This step-by-step guide and tutorial will show you how to jailbreak firmware 3.1 for iPhone 3GS using a Windows PC. If you have a Mac, you might as well follow this tutorial.
This guide is just a workaround as there is no official iPhone 3GS 3.1 jailbreak tool for Windows yet. We are going to get a custom firmware cooked on a Mac machine and install it on your iPhone 3GS on a PC. This is a safe and simple way to update your iPhone 3GS to a custom jailbroken 3.1 firmware.
This tutorial is a step-by-step guide that will show you how to jailbreak OS 3.1 for your iPhone 3GS using PwnageTool for Mac OS X.
PwnageTool will be used to create a custom firmware (also called custom IPSW). After creating the custom firmware, we will restore your iPhone 3GS in iTunes using this firmware. A custom IPSW is needed in order to avoid updating the baseband, which would render any software unlock impossible, at least for the time being.
Please read the next 2 notes over and over and over again... Seriously, please make sure you read and understand the following:
Note 1: PwnageTool does not support the 3GS out of the box. If your iPhone 3GS has 3.1 preinstalled and is not Pwned then there is no tested jailbreak solution at the moment. In other words, if you are on a pwned version of 3.0 or 3.0.1 (either using PwnageTool, RedSn0w, or PurpleRa1n), then you are fine; just follow this tutorial. If you updated to 3.1, you will have to wait for another method. We don't know when this other method will be available.
Note 2: there is no Windows version at the moment. We have no indication about when a Windows jailbreak will be available.
This post was written on 10/02/09. For the latest information about jailbreaking, visit our jailbreak section.
As usual, proceed with caution. You are doing this at your own risk...
It is official! The iPhone 3GS jailbreak for OS 3.1 announced yesterday and confirmed earlier today is out, compliments of the Dev Team.
The iPhone 3GS is now supported in PwnageTool 3.1.3, assuming the phone was pwned at 3.0 or 3.0.1 - PwnageTool does not support the 3GS out of the box. If your iPhone 3GS has 3.1 preinstalled and is not Pwned then there is no tested jailbreak solution at the moment.
This means that if you updated to 3.1 or if you bought your iPhone 3GS with OS 3.1 already installed, you will not be able to jailbreak. However, if you are on a pwned version of 3.0 or 3.0.1 (either using PwnageTool, RedSn0w, or PurpleRa1n), then you are fine.
Good news for iPod Touch 2G users! PwnageTool will also support this device.
The iPod 2G is now supported in PwnageTool 3.1.3, assuming the iPod 2G was pwned at 3.0 or 3.0.1 - PwnageTool does not support the iPod 2G with 3.1 software out of the box.
PwnageTool is for Mac OS X only. There is no Windows version yet but let's hope the Dev Team works on this in the near future.
I will be working on a tutorial and post it on the blog asap. Visit the Dev Team blog for full information on the release.
Dev Team member MuscleNerd confirmed earlier today what we reported yesterday: a jailbreak for iPhone 3GS 3.1 coming soon.
It seems that there is a bit of confusion around this and people aren't sure whether they will be able to jailbreak or unlock their iPhone 3GS.
From what I understand, here is the situation (note that I might be wrong, in which case, please correct me by adding a comment):
if you are still on 3.0 or 3.0.1 and your baseband is still 04.26.08, then there is no problem at all for you. You will be able to jailbreak and unlock by using PwnageTool and creating a custom firmware that will not update your baseband. if your iPhone 3GS is already on 3.1, you won't be able to jailbreak or unlock yet but the Dev Team is working on your case.As usual in this case, we will be spreading the news as it becomes available.
For the latest information about the iPhone 3GS jailbreak and unlock, please refer to the following articles:
jailbreak iPhone 3.1 unlock iPhone 3.1Please leave a comment should you have any question or concern.
UPDATE: I wrote a tutorial on how to jailbreak the iPhone 3GS 3.1 with PwnageTool.
