My notes, things I have learned, and documentation I have created.

Last week, I called AT&T to have my iPhone 3Gs unlocked by Apple under AT&T’s new unlock policy. I had already unlocked this phone using Ultrasn0w, but I wanted to see if I would be able to just do the IOS updates using redsn0w and that is it. I have to use redsn0w, because I have baseband 06.15.00 on this phone.

Well, it turned out that yes, I can just use redsn0w, but I still had this annoying issue with MMS. In order to fix that, I needed to jailbreak the phone again.

Here is the procedure I used.

Again, this is an iPhone 3Gs running IOS 5.0.1 baseband 06.15.00 unlocked using ultrasn0w. I called AT&T with my IMEI number and had them send the unlock request to Apple. I got the email pretty quickly from AT&T telling me my phone had been unlocked and that I just needed to restore it to activate the unlock.

Software installed/downloaded:

OS: MacOS Lion 10.7.3
iTunes 10.6.1
iPhone2,1_5.1_9B176_Restore.ipsw
redsn0w_mac_0.9.10b6b.zip

First, connect the phone to your computer using the USB cable.

From iTunes, right mouse click on the phone under DEVICES and select Backup.

With your phone backup complete, create a custom IPSW IOS installation package using redsn0w:

Unzip the redsn0w download, and execute the redsn0w.app.

Select Extras.

Select Custom IPSW, and browse to the location where your saved you IOS 5.1 download (iPhone2,1_5.1_9B176_Restore.ipsw).

On the next screen, select whether you have the old iPhone 3Gs or newer. I have the original 3Gs, so I selected No.

To determine which version you have:
Put the phone in DFU mode. In MacOS Lion, bring up System Information by clicking Apple/About this Mac and selecting System Report. Then, click USB and look for Apple Mobile Device (DFU Mode). Look at the Serial Number line for iBoot. The number following iBoot will help you determine whether your 3Gs in the old version. 359.3 is the old version. Anything above that is the newer version.

This will create a file called NO_BB_OLDROM_iPhone2,1_5.1_9B176_Restore.ipsw. This is the file you are going to use to restore your iPhone from.

Ensure that you have your phone connected to your computer. Put the iPhone in DFU.

Here is the procedure I have used to put the phone in DFU mode:

With the phone on and unlocked, hold the Power and Home button. When the screen goes completely black, count to 2. Then, release the Power button and remain holding the Home button for 10-15 seconds. iTunes will report that the device is in recover mode. Now, I have done this several times, and have fairly confidently determined that this is not DFU mode. If you try to restore with the phone like this, you will get a 1600 error. This is what I have done consistently that last few times that has worked every time. Once in recover mode as determined by iTunes, I fire up redsn0w again. Click Extras, and Pwned DFU. This quickly puts the phone in DFU mode, so you can restore your custom IPSW.

Once in DFU mode, go back to iTunes, select your phone from DEVICES, if not already there, and hold the option key and click Restore.

Browse to your newly created custom IPSW file (NO_BB_OLDROM_iPhone2,1_5.1_9B176_Restore.ipsw), and click Open. IOS 5.1 will be installed and the phone will reboot and prompt you to restore settings from a backup or setup the phone as new. Now, because Apple had unlocked my phone, at this point I got the message congratulating me for successfully unlocking my phone.

Cool. Except for one problem. I was hoping that this (new redsn0w + IOS 5.1) would also fix the inability to send MMS messages without using iMessage. Well, it didn’t. I am using a T-Mobile SIM in the phone, so I thought I might try setting Cellular Data APN or the MMS APN to either epc.tmobile.com or wap.voicestream.com. Neither of these worked.

So, I went back to jailbreaking (untethered supported). With the phone connected, I fired up redsn0w again, and this time selected jailbreak. Again, the phone needs to be in DFU mode. This took me a couple tries, because the first time it did not appear to go through the jailbreaking process. But it did the second time.

Once the phone rebooted, I verified that I had the Cydia icon installed. Funny note, it was right back where I had it before I started this process.

I started Cydia, and updated as prompted. I go the developer route, and update everything.

Once updated, and Cydia or the phone was restarted, I navigated to Sources, clicked Edit and Add to add the following repository:

http://beta.leimobile.com/repo

Once the repository was added, I tapped the newly added repository to browse the packages available. I selected MMS Tmobile Fix, and installed it.

Then, I navigated to the phone Settings/General/Network/Cellular Data Network.

Cellular Data APN: epc.tmobile.com
MMS APN: wap.voicestream.com

And that was it. So, I guess in the end, I only got rid of needing Ultrasn0w, but at least I have MMS working and have IOS 5.1.

AT&T was nice enough to finally allow those of us who have had to pay about $2400 for the privilege of using an iPhone on their network for the last two years the opportunity unlock our devices. It is about time AT&T stepped up on this one. Well, as soon as I read the statement from AT&T, I was all set. I have a 3Gs and a 4 that I have wanted to unlock since the day they were off contract. As you have seen in one of my previous posts, I have been able to successfully unlock my 3Gs and use it (with a couple minor issues). However, I would really prefer to do it legitimately, and maintain Apple supported updates.

First, about the unlock process. It is actually Apple that does the unlocking. AT&T sends the request to Apple, but Apple actually does it. Once your phone is unlocked, you just need to restore it, and when it goes through what is usually the activation process, it unlocks the phone and presents a message stating as such in iTunes. One thing to note, if you had you had your phone warranty replaced by Apple, AT&T will need to contact Apple to approve the unlocking. Apple will only unlock the phone, if AT&T tells Apple it is ok. I was able to have the AT&T representative place me on hold while she contacted Apple and told them it was approved to make sure the process went smoothly. The AT&T representatives were actually very helpful and a pleasure to deal with. Something, I absolutely did not expect. It was a pleasant surprise.

I have been able to successfully unlock my jailbroken iPhone4. I did have some minor complications, but it all stemmed from the fact that my hosts file had been modified (gs.apple.com) during some of my jailbreaking adventures.

I was running 4.3.3 on my iPhone. I restored/upgraded the phone to 5.1, after commenting out the gs.apple.com entry in my /etc/hosts file (MacOSX Lion). Once restored, I got the message in iTunes telling me I had successfully unlocked my phone. So, I have a newly updated iPhone 4 running IOS 5.1 unlocked.

My next challenge is getting my iPhone 3Gs 5.01 baseband 06.15.00 updated to IOS 5.1 unlocked. Unfortunately, I think I have passed the point of no return with that device, because the baseband is a iPad baseband. It was the only way I could unlock the phone at the time. Thanks for that one AT&T.