All the stories I read online, about people who jailbroke their phones, used sim-locked phones so I was quite scared that maybe jailbreaking my officially unlocked phone, would somehow fuxxor it up.

I downloaded WinPwn for my Windows machine and downloaded the latest 2.0 firmware for the 3G phone, from the Apple site. After that I made my own IPSW and iPwned my iTunes (I chose not to ‘Activate’ my iPhone while pwning it).

The first attempt, flashing the firmware ended up in a scary -1 error. My phone was hanging in the process of booting. I put my phone back in DFU mode (which actually is very easy to do) and tried restoring again with my custom firmware.

Voila… after a 10 minute wait, there it was! My unlocked iPhone 3G was jailbroken and Cydia was installed for me to supply me with some new toys to play with!

So, if you ever wonder: will jailbreaking my unlocked iPhone fuck my phone… no.

What I first noticed is the nice finish the new 3G has. I think I like the plastic more than the aluminum finish on the 2G. The phone has a different back, than the 2G, but fits better in your hand.

After I activated the thing, I started screwing around with it. I was especially interested in the AppStore and the Exchange support.

AppStore:
I think the AppStore is nice and clean. It is easy to find the stuff you want and it is easy to install. I got a couple things installed, just to test it out and it seems to work flawlessly. There are a couple of nice things you can download from the store, for example the ‘Remote’ application.

Exchange support:
This was about the first thing I tested. Mainly because I wanted to import my contacts. Well it was easier than I tought. At the first attempt it tried to get my server-hostname on itself. But that failed and it asked me to enter the hostname myself. After I did that, the phone started to sync and within minutes my contacts and email was on my phone! Woohoo, pushmail is one of the greatest things about Exchange. Except, somehow I cannot get my iPhone to push the subfolders defined in my email account.

I think I am missing something here. I don’t know if others got it to work, but if you do, please let me know. The phone is connected to an Exchange 2007 server.

GPS:
The phone has an amazingly fast GPS fix. In matter of seconds it determines your position and sometimes it even works inside?? Very nice work. This morning when I was driving to work I started the Google Maps application and let it find my position. It kept updating that and I got a nice satellite map to show me where I was… Nice! And thanks to 3G it downloaded the satellite images really really fast.

Since last friday there have been stories that de iPhone dev-team will be releasing their PwnageTool soon, so that we, iPhone 2G users, can finally upgrade to firmware 2.0 without risking our phones to get locked again. I am eagerly awaiting the release of that tool, because I can’t wait to try out the AppStore and finally some Exchange support.

There also have been some interesting stories on the dev-team’s blog, where they describe different parts of the hack and are already showing off their nice little tool. As it seems, they added a jailbreak for the iPhone 3G also, although it’s a shame that they postponed the release of their tool for that.

The blog of the iPhone dev-team.George Hotz’ blog

On the links mentioned above, you can follow a long discussion about the dev-team, George Hotz and more iPhone ‘scene’ people. There has been some serious shit throwing in that scene the last week.

I have been looking around the AppStore for a while, just to see what is being offered and it all looks very promising. There probably is not even a reason to jailbreak anymore.

I haven’t installed the 2.0 firmware on my broken iphone yet, because mine is was sim-unlocked when I bought it. I think after I install the firmware update, my phone will be unusable until they actually hack the firmware.

The iPhone 2.0 firmware, install at your own risk!The people from iFixit are already opening up the new iPhone 3G.