If you have a look at these pages, you will see that it’s pretty straightforward: look for the firmware you want to jailbreak/unlock, then choose your device (2G, 3G, or 3GS) and click on the appropriate guide.

I decided to create these 2 pages because it might be a little hard for newbies to figure out what they’re supposed to do or even how to search for information on this blog. This way, I make it dead simple for everyone to find relevant and clear information on both jailbreaking and unlocking the iPhone.

Note that I am starting this page with the latest 3.0 firmware. By now, most people have updated their iPhone to 3.0 and it wouldn’t make much sense to list previous tutorials I wrote.

"iPhone Jailbreaking and Unlocking Guides" is an article by the iPhone Download Blog sponsored by the iPhone Store. Feel free to leave a comment or discuss this topic in the forum. For the latest iPhone info, don't forget to follow me on Twitter.

To do so, you first have to jailbreak your iPhone with PurpleRa1n (see PurpleRa1n tutorial), and then, simply install UltraSn0w from Cydia.

It’s that simple! Note that even though PurpleRa1n got an update, it’s still a little buggy.

"Unlock Your iPhone 3GS With PurpleRa1n And UltraSn0w" is an article by the iPhone Download Blog sponsored by the iPhone Store. Feel free to leave a comment or discuss this topic in the forum. For the latest iPhone info, don't forget to follow me on Twitter.

Vista, Windows 7, International, 64-bit support
Less flakiness in the payload
Cydia tar cleaned up
Improved logging with slightly more useful errors
New kernel patches, codesign errors gone. Props posixninja
Added vm_map +x, passed vm_check
No winterboard yet, but now that ball is in Saurik’s court
Still in beta, use caution

As you can see, WinterBoard still won’t work but there is some major improvements. You may download PurpleRa1n from our iPhone downloads page (read PurpleRa1n tutorial). Use at your own risks though…

"iPhone 3GS Jailbreak PurpleRa1n Gets An Update" is an article by the iPhone Download Blog sponsored by the iPhone Store. Feel free to leave a comment or discuss this topic in the forum. For the latest iPhone info, don't forget to follow me on Twitter.

Our ultrasn0w program uses the at+xlog crash as an injection vector of our unlocking payload — and it does so on the 3GS in exactly the same way as on the 3G! But this injection vector will be lost if you update to 3.1 using the official Apple IPSW, which updates the baseband. So stay away from official 3.1 IPSWs until we release the tools that let you update the firmware without updating the baseband.

The Dev Team is still waiting on the OS 3.1 update to release its jailbreak.

"Dev Team Demos iPhone 3GS UltraSn0w Jailbreak" is an article by the iPhone Download Blog sponsored by the iPhone Store. Feel free to leave a comment or discuss this topic in the forum. For the latest iPhone info, don't forget to follow me on Twitter.

Not even a week after showing solid proofs of a successful iPhone 3GS jailbreak, GeoHot officially released PurpleRa1n, a tool to jailbreak the iPhone 3GS. The Dev Team planned to release their 3GS jailbreak after the OS 3.1 update but GeoHot just couldn’t wait.

Normally I don’t make tools for the general public, and rather wait for the dev team to do it. But guys, whats up with waiting until 3.1? That isn’t how the game is played. We release, Apple fixes, we find new holes. It isn’t worth waiting because you might have the “last” hole in the iPhone. What last hole…this isn’t golf. I’ll find a new one next week. Also your purplera1nyday files ensure that you can always get back to a jailbroken state, so if you have it it’s just a matter of tools.

Before going through a short PurpleRa1n tutorial, there are a few things you need to know:

• This is a beta release with some major hiccups. It is not stable at all.
• PurpleRa1n only works with 32 Bit Windows XP SP2
• You must have the latest version of iTunes installed
• The jailbreak is incomplete and many apps won’t work (ie WinterBoard)

Jump the break to read the full tutorial. Read the rest of this post...

"iPhone 3GS Jailbreak With PurpleRa1n" is an article by the iPhone Download Blog sponsored by the iPhone Store. Feel free to leave a comment or discuss this topic in the forum. For the latest iPhone info, don't forget to follow me on Twitter.

Remember we warned you to stay away from any updates to 3.1 if you want to be able to jailbreak or unlock your 3GS.

