hacked iPhone and have updated iTunes to 7.6, let us know in the comments how it went. Please include details about your hacked iPhone (firmware, hacks applied and unlock method if applicable).
January 15th, 2008
For those not up on the iPhone hacking lingo, here’s a glossary of important technical terms related to hacking and/or using the iPhone. If you’re fairly tech savvy or have already done some research into hacking the iPhone, you probably won’t benefit from reading on. If you are completely new to the iPhone and hacking however, this may make it easier to understand a lot of the stuff you will read on the internet about unlocking or hacking the iPhone, including some of my own articles, which often assume you already know the basics. I was inspired to write this glossary after I noticed a lot of the same questions being asked in article comments and internet forums.
This really is ‘the basics’ and is designed to be a README FIRST for someone who just started thinking about buying and unlocking an iPhone. This glossary assumes you know what an iPhone is, are pretty familiar with cell phones and their features and are a competent computer user. If you’re the type of person who can’t get anything done on your computer or cell phone without calling someone for help, then this isn’t for you, but if you were that technically challenged, you probably wouldn’t be reading this in the first place. 
So without further ado, on to the glossary!
Jailbreak
Apple designed the iPhone to make it difficult to hack for both security reasons, and so they could maintain greater control over how it was used. As such, they have not provided any means for end users to modify the built-in OS X operating system or install additional applications. Jailbreaking refers to the act of circumventing those controls or locks to enable write access the the iPhone’s OS and storage. An iPhone that has had this done to it is considered jailbroken.
Activation
Activation is the act of plugging your iPhone into your computer and running iTunes in order to ‘activate’ it’s features, something you need to do when you first take it out of the box or restore it’s firmware using iTunes. Activation in iTunes is usually a one-click process, but only if you have an officially supported carrier SIM card inserted. If it detects your SIM card is not an approved one, it will simply not allow you to activate your iPhone, which makes it pretty much useless except for placing emergency calls (e.g. 911). This is where the activation crack is needed. You need to jailbreak before you can crack it’s activation since it requires you to modify the iPhone’s software. Often the tool you use to jailbreak will also crack the activation.
Unlock
Most cell phone providers in North America sell mobile phones that have been locked to only work on their own cellular network in order to make it inconvenient for customers to switch to competing cellular providers. The iPhone is no exception. So if you buy an iPhone from the U.S., it’s locked to only work on the AT&T network in the U.S., even though the GSM technology the iPhone was built on was originally designed to make it simple to switch networks simply by swapping out a little chip called a SIM card. Basically, if a non-AT&T SIM card is inserted in an unmodified iPhone, it will be rejected by the phone and you won’t be able to connect to any cell phone network for voice or data. Unlocking is the act of modifying an iPhone to make it function with SIM cards from other GSM providers.
There are several different methods that can be used to unlock an iPhone, including a hardware unlock which requires you to physically open the iPhone and solder some connections, a “TurboSIM” method, which uses a special SIM card which must be purchased and most popularly, software unlocks which simply require you to run an unlock program on a jailbroken and activated iPhone. There are both commercial (e.g. iPhoneSimFree) and free (e.g. AnySIM, iUnlock) software unlock solutions available.
Firmware
The firmware is simply the iPhone’s operating system and software that makes the iPhone work. Apple periodically releases firmware updates which fix bugs and add new features via iTunes for Mac OS X or Windows. So far, Apple has not forced users to update their iPhone to newer firmware versions, but that doesn’t mean it might not happen in the future. Updating is of course mandatory if you want to take advantage of any new features they contain.
So far, each new iPhone firmware update Apple has released has undone the jailbreak and activation crack, requiring new solutions to be developed. Even restoring your iPhone with the current firmware requires you to re-apply the current jailbreak and activation crack, which sometimes requires you to downgrade your firmware first. The unlock may or may not have to be re-applied however, depending on which solution you use. So far the iPhoneSimFree solution has survived every firmware update Apple has released to date, and this is the one I’ve used on mine and my wife’s iPhones. Newer free unlock programs seem to survive now as well, but don’t have as proven a track record as the commercial iPhoneSimFree solution and even got a bit of negative publicity for rendering iPhones inoperable when firmware version 1.1.1 was first released, although a fix was eventually released weeks later.
Keep in mind that just because an unlock has survived firmware updates in the past, that’s no guarantee that it will survive all future firmware updates, but it does bode well. As always, unless you’re the adventurous type and doesn’t mind being the guinea pig, wait for others to update their firmware and run the new jailbreak/activation cracks and give the all-clear before proceeding with it yourself.
