iPhone Blog

If there is one good thing about the Dev Team, it’s that they work fast. Following a few issues with YellowSn0w, they have already updated it to version 0.9.4 and it supposedly fixes a bunch of issues. It is still in beta but it’s much more stable than it was. So if you had issues unlocking your iPhone 3G using YellowSn0w, try again with the latest version.

It’s still available in Cydia and you can still read this for the full iPhone 3G unclok tutorial.

Below are instructions on how to unlock your iPhone 3G using Yellow Sn0w. Unlocking your iPhone 3G will make it possible for you to use any cellphone carrier.

Before you go any further, make sure to READ EVERY SINGLE WORD OF THIS TUTORIAL. If you think you’re too cool for school, then go directly to the instructions but please, do not complain if you mess up your iPhone during the process, which is very unlikely to happen anyways…

First things first. In order to be able for you to use Yellow Sn0w to unlock your iPhone 3G, you have to be on a jailbroken iPhone that runs the latest firmware 2.2 with the latest baseband 02.28.00. To find out what firmware you’re on, go to Settings > General > About and look for “Modem Firmware”. It should say 02.28.00.

If you have not jailbroken your iPhone yet, you have to now in order to unlock. To jailbreak your iPhone, follow the QuickPwn 2.2 guide that I wrote a few weeks ago.

If you have already jailbroken your iPhone using PwnageTool to preserve your baseband, sorry but you have to restore and rejailbreak again in order to have the latest 02.28.00 baseband.

If you have updated to the latest firmware 2.2 with its latest 02.28.00 baseband, then you’re good to go.

So from now on, I assume that you are on a clean firmware 2.2 with firmware 02.28.00 and that your iPhone is jailbroken.

1. Go to Cydia and install this new source: http://apt9.yellowsn0w.com/ (note that snow is spelled with a zero, not an “o”). To install a new source in Cydia, go to Manage > Sources > Edit > Add, then type in the source http://apt9.yellowsn0w.com/ and tap “Add Source”.

2. Once the source has been added, tap “Return To Cydia”, then tap “Done”.

3. Now tap “apt9.yellowsn0w.com from the list of sources “Entered By Users”.

4. Select Yellow Sn0w, then tap install nad confirm.

5. Once the installation had been successfully completed, return to Cydia.

6. Hard reset your iPhone. To do this, hold the home and power buttons simultaneously for a few seconds until the phone shuts off by itself (ignore the “slide to power off” message)

7. Insert whatever SIM card you want! Wait a few seconds and you should be good.

8. Done!

See, that wasn’t too hard at all. Users that are already familiar with Cydia and sources shouldn’t have any problem at all. But first time jailbreakers might be a little lost, which is why I detailed this tutorial a lot.

Now there are a few known issues with Yellow Sn0w and I highly recommend you either read my previous post about it, or go directly to the Dev Team’s blog.

Troubleshooting:

1) If you are on tmobile USA you should disable 3G in Settings or sbsettings.
2) YellowSn0w does not work with a SIM PIN. You  must disable your SIM card pin lock.

At any rate, I would really appreciate it if you could digg this post, then write a comment, then go to the Dev Team’s blog to thank them for their great work.

Yellow Sn0w, the soft unlock created by the Dev Team is now available from Cydia or Installer. Instead of rewording what the Dev Team has to say about it, I will simply copy/paste their entire post from their blog.

I don’t like copy/pasting large amounts of texts from other sites, but in this case, I find it really necessary. I really recommend you go over to the Dev Team’s blog, read the post from there, and write a nice thank you comment.

For those of you that don’t care about the fine prints, here are the repos for Yellow Sn0w.
Cydia source: http://apt9.yellowsn0w.com/
Installer repo: http://i.yellowsn0w.com/

I will be writing a guide wrote an iPhone 3G unlock tutorial on how to unlock the iPhone 3G using YellowSn0w.

