iPodTouchMods.com

I have been reading reports that there is a simple fix for people who notice poor reception on their iPhone.

Dock it or connect the cable to it! The iPhones antenna is located behind the black plastic on the bottom of the phone. It may have something to do with putting more metal in that region (please don’t stick one of those tacky cell phone signal increasers back there.  Those still don’t work.).

While sitting in the exact same area on my desk (save for the 1/2″ difference in height between a docked/undocked iphone) my signal strength went from 4 bars to 5 undocked vs docked. Not bad when you need all you can for this glorious ‘W’EDGE network.

“More bars in more places. The new AT&T. Your World. Delivered. On a Dock.”

1. Connect iPhone to computer. Download the images.
2. Open up iTunes, sync your data.
3. Hold down shift (or option if on a Mac) and click “Restore” in the iPhone tab in iTunes.
4. Restore from the 1.1.1 image (details later)
5. Wait patiently. At the end it’ll fail with a 1015 error message, and the iPhone will show the iTunes logo & cable on the screen. Don’t panic.
6. Exit from iTunes.
7. open up iBrickr and select the “begin downgrade to firmware 1.0.2″
8. Copy your 1.0.2 firmware image into the ibrickr directory. Didn’t work, it’s fetching it again (shrug) OK whatever.
9. As ibrickr tells you, let iTunes downgrade you to 1.0.2. It will fail with “unknown error 1013″. iPhone now has yellow triangle and “Please connect to iTunes” on the screen.
10. Tell iBrickr what’s going on. Let it try to fix it.
11. Screen goes RED but then the phone reboots. Now I have a globe that says “Activate iPhone (connect to iTunes)”
12. Restarted iTunes, it’s activating. Now it wants to restore, so let it.
13. At this point you’ve got an iPhone running 1.0.2 that’s activated and everything is good.
14. Back to the iBrickr main screen, and click on “free my iPhone”.
15. “Your iPhone has been modified…” (click on “SWEET”)
16. “Boot the phone”
17. I needed to exit and restart ibrickr at this point. Now I get “Ready to rock”. Click “Applications” and “Install PXL”. Wait, and “Continue”.
18. It wants you to restart the iPhone twice. Do that, trust me on this one.
19. Now at “Application manager” and “browse apps”. Add “BSD Subsystem” and then “OpenSSH”. I had to restart iBrickr again (shrug). Now both show up.
20. Run “winscp405.exe” from the 1.1.2 baseband downgrade pack.
21. http://modmyifone.com/forums/showthread.php?t=15669
22. Back to iTunes, upgrade to 1.1.1 and then activate your phone.
23. That whole “wait patiently” thing?  For the record, I suck at it.  And yet…
24. OK, it’s done.  I’m running 1.1.1 and could stop now.  But I won’t.  Go to: http://www.jailbreakme.com/ and let it unjail your phone and install “installer”.  I had to go there twice, first time just kicked me out, second time gave me a % done dialog and looked better.
25. Oh look.  Installer.  Congrats, I’m back to where I was before I upgraded to 1.1.2 the day it came out, just to see how ugly it could possibly be.  25 steps into it: pretty ugly.  Note to self: don’t do it for 1.1.3
26. Go into installer, Tweaks (1.1.1), and install “Oktoprep”.
27. Here we go.  Time for 1.1.2 but, pay attention.  Don’t shift-restore, do a shift-update (or option-update if you’re on a Mac).  Trust me on this one.
28. Update to 1.1.2 claimed to work.  Now it’s activating.  Let’s see what happens.
29. OK, from all appearances, I have an unmodded 1.1.2 iPhone.
30. Exit iTunes and go into the 1.1.2 jailbreak folder.  Run windows.bat
31. Clicky-box on “Install SSH” and click “Jailbreak” button.
32. “Done, your device will reboot a couple of times…”  So do that whole patient waiting thing
33. Holy Crap, Batman.  It’s unlocked, installer is there, and it’s running 1.1.2.  Let’s not do this again, mmm-kay?

This is more running notes than a procedure right now.

starting point: 1.1.2 unhacked

Force phone into recovery mode

shift-restore, pick 1.0.2 firmware.  Refused to install.

shift-restore, picked 1.1.1 firmware.

“Unknown error 1015″, phone shows cable & iTunes on the screen.

apptappinstaller.exe and tell it you’re at 1.0.2 (yeah I know)

“sending to iphone failed”, phone boots, tries to activate and won’t.

don’t panic.

“Restore iPhone (name) from backup” (yeah, sure go ahead)

“Activation alert: No signal detected.  Signal is required to complete activation.”

“the settings for this iphone have been restored” and the phone reboots

Current state: 1.1.1 with no mods, and no phone functions.

Refuses to downgrade to 1.0.2

Upgrade to 1.1.2

Back to unhacked iPhone.  Circle completed.  Accomplished nothing.

OK, this isn’t fun anymore.  I upgraded from 1.1.1 a week or two ago to post the procedure and take the pain so others would know what to expect.  Theory at the time was “Well, I can just backrev to 1.1.1 and get my hacks back whenever I want”.

That theory sucks.

There are pages on the web talking about downgrading from 1.1.2 but, without exception, they’re full of guess-gaps, vague statements (”Now, go get the file from apple that you need”)  - yeah, that’s great, sparky, how about a freaking URL or at least the actual filename, huh?  Would it kill you to specify it?  Sheesh.  Ahem.  Sorry.

To add confuzzlement to annoyance, I got a lot of “And now you should have the yellow triangle on your screen” type notes when what I was seeing was the newer cable & iTunes logo screen.

After much wailing and gnashing of teeth, and at least two occasions where I thought I had _permanently_ converted my iPhone into an i, here’s where we’re at.  I’m back to a totally stock 1.1.2 iPhone with everything from Apple working just fine.  I had downgraded to 1.1.1 using the shift-select file thing in iTunes.  Got an unknown “1015″ error at the end of it, ran the apptap installer from back in the 1.0.2 / 1.1.1 days), and got in.  But the phone wouldn’t activate.  Waited a half an hour, no phone functions at all.

Went back into iTunes and did a restore/upgrade, and I’m back but for a while there it was a bit less than fun.  I still don’t have a hacked iPhone back, but I have a plan.  I’m going to get back to 1.1.1 with the radio off, and then scp “oktoprep” over to it, and run it.  MAYBE that will let me then upgrade to 1.1.2 as I just did but then use the second part of the oktoprep process.

If you never see posts from me again you’ll know how it went.

To add insult to injury, my daughter’s iPod Touch was running  along quite nicely at 1.1.1, fully hacked, when _something_ happened, and it ended up in recovery mode.  Refused a restore to 1.1.1, refused a restore to 1.0.2 (which I’m not sure would work on the Touch anyway).  So she’s now at 1.1.2 with no third-party apps either, which neither of us are real happy about.

So enough rambling.  Here’s the plan.  I’m going to come up with a coherent procedure to downgrade from 1.1.2 to 1.1.1 if it kills me.  If you _have_ knowledge of one that actually works, save a guy some time & let me know, wouldya?   But, I think the 1.1.2 -> 1.1.1 -> 1.1.1+Oktoprep -> 1.1.2 -> 1.1.2 cracked may be the way to go.

I told you all to wait on running Customize as it turned perfectly good iPhones into iPod Touches. Bleh. So, now in the app list in Installer.app, run Customize. It has been through several revisions, and it appears to be just find right now as it has not given me any issues.

Proceed at your own risk, just as with any mods to your iPhone/iPod Touch.