How to Downgrade Your iPhone 3.0 OS

Lots of us have been using the iPhone 3.0 beta full-time. Now we’re rolling back, because it is decidedly NOT ready.

Now, we’re not saying we’re surprised, or angry, or anything. It’s beta software, and beta software is by definition not ready for everyday use. But in the pursuit of the latest and greatest thing, we all have learned that a little bit of inconsistency or crashiness is often a fair price to pay for being on the cutting edge.

Not so in iPhone 3.0. It’s slow as hell, locks up on everything from launching an app to entering a phone number on the numeric keypad, sucks down battery life like an alcoholic who just found his first bottle of MD 20/20 in days, and so on. Add to that a lack of support for MMS as of yet and no apps to take advantage of the background notifications, and you have a fairly useless upgrade, right now. So let’s roll it back.

Note: Your iPhone 3.0 OS backups (your phone settings, unsynched photos, text messages, etc) will not be compatible with 2.2.1 once you go back down. So make sure you have a backup from the 2.2.1 days to restore from, or else you’ll be starting from scratch.

iPhone EDGE
If you’re running OS X 10.5.6, you’ll need to do the USB DFU fix outlined in our jailbreaking guide before proceeding.

1. With your phone plugged in, put it into DFU mode by holding both the power and home buttons for 10 seconds, then releasing power and continuing to hold down home until iTunes recognizes a phone in “recovery mode.”

2. Download the 2.2.1 firmware .ipsw file from Apple. Hold down option (Mac) or shift (Windows) and click on restore. Choose the stock iPhone 2.2.1 file you just downloaded.

3. Let it do its thing, and you should be in business. Restore your backup should you have one, and proceed to jailbreaking if you want to.

iPhone 3G
On the iPhone 3G, the 3.0 software flashes the baseband (the chip that controls voice and data network traffic), which confuses iTunes when you try to downgrade. So you have to jump through a few more hoops to downgrade your 3G, but it’s still easy enough.

1. Follow the first two steps above for iPhone EDGE, only using the iPhone 3G 2.2.1 firmware package of course. Again, OS X 10.5.6 users will have to do the USB driver switcheroo detailed above.

2. When it’s done restoring, you’ll get an error message that looks like this:

As long as it’s a four-digit error number like 10xx, don’t worry, that’s just iTunes telling you it’s confused by the updated baseband on your phone. Everything will work fine, but unfortunately your phone will be stuck in restore mode until you jailbreak it, which is what we’re doing next.

3. For Mac (Windows users skip to step : Download a utility called iRecovery. This tool forces your phone to reboot out of restore mode, which is necessary for the QuickPwn jailbreak software to recognize it.

4. Go to the terminal and change to the iRecovery directory, wherever it is on your system, and type these two commands:

chmod 755 libusb-0.1.4.dylib
chmod 755 iRecovery

5. Next, copy the “libusb-0.1.4.dylib” file to the /usr/local/lib directory on your machine (you’ll have to shift-command-G to go to this folder in Finder).

6. And finally, with your iPhone plugged in, go back to Terminal and type:

./iRecovery -s

You’ll get a prompt, where you should then type “fsboot” (no quotes) and hit enter. If nothing happens after 10-15 seconds, type it again and hit enter again. Your phone should boot.

7. Download QuickPwn and jailbreak your phone. Restore your 2.2.1 backup in iTunes, and you should be in business.

8. For Windows: After you restore to 2.2.1, you can skip straight to running QuickPwn to get your phone up and running.

And that’s it. Enjoy an iPhone free of horrible slow-downs until summertime.

(Via Gizmodo)

USB tethering with iPhone OS 3.0 apparently works

A developer has accidentally enabled USB tethering with a beta of Apple’s new iPhone OS 3.0. The feature appears to work, so it is just up to the carriers to determine whether they can handle the load when iPhone OS 3.0 is expected to ship this summer.

USB tethering—where a cell phone is used as a modem for a computer—is one of the most-requested features for the iPhone, and (half of) it has finally arrived in iPhone OS 3.0. Scott Forstall, Apple’s Senior VP of iPhone Software, stated on Tuesday that the feature is now built into the OS, but carriers will have to choose whether to take on all that extra network burden and allow access. As developers continue to tinker with the iPhone OS 3.0 beta, though, one has unlocked access to iPhone tethering and taken it for a spin.

Developer Steve Troughton-Smith has posted screenshots of his adventures in iPhone tethering to his Twitter account. Unfortunately, Steve has no idea how he did it, only tweeting that he was hacking around with APNs in the Carrier.bundle itcc file. Steve says the feature appears in the Network section of the Settings app, but while “tethering over USB seems to work,” it tends to cause a hard-reboot of the phone. Steve is in Ireland using O2, and testing over Bluetooth is next.

It is worth reiterating that the ability to tether an iPhone for data is not a technical challenge; it’s a network challenge. You probably heard that the iPhone is responsible for bringing AT&T practically to its knees this past week at SXSW in Austin, TX, and that’s just from tiny bits of mobile sites and the like. Computers can haul far more data down a connection, and many carriers are simply not ready to provide that large of a wireless pipe to 17 million iPhone owners yet.

iPhone 3.0 Software: What’s New, How to Install – Everything You need to Know

If you are seriously interested in iPhone 3.0 Firmware upgrade that was published this morning, you need to upgrade it right? Well without jailbreaks, its possible to upgrade to iphone 3.0. I will show you how to do it in just 5 mins. So don’t worry. let’s first see what are there in the iPhone 3.0 software update which is still in BETA phase mind you but well worth the use.

What’s New in iPhone 3.0

1. MMS: Thank god, at last MMS feature!

2. Cut, copy and pasting: If you have always wondered why there was never a c-c-p feature in iPhone now it is. With one touch of the screen, you can now copy text from emails, notes and websites and paste them into any application. You can also delete newly pasted data by shaking the iPhone and selecting the option from a pop-up window. Which is right from the Job’s books I guess.

3. P2P: This comes as a surprise but peer to peer technology can be used by iPhone developers from bluetooth, Wi-Fi etc. You can also play multiplayer games with cool speed.

4. Third-party add-ons: Third party add-ons are given more value here. Glucometer et al will be a welcoming addition to iPhone 3.0. So will be for developers who can now log on to app store and make cool apps.

5. Spotlight: Searching gets more enhanced with iPhone 3.0. The users will be able to search their entire collection of applications and music, as well as email and notes.

6. Enhanced GPS: The true potential of iPhone’s GPS will be unlocked now. Thanks to the new turn by turn navigation.

How to Install the New iPhone 3.0 BETA Firmware

1 Sign up as a developer on http://developer.apple.com/iphone. You need to pay $99 to be a member of the developers group. if you are really interested to know about inside stuffs then that price is not too much I assure you. And again with the new developers’ store for iPhone 3.0, it will be cooler. You will also get access to a vast array of documentation, videos and code on the apple iPhone develoeprs site.

2. Apple will take 24 hrs to upgrade your status. Now you need to download two things.

• Download the iPhone SDK if you haven’t already. Spare yourself of the trouble if you have an older version already installed.
• Download the DMG for the iPhone 3.0 Software

3. Open the DMP with the IPSW image. Open X-Code and find Organizer window. Plug in your iPhone and it should be up there, click on it.

4. In the place where it talks of software version, select other version and browse to your new DMG with IPSW image.

5. Press Restore (Its always good to have a backup of necessary files and contacts inside your iPhone before that)

6. Open iTunes when your iPhone restarts and it will activate again, allowing you to make calls etc.

You are done. Enioy after a restart.