IPhone 3G firmware 2.2.1, BB 2.30.03, BL 5.9 UNLOCKED !

Finally and after a lot of waiting and frustration I unlocked my two IPhone 3G with the cursed 2.2.1 operating system, baseband version 2.30.03 that were not downgradable to 2.28 because both had Boot Loader 5.9 ... yes, I have 2 and got them separately from eBay and both were stuck and have been used as thick IPods for the past 2 months

I tried to get an Ultra SIM, I purchased one from a reseller in Mansoura, Egypt, here is their website http://www.gsmegypt.com/VB/index.php, they started by stating that it doesn't work for Mobinil Egypt SIM cards, not sure why ... then they got it to work once on a Vodafone Egypt line of their own, when I tried my own Vodafone SIM, it didn't work, taking the iPhone back to them they tried to re-program the Ultra SIM to work with my SIM card, but failed big time and they refused to refund the money, that attempt costed 70 EGP and a lot of time from my "Mansourian" colleagues, thanks to Ahmed Abdalla and Ahmed Soliman for the help in that. Bottom line is that I won't recommend that Ultra SIM to anyone, because it is not stable and it can register to your network for a while and later you would lose that and get back to the locked state.

Finally the Dev-Team guys released ultrasn0w, the unlock for IPhone 3G firmware 3.0, the previously blogged here that they are skipping the Bootloader 5.9 problem and had an unlock ready for firmware 3.0 but according to the cat and mouse game they won't release it until Apple has done its official release of the new IPhone 3G S fearing that if they would release it earlier Apple would notice the crash that allowed them to inject the unlock and fix it and they would have lost an important edge

so, here it is, and without further ado, the steps that I followed and redeemed my IPhone, quoted from the Dev-Team official blog with a couple of links added

Ultra's Now!

Ultrasn0w for iPhone 3G is ready!

1. Ensure you have upgraded to iPhone OS 3.0 (download the image here), press SHIFT while clicking on the restore button in iTunes then browse for the image file


2. Jailbreak your iPhone 3G using redsn0w or PwnageTool (this will also install Cydia/Icy)


3. Run Cydia or Icy


4. Please add the repo repo666.ultrasn0w.com to Cydia or Icy. That last “o” is actually the number zero “0”! If you use the letter “o” you’ll get an error.


5. Search for ‘ultrasn0w’ in cydia or icy and install ultrasn0w


6. Reboot your iPhone 3G


7. T-Mobile USA users should disable 3G before using ultrasn0w


8. Enjoy

And I'm enjoying indeed

Big thanks to Ahmed Soliman for his support in this one as well, Soli, you are the God Father of my iPhone ;)

My IPod Touch 3G 2.2.1/BB 2.30.03/BootLoader 5.09 ... The ultimate frustration

Recently I decided to live on the fancy side of the street and get myself a 3G IPhone, because that costs over 700$ in Egypt and is locked to GSM providers I played it more smart and got myself 2 iphones from USA, my brother bought them for me on eBay and his focus, with good intention was getting a phone that is in the best shape, in other words recently manufuctred and good as new, the single device cost average 450$ so it felt like a bargain at the moment ...

I asked a couple of my geeky colleagues to join me in the adventure of the unlocking, Ahmed Soliman (Soli) one of the youngest & smartest system/software engineers I've ever worked with, a living idea generator and amazingly a geek with a sense of humor, and Ahmed Kamal (Kimo) a Linux guru who I gladly grants a root access to my Linux machine at all times to be a friend in need, he talks command line, tell jokes with parameters, socialize with network protocols and have a memory of a 100TB ZFS system with daily snapshots ... we set out for the adventure with full belief that it will work and we are the masters of the universe. Unfortunately I was too confident

The brand new iPhone, that looks good as new has OS version 2.2.1, baseband version 2.30.03 pre-installed. At first glance I got worried because all the posts out there speaks of baseband 2.28 unlock, then a small window for hope opened with posts taking abou thow to downgrade your 2.30.03 baseband to 2.28 and then apply the unlock, we followed this tutorial with high hopes and enthusiasm, the tutorial started with this pragraph:

These are instructions on how to downgrade your baseband from 2.30 to 2.28 for iPhone 3Gs with the 5.8 bootloader.

So what, who cares, let's do it, we Jail Broke it! cool making progress, I'm thrilled and starting to imagine myself flipping my photos back and forth, syncing my google calendar, browsing my favourite feeds, watching youtube videos and suddenly I get a call :) wow that will be amazing ... my fancies ends and I was brought back to reality and down to the ground with my friend's Ahmed Soliman's voice yelling "Crap, it is not working" and we searched for explanations and landed on some blogs saying that it won't work on devices with boot loader version 5.9 ... at this moment I haven't yet known my Bootloader version, so I was in denial phase and was rejecting the fact that mine could have this version (which is the freaken latest, uncracked yet version), so as an action of bargaining to dodge the shock we followed another tutorial to find out about my Bootloader version and there was the shocking fact, the iPhone sat their, smiling at us daringly and displaying 5.09 on the screen ...

After digesting the painful facts I formed a very simple query and googled it, my query had three numbers "2.2.1", "2.30.03" and "5.09" (I thought of adding 450$ as well may be God would answer my query and refund my money, then I thought that this won't happen on google) ... the results were very frustrating with hundereds of people crying all over the web, blogs, forums, etc that "It is not possible", "No hope for that yet", "Strong chance that it won't be there an unlock for 5.09 bootloader" and the like ...
To ease my pain and go on with my life I decided to call my IPhone a nick name that would help me live in denial: "IPod touch 3G" ... actually there is nothing 3G about it and even GPS doesn't wotk, but proudly my iPod has a microphone and a speaker so I can use skype and this is an advantage over (old only) IPods ... isn't it?!