Downgrade

How to Downgrade iPhone 3.1.3 to 3.1.2

As always when a new firmware is being realeased, there is always a few unlucky people who "accidentally" update or restore to the latest firmware, thus losing their jailbreak and unlock.

In this case, you'd usually want to downgrade your iPhone from 3.1.3 to 3.1.2 simply by downloading 3.1.2 and SHIFT + Restore in iTunes so that you can choose your own firmware to restore to.

The problem is that Apple recently stopped signing all previous firmware versions making it impossible for you to downgrade.

Fortunately, Saurik has been smart enough to create a system to bypass Apple's signature and making it possible for you to downgrade from 3.1.3 to 3.1.2. To do so, you will need to have your SHSH on file. To see if it's on file, launch Cydia and look at the top. Mine says "This device has SHSHs on file for iPhone OS: 3.0, 3.1, 3.1.2".

If you don't have this, make sure you look for a link that says "Make my life easier" on Cydia. This will allow you to save your SHSHs.

This being said, downgrading an iPhone 3GS from 3.1.3 to 3.1.2 is easier said than done. It's actually a pretty painful process that I detailed in a tutorial a few month ago. I originally wrote this tutorial to downgrade from iPhone 3.1 to 3.0 but the steps are exactly identical (MuscleNerd confirmed this).

If you're one of those who need to downgrade your iPhone firmware, then check out my tutorial, or simply wait for the Dev Team to come up with a reliable jailbreak for 3.1.3. Something tells me PwnageTool is not too far ahead of us ;)

UPDATE: If you have an iPhone 3G, you can now downgrade from baseband 05.12.01 to o4.26.08.

UPDATE 2: This post is slightly outdated. Check out this page for the latest information about downgrading your iPhone.

How to Downgrade iPhone 3.1 Baseband From 05.11.07 to 04.26.08

Every time there is a new firmware coming out, updating puts you at risk of updating your baseband as well, making it impossible to unlock your iPhone. This time is no different than the others and many people accidentally updated their iPhone to firmware 3.1, updating their baseband to 05.11.07 at the same time.

Fortunately, there is an easy way for iPhone 3G users to downgrade their baseband from 05.11.07 to 04.26.08. Note that this is for iPhone 3G users only. If you have an iPhone 3GS, then read my article on how to downgrade the iPhone 3GS firmware from 3.1 to 3.0.

Note that this trick only works on iPhones that have the 05.08 (5.8) bootloader from the factory, which is just a very limited amounts of iPhone 3G that were released in the first few weeks of the production cycle. If you don't know your bootloader version, you may run Fuzzyband and it will tell you what version you have and whether or not you can downgrade your baseband.

1. First, your iPhone 3G has to be jailbroken. For more information, read my iPhone 3.1 jailbreak article.

2. Launch Cydia and search for the Fuzzyband app. Install it and reboot your iPhone.

3. Launch the Fuzzyband app and tap "downgrade" to start downgrading your baseband from 05.11.07 to 04.26.08.

4. Reboot your iPhone. You should now be on baseband 04.26.08 and be able to jailbreak and unlock your iPhone using UltraSn0w.

How to Downgrade iPhone 3GS From Firmware 3.1 to 3.0

Saurik, the creator of Cydia, has come up with a way to downgrade the iPhone 3GS from firmware 3.1 to firmware 3.0. The method is not for the faint of heart but it can be a life saver if you accidentally upgraded your iPhone 3GS to 3.1. Saurik did a great job at explaining how and why this downgrade works and I invite you to read his article for detailed information. On my part, I will only give you a step by step on how to downgrade from 3.1 to 3.0.

1. First and foremost, you must have saved your ECID file through Cydia. If this was done, you should see the following message at the top of Cydia's homepage: This iPhone 3G[S] has an ECID SHSH on file.

2. Now we're going to duplicate the functionality exposed by Apple's signature server and trick iTunes into thinking it is connected to Apple's servers. Make sure you have iTunes 9 installed on your computer.

