While a lot of people are awaiting the release of Pwnage tool from iPhone Dev Team, there are equally that many people who accidentally got upgraded to 2.0 leaving their precious iPhone locked and unusable.

If you are one of those, then follow this guide to restore your iPhone 2G from firmware 2.0 to 1.1.4 and completely unlock it. This is of course is the only way you can use your iPhone 2G until the Dev Team releases Pwnage tool 2.0.

Follow the instructions below carefully, and you should be able to achieve the stated goal pretty fast. Trust me, it ain’t that hard….

Warning : This tutorial/guide is for the iPhone 2G only which have been accidentally upgraded to 2.0 needing to restore back to 1.1.4 and unlock the phone. Do not use this guide on your iPhone 3G.

Also this guide is currently only for the Mac OS.. I will add a guide for Windows when it is available and ready.

Alright lets get started then…. Download the following items at the start, you will need them during the course of the tutorial.

• iTunes 7.7 (from Apple)
• iTunes 7.5 (from Apple)
• AppZapper
• iPhone 1.1.4 Firmware
• Pwnage Tool 1.1
• iPhone 3.9 and 4.6 Bootloaders

Download all of them and keep them handy.. Lets get started then with the real deal.. Get ready to free your iPhone

• Install iTunes 7.7 and then uninstall it using AppZapper. This is to make sure you have the correct drivers and files necessary for the iPhone with firmware 2.0.
• Open Terminal and type the following command. Enter the administrator password when prompted for it.
  sudo rm -R /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/MobileDevice.framework
• Now install iTunes 7.5 and reboot your Mac.
• Rename iTunes folder in Music to iTunesOLD. Run iTunes and configure everything to your hearts liking and quit iTunes.
• Plug in your iPhone using the dock connector. iTunes should now recognize the iPhone and prompt you telling that you need a newer version of iTunes. Just don’t bother and click OK.
• Now the tricky part, you now need to put the iPhone in DFU Mode. Note that the iPhone is completely blank in the DFU Mode.

  Here’s how to get into the DFU Mode, hold the home button on the bottom and the power button until the screen turns off and then count to 2 and let go of the power button on the top of the iPhone , but keep pressing home button until iTunes asks you if you want to restore your iPhone.

• Now in iTunes option click Restore in the iPhone tab and choose the iPhone firmware file iphone1,1_1.1.4.4A102_Restore.ipsw you downloaded earlier.
• iTunes will now restore 1.1.4 onto the iPhone. Once it is done you should get an error 1015 which is good sign.
• Now put your iPhone in normal restore mode (not DFU). To go into normal Restore mode turn off iPhone, turn on with a tap on power while holding the home button and hold the home button until iTunes tells that you need to restore your iPhone. Now restore the firmware again just like in the previous step. Don’t bother about the error code.
• Now quit iTunes and start Pwnage tool that you downloaded earlier and hit browse ipsw and select the firmware you downloaded earlier..
• Hit iPwner, and after a while your iPhone will start showing text, loads of it. After a while it should restart and ask you to connect it to iTunes.

  

• Hit Browse ipsw. Choose the file you downloaded earlier. Select ipsw builder and configure the options as shown below in the screenshot.

  

• Hit Ok, and choose the two bootloader files from the rar archive you downloaded earlier. Choose a location to save your restore file.

   

• Quit Pwnage tool, and fire up iTunes one last time.
• Option click on restore in the iPhone tab (the alt key + mouse key) and choose the new custom restore file you created in Pwnage tool.
• Once the restore is complete, your iPhone should be completely unlocked and jailbroken. You should be able to run any apps you wish and use any SIM.
• Sync your iPhone, and enjoy your totally unlocked iPhone.

Well that is it, wasn’t that long isn’t it. Try it out and at the moment it is the best solution until Dev Team gets around to releasing Pwnage tool 2.0 that will unlock Firmware 2.0 on the iPhone 2G.

Meanwhile enjoy your hacked phone!! Special thanks to aRT in the forums for writing this guide.

Please let us know in the comments, as to how it goes for you. This wouldn’t be possible without the work of many hackers from around the world whose sole aim is to free up the iPhone.

Things are starting to heat up a little bit in the iPhone arena. The rumor mills are all active with buzz as to what new features the 3G model of the iPhone will bring.

In all chances I believe that Apple will unveil the 3G version of the iPhone during this years WWDC. But if you can’t wait till June 9th, here are spicy bits for you to feast upon.