I've been in the Midwest for the last 3 weeks, traveling around Illinois, Wisconsin, and Michigan with very few opportunities to get on wifi. Worse, most of the places I went to didn't even have 3G coverage, forcing me to rely on the slow Edge, when available. I am currently in Chicago (for one last day before finally going back home to San Diego) where there is some very fast 3G coverage.
The first thing I did when arriving in Chicago was to enable tethering with this simple hack. It took about a minute to get it to work and to get my laptop going. It was the first time I actually tethered my iPhone 3GS and I have to admit that I am incredibly impressed with the speed.
I didn't make any scientific test to see how fast it really is, but it seems to me that my wifi at home is not faster than that. Every once in a while there is a little downtime but nothing really annoying.
If you want to use your iPhone to get internet on your laptop (also known as tethering), I suggest you have a look at this hack.
It seems it was yesterday that I unboxed my iPhone 3GS for the first time. Of course it was love at first sight. It is fast and elegant, but now that I've been using it for a month, I notice there is still a lot missing to make it the perfect phone.
Copy/Paste is ClunkyWoohoo, the iPhone finally has copy/paste. It only took Apple 2 years to implement this basic feature... The reality is that they did a terrible job. I think copy/paste on the iPhone is clunky and intrusive. Now everytime you touch your iPhone screen, you have this annoying popup asking you if you want to select/copy/paste. Apple products usually are about amazing user experience and copy/paste for the iPhone is a big fail.
I was watching TV yesterday night when I saw the Copy and Paste TV ad for the new iPhone 3GS. I had seen this ad many times before but it was the first time it stroke me how laughable this ad really is.
This is the new iPhone, and it lets you do some pretty incredible things... You can copy a phone number, and paste it in a text. You can copy an article, and paste it in an email...
What made me laugh is that they are using the copy/paste feature as a selling point. Of course this is a brand new feature for the iPhone, but you have to keep in mind that copy/paste has been available on all other smartphones forever. Besides, the copy/paste feature on the iPhone has nothing of revolutionary. If anything I think it is very clunky and intrusive. Yet Apple sells it as a technology breakthrough.
Then at the end of the ad comes the catchy phrase:
Copy and paste on the iPhone 3GS, the most powerful iPhone yet.
Well of course it's the most powerful iPhone yet; it's the latest one and there has only been 2 before that.
I think this ad is really deceiving.
What do you think of the latest iPhone ads? If you didn't have an iPhone yet, would they make you want to get one?
When Apple introduced the iPhone 3GS last month, they announced that the battery life would be improved. Given the poor battery life of my iPhone 3G, I took that as a great news and was very excited about being able to get more from my iPhone.
Like many other iPhone 3GS owners, I am very disappointed in the actual battery life. It is nothing like Apple had claimed but since the phone was brand new, I figured that I'd need to give it a few full charges and run downs to optimize the battery. I was wrong as it didn't change anything. I also tried all the tricks as turning off push notifications, location services, etc...
So I decided I'd give a call to Apple to see what they suggested. It started pretty bad as I had to wait a solid 15 minutes to get someone on the phone. Oh well, they must be busy, I thought. Finally someone picks up the phone and mumbles what I believe is a name and some type of welcoming message for me. Eww, bad first impression!
A few days after releasing PurpleRa1n, the first iPhone 3GS jailbreak, GeoHot has now created his own iPhone 3GS unlock called PurpleSn0w.
Wifi fails? Battery fails? Unlock fails? You need purplesn0w, the geohot 3GS unlock solution. Now I know you here a lot about different colors of sn0w, but I'm here to tell you why purplesn0w is the best. First off, what is purplesn0w? It's a soft unlock for your 3GS that I'd actually use day to day. It's not a daemon that takes any resources, and it doesn't add a task to your baseband. It's very close to a true unlock. All it does is patch three files, CommCenter, lockdownd, and your wildcard activation plist(which you need, activate w at&t sim first, no hacktivation support yet).
Many users reported losing wifi connection and not being able to get any signal after unlocking their iPhone with UltraSn0w, so hopefully PurpleSn0w will get better feedback.
