Following on from my previous blog outlining the pain I went through getting my iPhone working after doing an update, I used the newly release Pwnage 2.0 hours after they released it…. And this was after I said I wouldn’t do it till a few more people had successfully used it - I figure that the 900 odd comments that appeared in that time saying how well it worked, and with my previous experience, I’d do it.

It went almost flawlessly… Got it wrong first time as I ticked a wrong box. Mine’s an American iPhone in Australia. 2nd time, it worked perfectly! Well done guys! Seriously, they’ve been working so hard to do these for free - I hope that UK company has been shut down now - and have done such an amazing job!

So, now I have it, I dived into the iTunes Apps Store. Bad idea… I now have the following installed on my phone:

• Facebook - Great little app, which gives you all the main features of Facebook, and works almost flawlessly.
• Last.fm - I’m a big fan of Last.FM and used the original App a fairbit (for reference it plays really well on an iPod Hifi).
• Phonesaber - Pointless but great fun.
• Remote - Apple’s free application for controlling your iTunes is a work of art really. Pair it with your iTunes, and it’s like browsing your iPod but it’s the collection on your computer.
• Shazam - I used this service in the UK regularly, and now it’s out on the iPhone. Hold it up to a speaker and it will tell you what the song is playing (most of the time).
• Crash Bandicoot 3D - The Bandicoot crashes onto the iPhone in an addictive little game where you control the character using the phones accelerometer to steer, and a
• iPint - this takes the biscuit for a waste of time, but somehow it’s amusing. Slide a beer down the bar, then your iPhone fills with beer which you then drink by tilting your phone.
• Sudoku Unlimited - I had a version of this on Nano and got quite quickly hooked. Reading the reviews this a down to earth version that lets you simply play Sodoku. What more could you want?
• TwitterMe - Yep, it lets you post tweets on Twitter
• Super Monkey Ball - Everyone saw this in the keynote speech, and it is as good as it looks - although it does take a little getting used to.
• Texas Hold ‘em - Apple’s take on the most popular card game is worth the price. It does exactly what you’d expect from a game of Hole ‘Em
• myLite - erm, it’s a torch that does torch type things. Yep, it turns your phone’s screen into a bright light.
• AIM - allows you to use American Online Messenger and .Mac/mobileMe messaging on your iPhone.
• Pinball RC - I love pinball. This is fun, but it’s a little chuggy at times. Good fun though.
• BrainChai - Brain Training similar to that on the Gameboy DS. Good fun!

In conclusion, the upgrade was a great thing! If you’re not afraid it might fail, then Pwn your iPhone now!

I made a small mistake and jumped on the iPhone 2.0 firmware a little too quickly, forgetting that my 2G phone came from eBay and would need a little work to fix. Add to that, that my phone had the 04.04.05_G firmware - something I discovered later on was a real issue.

So, booting it into DFU mode, and downgrading my iTunes to 7.5, I just couldn’t restore it running in OS X. It was giving me permission errors on the phone. I followed every guide, and still nothing. So, I booted into Windows XP, thinking that Microsoft’s approach to security might work in my favour. It did!

With a flashed phone, I set about jailbreaking and activating it. No problems there - although I did find that sometime Pwnage failed a couple of time due to permissions and required another restore (I think I restored the phone something like 30 times over the weekend).

Next up came installing my freshly created install. No problem. Then loaded it up and watched bootneuter (error 5) appear repeatedly… Nooooo….

So, I tried Liberty+ and Ziphone (I since found out that the latter may have been a bad idea… Search for “Ziphoned”) Nothing would unlock it. Further searching, and I found that you need to delete the bootloaded on some iPhones. Did that, went through the steps (again, and again), always hit the same problem.

Further searching, and I found that potentially ziphone had done something to my phone - I actually don’t think it was this, and was the iPhone 2.0 firmware. But, that did lead me down the final path to success. There are modified version of that program that will remove the bootloader and downgrade it.

Tried that. Nooooo…. turns out my phone has a version that nothing removed. Version 04.04.05_G. Nothing removes it, till I found a link on a YouTube video to Kiphone. My heart raced as I watched it purge that evil bootloader and install a downgraded one.

After that, everything worked flawlessly and I now have a fully working 2G iPhone again. And, this worries me a little, but after 3 days of not having it, I realised even more how much I like it, and had missed it!

Anyway, for those in the same position, 2 links for you:

Modified Ziphone to remove older bootloader:
Modified Ziphone for bootloader removal

iclarified’s tutorial on using kiphone to remove firmware version 04.04.05_G:
Remove and downgrade iPhone 04.04.05_G with kiphone