On a Mac, go to /etc/hosts. On a PC, go to C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts. Open the file in a text editor and add the following entry at the bottom of the file: 74.208.105.171 gs.apple.com

Save the file and close it.

3. Now we have to put your iPhone into DFU mode. To do this, open iTunes, plug your iPhone and hold down the power and home buttons for 10 seconds, then let go of the power button but continue to hold the home button until iTunes recognizes the device with the message: "iTunes has detected an iPhone in recovery mode. You must restore this iPhone before it can be used with iTunes." Your iPhone screen should be completely black. If you see an image on your screen, you most likely didn't perform the previous step correctly. Try again.

4. You can now do a "normal" restore to the 3.0 software. To do this, hold down the Option key (on Mac OS X) or the SHIFT key (Windows) while clicking the Restore button in iTunes. Select the firmware 3.0 (which can be downloaded here).

Theoretically, you should be done with the downgrade. That's just for the theory though... You're most likely going to get several errors.

If you get the "unknown error (3002)", it's because you probably don't have your ECID SHSH's for 3.0 on file with Cydia and it is unfortunately impossible to register your device with Cydia anymore. There is no solution, your iPhone can't be downgraded from 3.1 to 3.0 and you're gonna have to wait for a new jailbreak.

If you get the "The iPhone "iPhone" could not be restored. An unknown error occured (1015)" error, then re-do the process all over again. You will get the same error again and it is normal. Ignore the error and jailbreak your iPhone using RedSn0w.

I agree that this is definitely not the easiest way to downgrade your iPhone from firmware 3.1 to firmware 3.0, but you don't have much choice at this point. If you don't feel like taking on this project, I suggest you just wait for a proper 3.1 jailbreak, which may take days, weeks, or months. I am very confident that the jailbreak community is getting closer to a 3.1 jailbreak though.

If you have any tips and tricks to make this whole process smoother, or if you have any question, please leave a comment.

UPDATE: If you have an iPhone 3G, you can now downgrade from baseband 05.12.01 to o4.26.08.

How to Downgrade Baseband 2.30.03 to 2.28.00

If you like this post, please feel free to digg it, or subscribe to our RSS feed, or follow me on Twitter, or all of the above ;)

[digg-me]Since firmware 2.2.1 came out and updated the baseband from 2.28.00 to 2.30.03, many people accidentally updated, and are now stuck on baseband 2.30.03. I wonder how you can "accidentally update" your firmware as it takes a few steps, but anyways... I've had a few emails from people asking me how to downgrade baseband 2.30.03 to 2.28.08.

If you're looking to unlock your iPhone with YellowSn0w, you can't do that as long as you will on baseband 2.30.03. Unfortunately, you can not downgrade baseband 2.30.03 to 2.28.00! Sorry folks but you should have read the Dev Team's warning!

Now the good news is that I'm very confident the Dev Team is working on updating YellowSn0w so it works with firmware 2.2.1, baseband 2.30.03.

You can still downgrade your firmware from 2.2.1 to 2.2 in iTunes by hitting SHIFT + RESTORE and selecting firmware 2.2 but you will most likely have errors and even if you manage to downgrade, you still won't be able to downgrade the baseband.

UPDATE: It's now possible to downgrade your baseband thanks to pHaseBanDowngrader

pH (Pedro Henrique Franceschi) created a tool to help you downgrade your baseband from 2.30.03 to 2.28.00. To use this tool, you have to have to have an iPhone with bootloader 5.8. If your iPhone was manufactured before September 2008, you're good. If you bought your iPhone after September 2008 with firmware 2.2.1 out of the box, then you can't use pHaseBanDowngrader because your bootloader is 5.9.

Here are the instructions on how to downgrade using pHaseBanDowngrader:

1. Download this file 2. SSH into your iPhone and put the downloaded folder (phasebandowngrader) inside the folder /Applications/ 3. In MobileTerminal.app, type “login” and enter “root” as user, the default password is “alpine” 4. Now, type “cd /Applications/phasebandowngrader && ./phasebandowngrader”. Follow the screen instructions 5. Done!

Again, a big Thank You to pH for developing this tool.