Follow these steps to install PurpleSn0w:
First your iPhone has to be jailbroken (see jailbreak guides) Launch Cydia and add this source: http://apt.geohot.com Install the com.geohot.purplesn0w package Reboot your iPhone Done!If you want to unlock your iPhone for T-Mobile, make sure you disable 3G in the settings.
GeoHot also posted technical information about PurpleSn0w. If you're into dissecting lines of codes, GeotHot made the source code available for you to play with.
This short tutorial will show you how to unlock your iPhone 3GS using UltraSn0w. Unlocking your iPhone 3GS will allow you to use your iphone with any cellphone carrier in the US and in the world, assuming they use SIM cards.
Before starting, make sure this is the latest tutorial on unlocking the iPhone 3GS by visiting this page.
Unlock iPhone 3GS Guide:
First you have to jailbreak your iPhone 3GS. Read my RedSn0w tutorial on how to do that first. It should take about 10 minutes and it is a necessary step to be able to unlock your iPhone.
After jailbreaking your iPhone 3GS, follow these simple steps to install UltraSn0w:
Launch Cydia. Add the following source to Cydia repo666.ultrasn0w.com (note there is a “0″ in sn0w, not an “o”). After installing this source in Cydia, search for “UltraSn0w”. Install UltraSn0w and reboot your iPhone.That's it :)
This guide and tutorial will show you how to jailbreak your iPhone 3GS using RedSn0w. After jailbreaking your iPhone 3GS, you will be able to unlock it using UltraSn0w should you want to.
Note that this tutorial is for the iPhone 3GS but the steps are the same for the iPhone 2G, iPhone 3G and iPod Touch 2G. Read this for more information about the jailbreak that best fits your needs. This was done on a PC but I assume the steps are the same for Mac and Linux.
Jailbreak iPhone 3GS Guide:
1. First, make sure you have the latest version of iTunes installed on your computer. If you have to update iTunes, make sure you restart your computer after installing the latest iTunes.
2. On your desktop, create a folder called "jailbreak iPhone 3GS" or whatever you want to call it. In this folder, download firmware 3.0 for your iPhone 3GS and RedSn0w 0.8 from here. Unzip the RedSn0w folder.
3. Launch RedSn0w and browse for the 3.0 firmware you downloaded in the previous step. RedSn0w should be processing the chosen firmware and tell you that the IPSW was "successfully identified". Click Next.
4. RedSn0w will start working for a few seconds and then will ask you what you would like to install. You can install Cydia and Icy. I highly suggest you only install Cydia. Choose Cydia and click Next.
5. We'll now have to connect the iPhone 3GS in recovery mode. To do so, unplug it from your computer, turn it off and wait a few seconds. Then hold the home button while plugin your iPhone to the USB cable. Keep holding the home button until the "Connect to iTunes" image appears.
6. Your iPhone will then go into recovery mode and that's when the magic happens... RedSn0w will install the jailbreak, which may take a few minutes.
7. Your iPhone will restart and install a bunch of stuff. . Even though RedSn0w says "Done!", wait until the very end to click "Finish".
8. After a few minutes, your iPhone will restart. Then click "Finish".
9. Go to your iPhone springboard and you should see the Cydia icon. Note that the icon may be on the second or third page on your springboard.
10. Done!
It took me about 10 minutes to jailbreak my iPhone 3GS, including time to take screenshots and write this tutorial. It was from far the quickest and most painless jailbreak.
The Dev Team quietly updated RedSn0w to version 0.8, which allows you to jailbreak the iPhone 2G, iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS and the iPod Touch 2G.
The main features of RedSn0w 0.8 are:
a stable jailbreak (unlike PurpleRa1n) Cydia and Icy are now fully compatible UltraSn0w compatible Mobile Substrate and WinterBoard working wellThat's interesting that the Dev Team decided to finally release their iPhone 3GS jailbreak when they said just about a week ago that they wanted to wait for Apple to release 3.1 before making RedSn0w public. I guess they were emulated by the release of PurpleRa1n and needed to prove the iPhone world that they are the original iPhone hackers.
You can get RedSn0w 0.8 from our downloads page and read the RedSn0w iPhone 3GS jailbreak tutorial I wrote.