Baseband modem firmware
Like most complex gadgets these days, the iPhone is made up of many smaller complex components, each of which may have it’s own little bits of software driving them. One such component is the iPhone’s cellular modem or ‘baseband modem’, which is what allows the iPhone to connect and communicate via voice and data on the GSM network. The baseband modem has it’s own firmware (often referred to simply as baseband, or the baseband) that is periodically updated by the main iPhone firmware updates. You shouldn’t really have to worry about dealing with this at all, unless something has gone horribly wrong and you now either have a corrupt or damaged baseband modem firmware, or a firmware version mismatch, which happens when you downgrade the iPhone’s firmware in iTunes, since iTunes will not downgrade the baseband modem firmware. In either of these cases, symptoms will generally be problems or a complete inability to accept/make incoming or outgoing calls, SMS messages and access EDGE data services.
EDGE
EDGE is the cellular data network that the iPhone uses to connect to the internet from almost anywhere you can make a cell phone call. Any iPhone data application such as email, Safari, the Stocks and Weather widgets, YouTube and iTunes Store will use the EDGE network, if available, to connect to the internet and send/retrieve information. Note that like all other cellular services, you do have to pay extra for EDGE data usage, and it can be VERY expensive, especially if you don’t have an EDGE data plan, or you go over your plan limit. You can check your EDGE data usage under Settings–>Usage from your iPhone’s main screen. Accessing the EDGE data network normally requires you to have the correct APN settings entered in Settings–>General–>Network–>EDGE. If you want to make sure you never access the EDGE network, to avoid usage charges for instance, simply leave these settings blank.
Wi-Fi
Wi-Fi is your common wireless computer network that many homes, schools and businesses use to network computers. The iPhone will prompt you to connect to any available Wi-Fi network it detects when it attempts to connect to the internet BEFORE it will use an available EDGE network. This is great, since using Wi-Fi doesn’t incur any airtime charges on your cellular phone bill. The downside is free Wi-Fi networks may be limited where you go, especially outside of urban areas. Some Wi-Fi networks cost money to use, but are easy to spot, since you’ll be prompted by a web page to log in or purchase time when you try to visit any page in Safari. Many hotels, airports, coffee shops, conference centres and even some large urban areas have such paid wireless networks available and they can be really worthwhile if you have some time to kill or really need to get access to some web sites where EDGE would be too expensive. You’ll have to do the math and decide for yourself depending on your carrier’s rates and your data plan, if any.
Epilogue
I’m guessing that if/when my carrier here in Canada (Rogers) officially begins offering the iPhone for sale, that I will no longer have to deal with cracking the activation of my iPhone since iTunes will recognize my Rogers SIM card as an approved one. From that point on, if I have no desire to install my own software hacks, I should be able to upgrade my firmware without having to worry about re-hacking my iPhone. Since Apple has already committed to opening the iPhone to 3rd party software development beginning sometime early next year, my days of hacking my iPhone to install the programs I want on it will hopefully be numbered. I really look forward to the day when updating my iPhone’s firmware is as simple as Apple intended, but in the meantime, I’m thankful to all those hard working individuals who have made it possible for me to own and use this wonderful device in Canada now.
November 19th, 2007
[Update 1] Good news for all those iPhone aficionados who visit my blog: there is now a relatively simple jailbreak procedure that also handles activation for those of you looking to use an unlocked iPhone on unsanctioned networks. The older version only handled jailbreaking, but not the very important activation step, something I found out the hard way. Thankfully I was able locate instructions for manually cracking activation by replacing the /usr/libexec/lockdownd file with a hacked version via SSH/SFTP. Not fun. So do yourself a favor and use the new, improved jailbreak/activation method and save yourself the hassle. Instructions are in the included README.txt file.
Please note that I have not tested the new version myself, so run it at your own risk. I’d suggest reading through the comments on this TUAW article and maybe scanning the posts in the Hackint0sh forums to see if anyone is having any problems before proceeding. Please note that this jailbreak/activation solution DOES NOT handle unlocking. This will require an extra step using an unlocking program such as iPhoneSimFree.
Now I say it’s relatively simple because it is somewhat lengthy, with many steps to follow, but the hard stuff is automated, so as long as you are comfortable following step by step instructions and are fairly familiar with your OS of choice (Mac OS X or Windows), you should be OK. Whether or not it’s worth upgrading to the latest firmware really depends on who you are and how you want to use your iPhone, or more specifically, in what language. Besides the likely bug and security fixes (like the Safari TIFF file exploit, which has been closed), the only new features seem to be better support for typing and using your iPhone in other languages. So unless you want/need the better language support, have bought a new iPhone that came with firmware 1.1.2 out of the box, or, like me, you absolutely have to know you’re running the latest firmware “just because”, you may want to just sit this one out and wait for the next firmware update.