Again, please make sure to visit the Dev Team’s blog and thanks these guys for spending New Year’s Eve behind a computer screen so everyone can have an unlocked iPhone.

From the Dev Team Blog:

BASICS

• The unlock works exclusively with baseband 02.28.00. This baseband is provided by the latest firmware update (2.2) from Apple.  You’ll need to upgrade to this release using iTunes and then use QuickPwn to activate etc. There are plenty of tutorials about this on iclarified, bigboss, and other established tutorial sites.  Because it works on 02.28.00, it is available to everyone on the planet.  This means we don’t need to unnecessarily expose holes in earlier basebands, which is an important concern.
• The application is a small daemon that is launched on boot.  It injects the payload at boot and also whenever there is a baseband reset.  You won’t notice anything about it other than that your third-party sim now works.  It’s a small program and unobtrusive.  There is no GUI (this is by design).
• You can add the application using the sources outlined below (coming soon). There are Cydia and Installer sources available, so use whichever you are comfortable using.
• yellowsn0w is completely removable through Cydia, the command line, and iTunes.

DETAILS

• There is a known issue with SIM cards that have STK (SIM Toolkit) application menus.  These menus are usually items such as “top up” “get credit” “lotto numbers” etc. These menu items confuse the application sometimes.  Removing and reinserting the SIM once after reboot (give it about 10 secs 60 seconds (with v0.9.1) after you see the slide to unlock widget) fixes this issue.  We’re working on a better fix.
• For those of you using SIM cards without STK menus, the application has some optional arguments that will make the unlock much faster for you.  So either experiment on your own (use “yellowsn0w -h” for usage) or wait for a customization writeup.
• After you install yellowsn0w via Cydia, you should return to the Cydia main menu then reboot your iPhone with the 3rd party SIM installed.  Wait for the slide to unlock screen, then wait 10 or 15 secs more.   If you don’t see your carrier name pop up, then remove your SIM, reinsert it, and wait 10 secs more.  This is the step we’ll be working on eliminating next.

RANDOM

• The application is version 0.9 0.9.1.  This is considered beta software, you use it at your own risk. You know the score.
• The application is released on a non-commerical basis.  Please do not accept pirates and scummy ripoffs of this software. We license this software for single use and in a non-commerical environment (meaning you can’t charge for it). The techniques and methods used are not to be used by third party companies. We are watching you Jody…we won’t be so forgiving this time.
• Direct linking to the repository URLs is prohibited, please only link to this post. We will be checking referers.
• Happy 2009 and enjoy!

The iPhone 3G is used all over the world with all sorts of SIM cards, and we almost certainly will see untested and unexpected situations.  If the soft unlock doesn’t work for you on day 1 (literally day 1, of 2009!) then please don’t panic or be impatient.  This is new territory for everyone, so enjoy the ride as much as you can

RELEASE INFO

• Cydia source: http://apt9.yellowsn0w.com/
• Installer repo: http://i.yellowsn0w.com/

UPDATES

1. Soon you’ll see yellowsn0w 0.9.1 in the repos.  It uses a much longer delay to let your SIM card initialize.  If you have problems with 0.9.0, try this one and wait a full minute after you see homescreen, then reinsert sim card.  We need both success and failure reports to tune this across the world, so please be patient (but please also report result!)
2. If you are in the U.S. and are trying this with T-Mobile, you must turn off the 3G switch in Settings.  Also if you are good with the command line, you can make it much easier by adding the line <string>-q</string> right after the /usr/bin/yellowsn0w line in /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/org.iphone-dev.yellowsn0w.plist  (that’s and advanced tip, hopefully someone will make a boosprefs type of tool for it)
3. No PIN support yet. Remember how we said this was beta?  Well we’re still working out the flow for SIMs with PINs enabled.  Please disable any PIN you may have on that SIM before trying yellowsn0w, for now.
4. The unlock will silently quit on anything other than baseband 02.28.00. It detects the wrong version and just quits to avoid any damage.  Please double check your Modem Firmware setting in Settings->General->About.

