Upgrading iPhone 3.0.1. to jailbroken 3.1.

by WyldKard on October 5, 2009

Since we picked up an 3GS a couple months back, our jailbroken/unlocked 2G has been sitting on a shelf collecting dust, as though a forgotten relic in the battle against Big . Now forced to use AT&T, which drops calls at an alarming rate compared to our experience with the 2G on T-Mobile, we’re still happy with our service overall, if only because the user experience, occasional dropped call or not, is still better than using any other cellular phone in the United States. Yes, that’s how great the 3GS is, and why ’s market dominance in this area continues to swell.

That said, the isn’t perfect, and one of the imperfect things about it is the fact that Big is doing its damndest to keep the user experience consistent, and in doing so, limiting the types of applications that developers can release in the AppStore. Now, admittedly, the need to jailbreak an in order to run third-party “” applications is no longer what it was when we first decided to hack our 2G two years ago. Quite simply, the AppStore has evolved into a pretty nice store, with a great selection of apps that do most everything we need to. And where it doesn’t offer a particular app that we’d like it to, in most every case, that kind of app isn’t available in Cydia either. That is, except for three that we consider must-haves, two of which we mentioned in our mendax.iphone article. Specifically, we’re talking about Backgrounder (which lets us run any application in the background), SBSettings (a quick way to toggle settings on/off), and the more recent GV Mobile (the infamous Google Voice client).

While our experience using GV Mobile hasn’t been flawless (the app crashes consistently when changing forwarding numbers), an update is on its way. With no word on whether will ultimately approve or deny the official Google Voice app, GV Mobile is our only hope for using Google Voice on our today. Having access to SBSettings again is a fresh walk down memory lane, and significantly reduces the need for us to jump into Settings to enter airplane mode, as we can now easily turn off select services when we need to save some battery life. Plus, we can now disable everything except wireless, which is nice if we want to use, say, Virgin America’s in-flight wireless (even though, realistically, we’ll almost always have our MacBook Pro with us for such trips). But Backgrounder, assuming it works as well as it did on our 2G , is the cornerstone of the must-have jailbreak scene. Finally, we can keep Pandora running while switching to Google Maps (or a GPS application), or keep active any other audio programs while fiddling with whatever other apps we need to.

But enough about why we decided to jailbreak again. Let’s get back to how. While the process for jailbreaking is amazingly easy these days for older iPhones, the 3GS has been a different story. Until very recently, jailbreaking tools developed by the Dev-Team didn’t work on the 3GS. Even now that they do, how to upgrade a non-jailbroken 3.0.x 3GS to 3.1 and put a jailbreak in place isn’t a solution readily advertised. Even the guides at iClarified aren’t entirely accurate. After spending too many hours this past weekend figuring it all out, it’s time to share our procedure.

  1. Obviously, back up your and sync it with iTunes before you begin.
  2. If you haven’t already, download the 3.1 update via iTunes, but don’t install it.
  3. If you no longer have it, download the 3.0.0 update. The iClarified guide says you can alternately use the 3.0.1 update, but it did not work for us.
  4. Jump into a terminal window, and type the following commands: 
    cd /etc/
sudo pico hosts

    You’ll have to input your admin password at this point, after which you’ll be in a simple text editor window. Use the arrow keys to get down to the bottom of the document, and add the following line at the end:

    74.208.105.171 gs..com

    Hit Ctrl+X to exit, press Y to save, and hit return to overwrite the old hosts file. What this step does is redirect iTunes to a jailbreak-friendly server for firmware updates, instead of relying on ’s servers to control which firmware updates you’re allowed to receive and use on the .

  5. Download redsn0w v0.8 and run it. You’ll be prompted for the 3.0 firmware file. Follow the prompts, and at the end of the redsn0w process, you’ll have a jailbroken 3.0.0 3GS.
  6. Now, download PwnageTool 3.1.3. Run it, and click on the expert mode icon. Select the 3GS icon, and proceed with the program. Make sure the program uses the 3.1 firmware update. Refer to Step Six of this second iClarified guide. If you are an AT&T subscriber, ensure that “Activate the phone.” remains unchecked. If you check this box, you will be unable to get new carrier settings from iTunes. Also, it’s not likely that you need to mess with the partition size, so don’t worry about it.
  7. You can follow the rest of the iClarified guide, but don’t worry about putting your in restore mode. Instead, once PwnageTool is done and has output a custom 3.1 firmware package, jump into iTunes, hold down the option key, and click on the Restore button from the screen. You will be prompted for a firmware update: choose the custom firmware file, and let iTunes do the rest. When your finally reboots, it will be jailbroken, and Cydia/Icy will be installed.
  8. You can now sync the phone from your last backup to restore all your old apps and such. You’ll also be prompted for the 5.5 AT&T carrier file, which you’ll need to install to enable MMS.

At this point, you’ll have a fully-jailbroken 3GS running at the latest firmware revision. Jump into Cydia and install jailbroken apps to your hearts content!

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