I have one of the original iPhones, imported for me by a customer (thanks Urs!) and it’s been interesting to see the development of the hacking tools that go with the software updates. I tend to update infrequently because of the difficulty- it’s like hitting yourself with a hammer- it feels so good when you stop.
So I upgraded to v1.1.2 a while back which took hours. The instructions on the internet were frequently contradictory and poorly written. I was up until 3am getting it working and missed an important meetup because of it.
Then I upgraded to 2.1 which used a completely different method, and again took hours because I was trying to understand how it all worked, and again the information was poor. You have to create a custom firmware for your phone, save it to your computer, then inject it back into the phone.
So by now I was quite wary of doing anything with the phone, actually putting time aside on a weekend for it.
Fast forward to last weekend, and I downloaded the v3.0 software, switched the phone into airplane mode, connected it to the computer, backed up, updated, synced. And then pulled it off the dock to test. Turned airplane mode off and….. Noooooooooo Waaaaaaay! It actually works! I hadn’t even done the jailbreak or unlock steps!
By the way, if you want to go to the home of iPhone hacking, try
I still don’t know why it works, but I now have a fully functioning iPhone running v3.0 software without any nasty hacking. So far I’m very impressed. Typing texts is marginally slower (but not painfully so), and I’m loving the landscape keyboard. The update has allso fixed a couple of other annoying glitches, namely it will now display cover art when connected to my Alpine car stereo, and previously if you had a messge come in while you were on the phone, you had to reply or dismiss the message before you could finish the call. Yes, you could have hit the top button on the phone to kill the call then dealt with the sms, but you can now hit a button to end the call then decide what to do with the sms.
Thanks Apple, this is a worthwhile update.
17.7.09 update. One other thing that seems to be fixed is Bluetooth, which was ok but unreliable under previous versions. One thing that is not fixed is a music ‘feature’. I listen to a lot of music podcasts in the car, and the phone remembers where I am up to as long as I don’t switch it off. So I can put it back in the cradle and start again just where it stopped. However if I turn the phone off overnight and stick it in the car the next morning, it starts from the beginning of the current playlist.
Hey Apple- if it can remember which playlist I’m on, why can’t it remember the track and start time! Grrr
