iPhone 1.1.3 Jailbreak, Attempt 1

by Brian Enigma on January 25, 2008 3:59pm

in Dear Diary, iPhone

My first attempt at the iPhone 1.1.3 jailbreak: FAIL.

I previously installed 1.1.3 in preparation for the jailbreak.  In the murmurings before the jailbreak was released, I had heard that you need the official 1.1.3 upgrade to get the correct baseband firmware for the cellular modem chip to work with the Google maps "locate me" feature.  You then downgrade to 1.1.1, then upgrade to a jailbroken 1.1.3.  In theory, it was pretty easy.

In practice, it was a bit more involved.  First, I had to downgrade to 1.1.1.  This can't be done with the latest iTunes (7.6), so I had to use some switcharoo framework magic and get a very specific version of iPHUC to make everything play well.  After some trial and error, I got 1.1.1 installed, but was unable to activate it through official channels.  I then had to use some hackery to make the phone think it was activated.  By "some hackery" I mean stuff like this:

Slide to make an emergency call, enter *#307# press call, now use the back button on the top of your screen to remove *#307#, now enter 0 , press call, press answer, press hold, press decline. And you get to the contact list. And thereafter every time you push the homebutton you just slide the "emergency call" slide, then enter 0 , press call, press hold, press decline.

I mean, what?  From there, things were much easier and involved getting the 1.1.3 jailbreaker, running it, and waiting.  It downloaded the official 1.1.3 firmware, patched it, and uploaded it to the phone.  It then prompted me to launch Installer.app and run the "1.1.3 soft update."  Unfortunately, it wasn't there.  The FAQ said I needed to update the community sources, then refresh the source list, and it will magically show up.  The FAQ is wrong.

Since this was pretty much a dead end, I rebooted to restore mode (power+home for 15 seconds, then release power, keeping home held down) and restored to 1.1.3.

I just hope that when Apple says they'll open the SDK to all 3rd party developers, they really do mean it, without any gotchas, caveats, or technicalities.

If you liked this post, you may also enjoy:

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{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }

1 vpisteve January 25, 2008 5:12pm at 5:12 pm

Heh, I did this too. The whol *#307# thing.…crazy!

The final step worked for me ok, ast the 1.1.3 soft update did indeed show up in Installer for me. Did you install Com­mu­nity Sources first?

Then, after that, I needed to install the Base­band down­grader, which wasn’t doc­u­mented specif­i­cally any­where that I found it. I basi­cally felt my way around try­ing var­i­ous things until some­thing worked.

It all works for me, except for the GoogleMaps pseudo GPS locater. But I’ve got Nav­i­zon, so that works just the same.

But yeah. What a royal PIA this was.

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2 brian January 25, 2008 5:39pm at 5:39 pm

Yep, I updated the Installer, installed com­mu­nity sources, then refreshed sources mul­ti­ple times.  Still no soft update.  I think I’ll just stick with the stock 1.1.3 firmware for now.  I pretty much got to the point where the only non-Apple apps I was using were Soli­taire and VNsea.  Not hav­ing those will be a minor annoy­ance, but not worth the trou­ble of try­ing to fig­ure out an alternative.

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3 Vortech January 27, 2008 12:32pm at 12:32 pm

Aaannnd yeah, I’ll still hold off on that 1.1.3 update.  Though I should get around to try­ing the 112 jail­break.  I think I’ll have to do the 307 trick, but if it does not work with the lat­est iTunes I might just give up.  It still seems new and such so I’m not feel­ing the need to add func­tion­al­ity.  I still have not found a guide for jail­break­ing a 112 OTB on a Mac with no inten­tion of unlock­ing the SIM.  With a month till every­thing changes again, it seems almost like wasted effort.

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4 Vortech January 27, 2008 12:51pm at 12:51 pm

Poten­tial installer source, if you wanted to take another wack at it, but it seems like the 1.1.3 JB pack­ages are still in flux and have bugs.

http://www.iclarified.com/entry/index.php?enid=611

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