Earlier today, the Dev Team published a post on the blog with some strange binary codes that won’t mean anything to anyone that doesn’t speak geek fluently (I don’t!). I completely disregarded this post as I thought it was a pre-message for tonight’s release of yellow sn0w, the new unlocking tool that will be available sometimes today through Cydia.

However, a tweet from twitter user Yellow Sn0w got me all excited when it said that it will be safe to use yellow sn0w on any firmware. Tweeting back and forth with him, I was directed to a blog post of his that actually explains the full meaning of the binary codes posted by the Dev Team.

Here is his explanation:

In binary that message translates to vtaber 61060174. vtaber translates to “ignore” and the 61060174 means post# 61060174 on the iPhone DevTeam blog. http://blog.iphone-dev.org/post/61060174/the-man-from-delmonte-he-say-yes

Hoping that this is true…

It’s completely unofficial and still very buggy, but yes, you finally can get Flash on your iPhone… kinda. iMobileCinema is a new app available for free in Cydia that aims at being the “Flash for iPhone” application.

iMobileCinema is in fact a Safari plugin for playing internet videos on your iPhone or iPod touch. I personally gave it a try on several websites and it worked pretty well.

After installing iMobileCinema, simply visit any webpage that has Flash content and it will show you a big “play” triangle on top of videos so you know you can play it.

Is iMobileCinema a Flash Player for Safari?

The answer is no. Even though iMobileCinema acts like a Flash plugin, it can’t play Flash content such as Flash games and ads. It only plays Flashvideos that are embedded in a webpage.

iMobileCinema can’t decode Flash files (.swf) but it ca decode Flash Videos (.flv). It decodes and plays the flash video in real-time while it’s buffering.

According to iMobileCinema’s blog, they are also coming up with some cool new features…

Some live broadcast sites are using rtmp protocol to deliver videos, e.g., mtv.com, hulu.com. We’ll try to support the protocol later. And playing embedded mp3, like singsbox.com, is a good idea and we’ll try to support it too.

iMobileCinema is available via Cydia. You will have to add this source to Cydia: http://d.imobilecinema.com

Here is a short demo of iMobileCinema in action…

iPhone 2G jailbreak - checked
iPhone 3G jailbreak - checked
iPhone 2G Unlock - checked
iPhone 3G Unlock - NOW CHECKED!

Earlier this week, I told you that the Dev Team was going to release its iPhone 3G soft unlock on New Year’s Eve and today, MuscleNerd, leading member of our favorite hackers team broadcast live on Qik, showing the first “public” iPhone 3G soft unlock.

The live broadcast was about 4 minutes long and was not about fluff and BS. MuscleNerd went straight to the point switching SIM cards, running the unlock tool and showing the newly unlocked iPhone successfully operate under T-Mobile.

If you look at the video below, you will see that MuscleNerd is actually performing the unlock running some code directly from his computer but you won’t have to do that once the 3G unlock becomes available to the public on December 31st. Indeed, you will be able to download and easily install the unlock method directly from Cydia.

Earlier this week when Apple released the Mac OS X 10.5.6 update, it created an issue preventing jailbreakers to put their iPhone in DFU mode, which is a vital step of the jailbreaking process. The Dev Team quickly released a dirty fix for it but it obviously wasn’t the best way to get around this issue.

