Crackin' the Classic into 2.0

I never thought they would crack the 2.0 firmware that fast but they did it, and I wonder how much of that is actually sought for by Apple itself. The 'dev'ils of 'Dev'Team who created the Pwnage Tool for cracking the iPhone sound like 'russian' but I wonder what their origins are. I am sure everybody else knows about them but, pardon me, I heard of them first time ever only this morning, so my guess might be totally off the charts... I knew of the ZiPhone hacks who apparently seem to be slow-responding to the 2.0. They published a statement instead... bla...bla...bla...

Anyways, having found on a usenet server the DevTeam's latest version of their crack, a.k.a. PwnageTool, including the 3.9 and 4.6 bootloaders (WTF are these?!), I said, I'd give it a try. On the shot on the left, you see four files that are necessary to do this upgrade from 1.1.4 to 2.0. If you find and download the Tool itself (easy on the Net), make sure you find the bootloaders shown here and the firmware upgrade as well. I have no clue whether these bootloaders are necessary but it appeared in my configuration that the Tool needed them. In all honesty I know as much about mobile phone OS's as I can speak Cantonese Chinese... I am just doing what the software tells me to do...

Anyways, the process 'made for dummies' is the following: In the Tool, you select your own specific case, that is to say, iPhone Classic, iPodTouch or 3G iPhone. You then follow instructions and at the end the Tool prepares a custom firmware upgrade file that you may save on your desktop to be able to find back easy. It also asks whether you cracked your iPhone with the PwnageTool ever before; here you must say 'Yes'. You're probably lying on your face on this but please do answer 'Yes'. When it then asks you whether you are a 'legit user' tell'em the truth. I don't know whether it counts on doing their custom build but I said 'no' and it worked! Truth works!

After preparing the custom firmware build and saved it on your desktop (it's a file called iPhone1,1_2.0_5A347_Custom_Restore.ipsw), it'll tell you to close the app, open iTunes, and connect your iPhone via a USB port by putting it in Restore mode (turn it off altogether and hold the home button down while plugging it in the USB port of your Mac... keep holding home down until you see the familiar cable shot telling you to connect it to your iTunes). Once there, iTunes reacts that it's got to restore it to the newest version... now hold down the 'option' key on your Mac and click that restore button in iTunes. The process starts and a few minutes later iTunes tells you that all is done and asks you to hit OK and wait for the iPhone to restart. At that moment I found that I had to unplug the iPhone from the Mac and let it continue on its own the restart process. It said something about loading bootloaders and basebands and after 4-5 minutes it was just ready to go. Connecting the phone back to iTunes took care of its entire restore to the original data (contacts, mails, even SMSs, etc...) Super Cool!

Don't tell me Apple didn't want that to happen. In a week and change from the launch of the 3G, all classic jailbroken iPhones can move without a hitch to 2.0... c'm on! Why not, by the way? Their app store is going to get an extra few million customers overnight... most people I know would give their right arm for a fraction of this.

I believe the advantage to iPhone classic owners is just about the new apps and the 'push' mail, calendar and contact data in combi with mobile.me. GPS and 3G speeds are hardware related add-ons that are only available on the 3G reincarnation of the gadget and are of course missing from the classic version... (Jeez, barely over a year old and we call it a classic!).

Anyways, enjoy those apps folks... many are real fun and most are free or real cheap! As the Greeks say, cheap pricin' eats up the dough!

UPDATE: In the meantime, some smart kid pointed me via Twitter to a full blown "how-to" illustrated process (unfortunately only written in Dutch) that seems to be identical to my experiences. Go have a look and try it if interested. Even their opening shot (the four files needed) looks very much like mine!