The Inner Circle

Few things are important to note at the start of this:
1) I did this the day before 3.1.3 was release, so I was on 3.1.2.
2) I’m on O2 in the UK on a contract, PAYG or other places may vary.
3) I had already asked O2 to unlock my iPhone, which they had done. This is important, as if they haven’t and unlocking is important to you it can’t be done on 3.1.2 anyway I believe.
4) I had the help of a few friends for this, they have my thanks and know who they are.

So why? Well I’ve had my iPhone now for the best park of eight months. I love it, it’s the best internet connectivity device I’ve owned… and it makes phone calls too. Which I guess is a bonus. The one thing that really gets me though is background apps, yes I know it’s not a huge thing, and it can be worked around… BeejiveIM does APN based jabber, etc. TouchTerm uses screen to create the illusion of no connection loss. It’s still not quite the same.

So what did I do?

Well, it’s important to note that the various jail braking techniques used to unlock your iPhone are not needed if your on O2 UK contract, you can go to an online form and request that they unlock it. There’s no point using jail braking just for that if it’s all you want.

1. Go get blackra1n - http://blackra1n.com/
2. Run the application (mac or win), and ask it to patch your iPhone. It’ll sit and churn for a bit, as will your iPhone. Do not worry if iTunes complains that you’re in recovery mode and it needs to be repaired. Ignore it and just wait.
3. Your iPhone should have rebooted now and it’ll look normal, exactly as it used to be. Except you should now have a new app called “blackra1n”, looks like a black rain drop.
4. Run the blackra1n application and install Cydia, this is a package manager that allow you to install other things.

You’re done, now you can play around with your iPhone in ways you can never recover from.

Things I did…

Installed OpenSSH.

Changed “root” and “mobile” users passwords away from “alpine” to one that’s slightly more secure.

Installed SBSettings (w/ plugins to turn rotation off, bluetooth, tethering, ssh on/off, etc).

Forcefully enable Internet Tethering (most probably against the O2 agreement), I know people have used 450Mb out of their monthly 500Mb, got a warning SMS. Not heard anymore.
- http://www.redmondpie.com/enable-tethering-on-iphone-3g-3gs-3.1.2-firmware-eqw846/

Installed “backgrounder”, allows you to put certain apps in the background. Needs a full “Power Off”, “Power On” restart to start working. A bit weird to use, I suspect I’ll default to things closing and use the “always background” option for certain apps.

Feel free to ask questions, there are loads of guides out there.

D.