Engadget got tipped off that the enterprise beta of the firmware has the "missing" magnifying glass-contact search feature that we saw during the iPhone SDK announcement earlier this year. There is also an inbox-like button that doesn’t seem to do anything. Apparently it shows meeting invites, with an icon badge that shows how many invites have been received.

I’m sure you will all agree on the fact that features in the UI are more obvious than the other newer features that are buried deep inside the iPhone software. The noted iPhone hacker Zibree found references to SGOLD3, a chip that would give the iPhone 3G capabilities. Electronista found a Greek iPhone-unlocking website reveal numerous textual clues about the firmware. Tidbits include "A2DP," which is a Bluetooth profile that allows streaming of CD-quality audio wirelessly, and a Bluetooth remote control. Other capabilities include GPS capabilities, a YouTube plug-in for mobile Safari, and Google411 integration. Pretty Cool eh!

Looks like Apple is also clearly taking concrete steps to prevent the unlocking of iPhones. A new clearly identifiable "BRICKED_AND_SIM_LOCKED_STRING" indicates that the iPhone may one day refuse to work with other carriers no matter what you did to it.. Hardware unlocking would still be possible though.

Features aside, TGDaily seems to believe that we will see the 3G Model in similar price points like the existing models. 8GB one 399$ and 16GB one for 499$. We might as well see a 32GB Model though. There are not going much changes in the way the iPhone operates, and the casing of the iPhone is also expected to slim down a bit.

This is it for now. We will see a lot more happening in the run up to this years WWDC. Things are definitely heating up now, but I’d want the iPhone v2 to come with atleast a 3.2MP camera, and Video recording capabilities. A 2MP camera doesn’t cut it these days does it?

What are your expectations of iPhone take two(as Uncle Steve would say)?

This time around a guy named George (Not to be confused with George Hotz of the Gunlock fame) has come up with a simple solution to Activate and Jailbreak iPhones with the latest firmware.

Before I go into the specifics of this hack, let me point out that this hack is based on the same RAMDISK exploit that ZiPhone is based on. The tool released by George will only Activate and Jailbreak firmware 1.1.4, so to Unlock it you would still need to use ZiPhone.

Here is what George had to say while coming up with the exploit :

Okay, the firmware 1.1.4 has been released, since my phone is running 1.1.3 with bootloader 3.9, and there’s a very convenient tool named ZiPhone out there, so I decided to give 1.1.4 a try. In case anything’s wrong, I can always return to a previous version.

So I update my 1.1.3 to 1.1.4 with iTunes, the update was completed without hassle, at the end of update (after iPhone restarted), iPhone stayed in SpringBoard (same as it was during my last 1.1.2 to 1.1.3 update), so I checked the version, yes, it is 1.1.4 with baseband 04.04.05_G.

Then I restarted my iPhone and expected it’ll be stuck at the activation screen, and yes it did stopped there, now I need to find a way to jailbreak and activate it.

As I have played with ZiPhone some days ago and are familiar with the way it works, so I quickly created a new ramdisk which jailbreaks the phone and adds the afc2 support so that I can get the new lockdownd to analyze. I jailbreak my 1.1.4 with the customized ramdisk, then I use iPHUC to get the new lockdownd 1.1.4.

Yes, it’s possible to install SSH during the jailbreak, but I was just too lazy to do it, besides, iPHUC could do everything I needed except running shell commands which was not needed at the moment.

He has come up with this small tool that will Jailbreak and Activate the iPhone with the latest firmware version. Download the Tool from here: http://george.zjlotto.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/02/act114.zip 

Via George’s Blog

Preliminary reports from people who have upgraded to the latest firmware say that :

• Jailbreakme.com doesn’t work anymore. (TIFF Exploit Fixed)
• All 3rd Party apps are now gone.
• iToner does still work.

The Hackers at the iPhone Dev Team are at hacking the iPhone again, with the IRC channel becoming busy all over again. Netkas (Brilliant Hacker!) who first found the TIFF Exploit on the iPhone is currently busy with OSX86, so there is some serious work that needs to be done. Which means that the countdown for a jailbreak has begun. When do you think a working Jailbreak will be released?

The Good news is that this time, unlocking does not appear to be a barrier to upgrade–especially if you’ve used the recent revirginizing and safer unlocking methods.