The reason for taking the trouble to jailbreak your iPhone is that it opens up your iPhone to thousands of third-party applications, hence you are no longer limited by the iTune store applications which are approved by Apple. For instance, the iPhone 2G and iPhone 3G do not have video recorder, and you won't find one on the iTune store. But, your jailbroken iPhone would be able to get Cycorder which is a free and pretty good video recorder. Of course, you will have lots of games too, including my favourate classic Pacman!

Tools you need to get

I have successfully jailbroken my iPhone 3G with Pwnage 3.0 first, and now 3.1.4. I also did it for an iPhone 2G. What I did was simply the following. Note that I only use the Mac, so I have no idea how it is done on Windows.

Optional step:

• Upgrade the iPhone 3G to 3.1.2 from Apple using iTune, provided you have an unlocked iPhone 3G (i.e., one without service provider lock and can be used with any sim card). But if you have already jailbroken it with Pawnage 3.0, you simply go ahead with Pawnage 3.1.4 without upgrading to the latest OS from Apple.

Normal steps:

• Download Pwnage 3.1.4, and install it on your Mac.
• You also need to get the latest firmware file for your iPhone (e.g., for iPhone 3G, the file is iPhone1,2_3.1.2_7D11_Restore.ipsw). You may find this website useful in locating the firmware for your iPhone: http://www.iphonefirmware.com/firmwares-download/
• When you have all these. You're ready to jailbreak your iPhone.
• The official website that tells you all the details is http://blog.iphone-dev.org. I also suggest the following homepage which contains detailed instruction: ismashphone.com. It tells you where to get Pwnage and the firmware files.

What will happen?  Apple becomes pineapple!

When you launch Pwnage, follow the on-screen instructions. Pwnage basically creates a customized firmware file for you. This file will be kept on your Desktop when Pwnage completes the creation. Then, you have to go back to iTune to restore your iPhone with the new customized firmware file. The whole thing is actually quite easy.

You will get Cydia and Ivy on the springboard. These are applications for downloading third-party applications. So, open Cydia and get Cycorder, etc.!

At the end, when you get everything done, you get a bonus too! The startup Apple logo will become a pineapple! This is the little thing that you have to put up with, and actually, I am quite happy to accept it as an acknowledgement of the great effort by the Dev-Team!

Good luck jailbreaking!

Tip for iPhone 3GS

For iPhone 3GS, once you upgraded it to 3.1 from Apple using iTune (i.e., official upgrade), there is no way you can jailbreak it as the baseband is unbreakable. See http://blog.iphone-dev.org. But if your iPhone 3GS is still using 3.0, then Pawnage 3.1 will jailbreak it without a problem.

(3.0) June 2009; (3.1) October 2009