Unlocked iPhone? Take the 1.1.1 plunge!

Now that the iPhone ‘hacks’ have been updated to support the current 1.1.1 firmware, I decided to take the plunge. As a follow-on to my previous article (My Big Fat Unlocked-iPhone Experience!), here’s how it went…

Firstly, why upgrade? What do you get with 1.1.1? In addition to the ability to buy from iTunes directly from your phone over WiFi, the update also adds the following:

Louder speaker and receiver volume; Home button double-click shortcut to phone favorites or music controls; Space bar double-tap shortcut to intelligently insert period and space; Mail attachments are now viewable in portrait and landscape modes; Stocks and cities can be reordered; Apple Bluetooth Headset battery status is now in the Status Bar; support has been added for TV Out; Preference to turn EDGE/GPRS off when roaming internationally has been added; Passcode lock time intervals; and adjustable volume alerts.

Apple also addressed several security issues, as well. Three components of the iPhone — Safari, Mail and Bluetooth — have received updates to tighten security.

Generally though, it is usually just smarter to stay with the current firmware version whenever possible. And since most of the up-to-date hacks are now available, upgrading has become a viable option.

My primary machine is a Mac, so I once again decided to use the rather useful iNdependence application. At the time of writing, the current version was 1.2.3, which fully supports iPhone firmware 1.1.1. The embedded help for this application is excellent, and contains fully detailed instructions on the process to follow. However, “iNdependence cannot activate or jailbreak a phone which has the stock version of the 1.1.1 firmware on it. In order to use the functionality in iNdependence, you must first downgrade to 1.0.2, then perform a special upgrade back to 1.1.1.” Since I was still at 1.0.2, this wasn’t an issue for me.

Also note that iNdependence cannot NOT ‘unlock’ your phone. This must be handled separately. Since I had previously unlocked my phone with the paid iPhoneSimFree solution (which survives the 1.1.1 upgrade), this was not an issue for me either. However, this is currently NOT the case if you used the free AnySIM solution.

So, I simply followed the process outlined in the embedded iNdependence help:

(1) Run the pre-1.1.1 upgrade process via iNdependence (requires SSH access via WiFi).
(2) Upgrade the iPhone Firmware via the normal iTunes process.
(3) Activate/Jailbreak the iPhone via iNdependence.
(4) Reinstall SSH/SCP/SFTP via iNdependence.
(5) Run the post-1.1.1 upgrade process via iNdependence (requires SSH access via WiFi).

After the upgrade, I also had to reset the iPhone to correctly call Vodafone Voicemail from the Voicemail button by dialling the following code from the phone: *5005*86*phonenumber# and then press ‘call’. (So for Vodafone that means *5005*86*707#’call’)

The complete process does take quite a while - in total this all took me about 1 hour, so a fair amount of patience is required. (Also, a large sign hung across your computer with the words “Don’t PANIC!” might also be useful.) The embedded help does repeat “Please be patient as it will take a while to do this. It may appear that iNdependence is locked up, but it’s not, it’s just working very hard.” In general though, the process is logical and the prompts are both appropriate and easily intelligible.

When I ran the upgrade, I actually used iNdependence 1.2.2 which had a minor bug leading to none of my previously installed 3rd-party apps showing up once the process was complete. However, version 1.2.3 included a patch that fixes this retrospectively. The new version apparently does not have the problem.

As you can see, the process is fairly smooth and relatively painless, although some technical knowledge is required. Firmware 1.1.1 does offer some improvements, and I am once again pretty happy with the end result. And, I must say that I am now very happy I chose the iPhoneSimFree unlock solution - so far it has been worth every cent in terms of pain-freelessness…

Originally from TechGripe! by Brett Ryland (18 October 2007)