iPhone: How To Recover From 1.1.1 Firmwire Upgrade in 4 Steps

iPhone Elite hackers have finally posted ways to un-brick your iPhone (make it usable again) after it has been rendered useless by Apple’s iPhone firmwire upgrade 1.1.1. Any iPhone which was modified (software) to unlock the SIM card to use it without AT&T subscription or switch to a different provider were affected by the upgrade. Now you can make your iPhone usable again in four simple idiot-proof steps.

Required programs and files for Mac users:

• bbupdater - http://www.freeiphoneunlock.com/guide/
• ICE03.14.08_G.eep, ICE03.14.08_G.fls, iEraser, secpack - http://tinyurl.com/2n5yvj
• AnySIM 1.02 - http://www.deadbeef.cn/files/anySIM_102.zip
• Fugu - http://rsug.itd.umich.edu/software/fugu/download.html

Required programs and files for Windows users:

• bbupdater - http://www.freeiphoneunlock.com/guide/
• ICE03.14.08_G.eep, ICE03.14.08_G.fls, iEraser, secpack - http://tinyurl.com/2n5yvj
• AnySIM 1.02 - http://www.deadbeef.cn/files/anySIM_102.zip
• PuTTY or alternative SSH client - http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/download.html
• WinSCP - http://winscp.net/eng/download.php

Read the instructions here for Windows & Mac. Read here for Linux instructions.

If you have 1.1.1 factory, never unlocked. the above method allows you to downgrade to factory 1.0.2 if you stop after the ieraser & bbupdater step. ieraser step allows you to reflash any firmware which is accepted by the bootloader. Otherwise you can only put same or newer firmware.

If you have 1.0.2 unlocked with anySIM and then bricked by update 1.1.1, this method allows you to downgrade to 1.0.2 and baseband 3.14 firmware (probably also 3.12 if you want that one) and bring your phone back to life. If you do the first bbupdater step and then the anySIM step, your IMEI will be back to normal. The second bbupdater step will bring your phone to a virgin state with proper IMEI so you could run IPSF and then upgrade to 1.1.1 if you want this. If you leave it unlocked with anySIM it will brick again when updating to 1.1.1 of course. This is known. But so far 1.1.1 is not recommended for anyone with 3rd party apps and non AT&T sim anyway. In 1.1.1 so many things are much harder to get to.

As an entrepreneur I am observing with acute interest the ongoing saga between Apple and iPhone tinkerer’s. What Apple is doing with iPhone isn’t unique and was very much accepted, though frowned upon, practice in non-internet era - lock-down your subscribers from using competing service. Microsoft did it with Microsoft Office products like Word & Excel by using a proprietary data format. Only when Star Office / Open Office hacked their format and make it compatible with Open Office suite did Microsoft move to a more open XML based format. Will the same happen to Apple too or will Apple continue to deprive its customers by banking on their loyal support for Apple?