I recently had to get my iPhone restored at an Apple store because I was away from my home computer and my phone was stuck on the loading screen (with the pretty metal apple). I was a little pissed because I knew they were going to upgrade me to the newest firmware (3.1.3) and I didn’t know there was a jailbreak out for it, but I needed my phone!

When I got home, I started sniffing around for a 3.1.3 jailbreak and came across sn0wbreak (ih8sn0w.com/index.php/welcome.snow). I started the app and followed the instructions to get into DFU mode, but the app never moved on from there… always stayed at the DFU Starter Help screen. Realizing sn0wbreeze is not an “official” dev-team release, I went to their blog to see what was going on: that’s where I learned about the Spirit hack.

The Spirit hack (spiritjb.com/) is a small download and a simple screen. You run it with your iPhone attached (some stipulation if you’re using a 3GS) and when the process is over, you have a jailbroken iPhone. Done. The people rejoice.

As I posted most recently, I got the iPhone and have been using it (fairly) happily for a couple months now. I have some issues with it like its propensity to crash when performing a particularly challenging task such as opening a web site. I figured that I couldn’t lose much by jailbreaking that damn thing other than making the phone completely useless and having to stick with my Motorola Razr for the next few years while I save up enough money to buy a new one when it comes out.

But for some strange reason I trust in the hacking community to provide a stable enough world such that I don’t have to worry too much… If I broke something I probably shouldn’t have been playing with it in the first place. So I downloaded Winpwn (2.5) (www.winpwn.com) and followed the online guide linked from the website.

The jailbroken iPhone is not “unlocked”. The iPhone 3G has been unlocked yet, opening it to other network subscribers. Jailbreakomg basically allows me to install applications to my phone that would otherwise be unavailable. These apps include an NES emulator, OpenSSH, new UI controls and other sweet little tidbits. I’m happy I did it — I have experienced no negative side effects of jailbreaking.

My thanks to the iPhone-dev team and all the contributors that make jailbreaking fun.

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Sent from my iPhone