Matt Oldham

I finally decided to go for it.  Sure, I  could end up bricking my phone and have to shell out $300 for a replacement.  And sure, it’s my only cell phone…tied to my main phone number…which also happens to be printed on my business cards…the sole means of my family contacting me once I leave the house in the morning.  Who was I kidding – I could not afford to fail.

I am not ashamed to say that what pushed me over the edge was seeing the entire suite of Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) games (~800 in all) running on a friend’s jailbroken iPhone 3GS.  Each of them only consumed on average approximately 100KB.  I could not believe it.  Enough said, time to jailbreak…

First let me say that I found many guides to jailbreaking an iPhone 3G, but I only found one I was comfortable giving a go.  There are many variables at play in terms of iPhone model, firmware version, iTunes version, host O/S version, jailbreak software version, etc.  I highly recommend you do your homework before choosing a path to follow.  Included in this post are brief notes on my personal experience, but they are by no means guaranteed to work for you.  However if you meet the following criteria, you should have no problems:

• iPhone 3G (not 3GS)
• Firmware version 3.0_7A341
• Windows Vista 64bit
• iTunes 9.0

I used the instructions provided here.  There were many follow up comments from people who used these instructions successfully, and they also included specific for how to get the jailbreak process to work in a Windows Vista 64bit environment.  While “Vista 64bit” is not mentioned anywhere in the instructions, Windows 7 is, and that was enough to do the trick for me.  Here are the key things to watch out for…

First, the instructions specifically mention iTunes 8.2.  Well, unfortunately I had already given in to the relentless upgrade notifications iTunes had been presenting me and allowed it to upgrade itself.  That resulted in iTunes 9.0.  Oh man! Now what?  Well, after a little research I saw a few posts confirming iTunes 9.0 would not affect the jailbreak process.  Whew…

Next off, I downloaded the latest version of redsn0w for Windows.  The instructions mention version 0.7.1, but I could only find 0.7.2, which worked great.  I am convinced that the higher the version the safer you probably are because of bug fixes, etc.  I also downloaded the iPhone 3.0 ipsw firmware file (a 230MB beast, BTW).  These are really the only two items you will need outside of iTunes.  Once you have them you can begin following the instructions as provided.  The only thing I want to highlight is the section at the very bottom of the instructions which explain how to start redsn0w in Windows 7.  Regardless of whether you are using Windows Vista 64 or Windows 7, make sure you start the redsn0w executable in Windows XP compatability mode, and run as administrator.

The first time through the process I did the compatibility mode step, but missed the “run as administrator”.  All was going well until redsn0w crashed right in the middle of “uploading the ramdisk”.  I remember screaming in horror  briefly, which thankfully did not wake the kids.  Then I went back over the instructions and saw the part I missed.  Fortunately I was able to resume the process beginning at Step 3.  The second time through worked like a champ.  It took maybe 5 minutes from start to finish.

When Cydia was completing its installation after the first reboot, it again rebooted and this time it took longer than a normal reboot.  I got concerned (impatient, really) and did a hard reboot.  It still took a while but eventually came up just fine.  I am now well on my way down the path of exploring Cydia’s app inventory.  Wow, what a difference.  I have to admit that the first app I installed was a command line terminal.  I just had to do it.  I feel so much more comfortable knowing I can now go to a terminal at any point and inspect my new Linux handheld

Looking back at both my experience moving to a Linux environment on my laptop as well as living in the world of a locked down Apple iPhone, I have come to this conclusion:  The only viable way to put a Linux device in the hands of an average user is to lock it down the way Apple did the iPhone.  Between the periodic kernel updates, video driver patches, Xwindows issues, etc., there is no way the average laptop/desktop user could survive.  You simply have to know too much about the “ugly” parts of Linux to work around the everyday issues that arise.

Best of luck to you if/when you decide to jailbreak.  So far no regrets for me, but then again it’s only been a few hours.