Category Archives: Cool Stuff

iBricked my iPhone but iBrought it back!

UFF!! Thought I had permanently damaged my iPhone. I accidentally did an upgrade I was not supposed to do and the phone would not restore, reactivate, recognize the SIM card and so on… After an entire afternoon and night I managed to get it going following these instructions:
HERE.
Follow these instructions if you bricked an iPhone unlocked by AnySIM 1.0.2 and upgraded to 1.1.1 resulting in the “Unrecognized SIM…” a.k.a. “0049 IMEI” problem. I tried doing step 2.5 with no success but in the end it did not matter – the fix for the corrupt seczone – or “re virginizer” fixed the IMEI problem. Finally I updated to 1.1.1 in DFU mode and unshackled it by going to www.jailbreakme.com on the iPhone itself. Ufff!
And now it starts all over again with the 1.1.2 update – but apparently it’s only a minor update that does not affect the “TIF exploit” fix used in to unlock 1.1.1.

iPhone 1.1.1 unlocked

After a lot of tries and retries I finally got an iPhone with the latest 1.1.1 firmware to unlock for any carrier.
I followed the steps on THIS page.
After you’re done with this you still have to put Installer.app on the phone, BSD Subsystem and OpenSSH again on the phone.
Finally you put anySIM.app into the phone.
Tricky but doable.

Helvetica

Went to see a great documentary yesterday called “Helvetica” – yes – the FONT!!
It looks at the ubiquity of this font in today’s world – or at least the Western world – why some designers love it, some are “over” it, but mostly how it came about (Linotype, Switzerland – 1950’s – most readable font) and how the advent of computers made it even more widespread (it is the default font for computers).
There were many amazingly beautiful still shots all through the movie illustrating Helvetica around the world.
Worth checking out not only from a design point of view but also in terms of niche markets, trends, changes in society, and even cognitive psychology – why the hell does the eye like Helvetica more than other fonts?
And by the way – this is not Helvetica 🙂

iPhone SIM unlocked on a Mac OSX tested on Brazilian carrier roaming on T-Mobile!

After thinking I would have to go to an Apple store and invent some story that “a friend” messed up with my iPhone and it does not work any – I want a new one – I was able to unlock the iPhone for any carrier!
It is a “painful” process but with the help of some sites and UNIX knowledge it is done.

  1. To start off with, make sure your iPhone is updated by iTunes (check for updates).
  2. Then you have to “unshackle” the iPhone. I used iFuntastic. Get it here.
  3. Got through the unshackle process.
  4. On the iPhone, run the Installer app that should appear on your home screen and install the following three applications, in this order:
    1. Community Sources
    2. BSD Subsystem (might take some minutes)
    3. OpenSSH
    4. Term vt-100
  5. Back on your computer download the following files to your computer – open the downloaded folder.
  6. Using iFuntastic’s File Manager, navigate to the /usr/bin/ directory and copy the following files to that directory:
    1. iUnlock
    2. ICE03.14.08_G.fls
    3. nor
    4. minicom
    5. bbupdater
  7. Navigate back to the /usr/ directory and now create a new folder called local. Within the local folder, create a new folder called etc. So you should have /usr/local/etc/ in your iPhone’s folder/directory structure.
  8. Back on the iPhone, go to the Home -> Settings -> General -> Auto Lock and set it to Never (this is so that the WiFi connection does not drop during the process)
  9. Now you have to run stuff on the iPhone. Open Terminal (Applications -> Utilities -> Terminal) and SSH into the phone by typing in ssh root@10.0.1.5 (this is your iPhone’s IP address – to find what it is go to Settings -> WiFi and click on the blue arrow next to your WiFi connection). The password is dottie. Then type in the following commands:
    1. cd /usr/bin/
    2. chmod +x bbupdater
    3. chmod +x iUnlock
    4. chmod +x minicom
    5. launchctl unload -w
    6. /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.CommCenter.plist
    7. iUnlock ICE03.14.08_G.fls nor
  10. Once that finishes, type in minicom
    1. After the application starts, type in AT S7=45 S0=0 L1 V1 X4 &c1 E1 Q0 and then return.
    2. No results were printed out on my screen but it worked.
    3. I was not able to quit minicom so I just exited the entire Term-vt100 by pressing the Home button and entering Term-vt100 again.
  11. Type in the following command in Term-vt100
    1. launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.CommCenter.plist

That did it for me… put in my Brazilian SIM card from TIM and there I was roaming on T-Mobile’s network… Made a call and it worked. My AT&T card is also working – tested a call, SMS and the EDGE network.
Ufff!!
More information about this entire process with more detailed instructions and things to do if something goes wrong: http://iphone.unlock.no/
Also – this seems to be the wiki with the most up to date information – http://iphone.fiveforty.net/wiki/index.php/Latest_Progress_Report – there is a GUI app called anySIM that they released but it did not work on my phone – had to go the manual way described above.