Thanks to Hackint0sh user Volkspost, there is now an easy way to fix this DFU mode problem in Mac OSX 10.5.6. Here it goes…

1. Download the Automator program(Install_IOUSBFamily_kext_10_5_5.zip) from here

2. Extract the zip file

3. Open the unzipped folder and launch the Fix_DFU_10_5_6 Automator script

4. At this point, you may get a message asking if you’re sure you want to open it. Click YES

5. Click OK to the “Read Me” file

6. Enter your admin password and click OK

7. A window will pop up telling you that “caches necessary for booting are being updated”. Click OK

8. Your computer will then reboot and it will now be able to recognize your iPhone in DFU mode.

Here is how the Automator program Fix_DFU_10_5_6 works:

1. checks if you are at Mac OS X 10.5.6 or better (if not will quit)
2. show a readme
3. quits all running apps (with save option)
4. backup the original files (AppleUSBHub.kext and IOUSBCompositeDriver.kext from 10.5.6) in a new folder on your Desktop
5. ask for your admin password
6. copy AppleUSBHub.kext and IOUSBCompositeDriver.kext from 10.5.5 into the desired location on your Mac
7. set owner:group and permissions
8. rebuild the kextcache
9. reboot your Mac

That’s all there is to it! Any question, please leave a comment.

I wrote yesterday about the rumor of an iPhone 3G soft unlock before New Year. Well, this is not a rumor any longer as the Dev Team confirmed today in a blog post that they are indeed finishing up on the yellowsn0w project, a codename for the 3G unlock.

We have been working hard on a few other things. The main one being the 3G unlock codenamed “yellowsn0w”. This is now completed and is currently being packaged into a user-friendly application with the simplicity that you see in QuickPwn or BootNeuter.

The release date for this 3G unlock should be New Year’s Eve and it will be available to iPhone 3Gs that have 2.11.07 baseband or earlier.

Ok, you want to know the cool part? This 3G unlock will be available through Cydia, which means there will be no software to install on your computer and the process will most likely be painless for you, assuming you know how to install an app on Cydia…

Sometime before Christmas, MuscleNerd will show a live demo of the unlock (and some other random nucleus and pwnage stuff).  It’ll be streamed live via the awesome Qik application, and announced via his Twitter account just as the broadcast begins.

Stay tuned for that!

Now regarding these DFU issues in Mac OSX 10.5.6…

We believe this behavior is due to a kernel bug not a specific countermeasure by Apple. Possible fixes are (try at your own risk!) -

1. Replace the following plugin kexts from within IOUSBFamily.kext with the ones from 10.5.5 and then rebuild kextcache (if you don’t understand this, then you shouldn’t attempt it!)

/System/Library/Extensions/IOUSBFamily.kext/Contents/PlugIns/AppleUSBHub.kext

/System/Library/Extensions/IOUSBFamily.kext/Contents/PlugIns/IOUSBCompositeDriver.kext

2. Use a USB hub in-between the DFU device and the Mac and insert/reinsert the iPhone’s USB cable.

3. Use a PwnageTool created .ipsw on Windows! Oh the irony!

I don’t have a Mac so I was not able to try this myself but if you do, please let us know about your experience in the comments.

A new rumor is circulating about a possible software unlock for the iPhone 3G sometimes soon after Christmas. This is just a rumor so don’t get too excited but it is however true that the Dev Team has been progressing a lot towards this soft unlock.

This software unlock would be only available for 3G users that are still on 01.45.00 baseband, which is the baseband of firmware 2.0. Remember when I published my firmware 2.2 jailbreak tutorial? I warned you that this method would be good only if you didn’t care about a future soft unlock. Well, this future soft unlock is now coming and if you haven’t followed my warning, then you won’t be able to unlock.

This is pure speculation at this time as there is no real evidence of a post-Christmas unlock release. I asked MuscleNerd (key Dev Team member) about it but it didn’t comment whether it was true or not.

So, what do you think? Rumor or real info?

This piece of news might mean something for iPhone geeks out there,but I guess the average iPhone owner couldn’t care less… Dev Team member PlanetBeing found a way to port Linux 2.6 kernel to the iPhone.

This is a rough first draft of the port, and many drivers are still missing, but it’s enough that a real alternative operating system is running on the iPhone.

Visit PlanetBeing’s blog for the download.