Update 1 - 12/22/2007: Please note that as of this writing, there is no software unlocking solution for out of box version 1.1.2 iPhones. The above article is referring to iPhones that are updated to firmware 1.1.2 from earlier versions. Thanks to reader “TM” for bringing this to my attention.
November 19th, 2007
[Update 2] A lot has happened in the iPhone hacking world in the past week. On October 10, the iPhone Dev Team published detailed instructions for jailbreaking and activating iPhone firmware 1.1.1. Within 24 hours, the folks at iPhoneSimFree, confirmed that their unlock solution in conjunction with the iPhone Dev Team’s hack would enable unlocked phones to be fully operational running the latest firmware. They also released an update to their SimFree application which repaired iPhones that had previously been bricked due to corruption of the baseband radio firmware caused by some of the free unlock solutions.
Yesterday, an update to iNdependence for Mac OS X was released that makes the process of updating, activating and jailbreaking iPhones a whole lot easier. I tried both the old manual instructions as well as using iNdependence 1.2.3 to update mine and my wife’s unlocked iPhones to the latest firmware with a high degree of success. Read all about my experiences in the full article.
Continue Reading October 17th, 2007
[Update 1] Just a quick warning to anyone who may have followed my exploits and unlocked their iPhone to work with non-AT&T SIM cards: DO NOT update your unlocked iPhone’s firmware past version 1.0.2 until you’ve confirmed that it’s either safe to do so, or find verified instructions detailing what steps need to be taken to avoid permanent damage to the device.**
You’ve most likely heard Apple’s warning that the next firmware update (rumored to be version 1.1.1), will likely cause permanent damage to any iPhone that has been unlocked. Furthermore, they have stated that any such damage will not be covered under the iPhone’s warranty. OK, before you panic, take a moment and breath. This isn’t such a big deal, and should not have been unexpected. You should have already known the risks that are involved in hacking your iPhone, and been prepared to take the necessary steps to void them, namely not updating your firmware until you know it’s safe to do so.
But hot on the heels of Apple’s statement, the iPhone Dev Team has responded:
Based on download numbers, the iPhone Dev Team believes that, worldwide, several hundred thousand people have unlocked their iPhones. That number continues growing every day. The removal of the lock, a bug, was a major step forward in the iPhone development. It made the iPhone free and useful to anyone, not only to those in certain countries.
Apple now announces that the next firmware update, expected later this week, will possibly break the handset of all of us free users in the World. It speaks of “damage” done to the firmware and “unauthorized access” to our own property, The removal of those firmware problems, which were built in in favor for AT&T, does not cause “damage” as they want to make us believe.
We will provide you with a tool in the next week which will be able to recover your nck counter and seczones and even enables you to restore your phone to a Factory-like state.
In the meantime we advise you not to update your free iPhone with the upcoming firmware. Wait for the next version to be fixed to work properly with your carrier and not break your phone.
So there you have it. Be patient, don’t rush to install the new firmware when it comes out, and keep an eye on this space (or any other useful source of iPhone hacking/unlocking news) for updated information on how to proceed. I recommend against trying any of the premature manual re-lock methods. There’s no need to rush. You have control over when you update your iPhone’s firmware, so there’s no sense rushing to implement a risky hack that may do real permanent damage to your iPhone. An easy solution will come in time, so relax and enjoy your iPhone in the meantime.
Worst case scenario I foresee is you’ll need to re-lock your iPhone, install the new firmware update, then unlock it again using a new version of the unlock tool that will no doubt be released shortly after the new firmware hits the interwebs.
Update 1 - 9/29/2007, 12:55 pm: It is
NOT safe to update your unlocked iPhone to firmware 1.1.1! DON’T DO IT unless you want to end up with an expensive brick. I suggest disabling “Check for updates automatically” in iTunes preferences, and do not click the “Check for Update” button on the iPhone screen in iTunes. I also recommend NOT updating iTunes past version 7.4.2 until we know what it does exactly. If you have to restore your iPhone’s 1.0.2 firmware, disable your network connection first so iTunes can’t check for the update. If iTunes has already downloaded the updated firmware, deleting the 1.1.1 .ipsw files from
~/Library/Application Support/iTunes/iPhone Software Updates (that’s the Library in your home folder, not the one at the top level of your hard drive) should allow you to install the older 1.0.2 version as long as it’s files exist in that directory already. I make no guarantees though, so proceed at your own risk.
September 26th, 2007
The iPhone development community has released iNdependence 1.2.1, an update to the iPhone activation/hacking tool that now enables YouTube functionality on non-AT&T activated iPhones. I’ve tested it and it works beautifully. This program is in my opinion the most important tool for hacking the iPhone using a Mac.