Well this is an additional message to all you 3GS owners that would like to jailbreak your device sometime soon, but this advice comes with a warning! A warning that if you accidentally upgrade to 3.1, you will not be able to use Ultransn0w, so please re-read and double check this warning at the bottom of this post before proceeding.

During the restore process iTunes nicely keeps these oh-so-top-secret-files in a lovely accessible place for us to copy out and backup, that place?  /tmp on Mac OS X or %TEMP% on Windows.  Thanks Apple — handy!

The downside to this approach is that you actually need to go through the restore process to get these signed files, which has risks if you are anywhere near 3.1 or 3.1 beta

Jump the break for instructions on how to get the iBEC and iBSS of your iPhone 3GS. Read the rest of this post...

"Prepare Your iPhone 3GS For Jailbreak" is an article by the iPhone Download Blog sponsored by the iPhone Store. Feel free to leave a comment or discuss this topic in the forum. For the latest iPhone info, don't forget to follow me on Twitter.

• Non-destructive video editing
• Voice Control over Bluetooth
• iPhone vibrates when moving icons
• New APIs to enable third party apps to access videos and edit them
• “Fraud Protection” toggle
• Faster boot time

The biggest change is the update of the baseband to 5.08.01.

If you don’t care about jailbreaking or unlocking your iPhone, then this doesn’t matter to you. However, if you want to keep you device jailbroken/unlocked, you should not update to 3.1 beta, or even the official 3.1 firmware when it’s released to the general public.

Like the Dev Team warned us, updating to 3.1 will prevent you from running any jailbreak method, which would make it impossible to unlock.

My advice is to wait and see. The Dev Team is most likely already picking the 3.1 beta apart. Stay tuned for more updates as they become available.

"iPhone OS 3.1 Beta Is Out. Jailbreakers, Stay Away!" is an article by the iPhone Download Blog sponsored by the iPhone Store. Feel free to leave a comment or discuss this topic in the forum. For the latest iPhone info, don't forget to follow me on Twitter.

My fiance Tina is a mental therapist and she regularly has appointments with clients. She usually uses her old Samsung phone as a calendar but needless to say it is not very practical. I recently “forced” her to get an iPod Touch and one of my sales argument was that she could use it as a calendar and that she would be able to sync it with Google calendar over the air. Note that these were just arguments I pulled out of my butt so she agrees to get an iTouch (yes, the iTouch is more for me than for her)…

We finally bought a 32GB iPod Touch and I started looking into ways to sync an iPhone calendar with Google calendar. I found many options but all involved some third party apps and that’s clearly not what I was looking for. I was very surprised that Apple hadn’t included this feature in the iPhone/iPod Touch until I actually found an article on JAIB saying that the new OS 3.0 supports CalDAV with SSL so your are technically able to sync Google calendar with your iPhone or iPod Touch, as long as you have internet access.

Here is how to set up your iPhone or iPod Touch to sync calendars with Google over the air:

1. On your iPhone, go to Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > Add Account > Other > Add CalDAV Account

2. For the CalDAV settings, enter the following information. Note that your username should be the email address you use to access your Google calendar as well as the password.

3. Then tap “Next” and it should verify your information.

4. If you can’t get your account verified, tap “Advanced settings” and make sure that “Use SSL” is On, that the port is 443, and that your Account URL includes the sign “@” in your email address.

That’s it!

Now every time you add an event to your iPhone calendar, it will also show up on your Google calendar, and vice versa. You obviously need to have internet access from your iPod or iPhone for the data to sync. Note that the sync is not immediate. It sometimes takes a few seconds but besides this, it works very well.

"How to Sync Google Calendar With iPhone Calendar" is an article by the iPhone Download Blog sponsored by the iPhone Store. Feel free to leave a comment or discuss this topic in the forum. For the latest iPhone info, don't forget to follow me on Twitter.

There is a simple trick to enable the emoji keyboard on your iPhone. This trick has been around for a few days but for some reason, I never wrote about it. Loyal reader David emailed me earlier today and reminded me of this.

1. Install Spell Number from the App Store (it’s a free app)

2. Launch the app and type 91929394.59

3. Press the home button

4. Go to Settings > General > Keyboards, and under “Japanese” select “Emoji”

You can now use these crazy little japanese icons. Note that you can delete the app if you don’t want to keep it. Your Emoji keyboard will still be activated.

"How to Enable Emoji Icons On OS 3.0" is an article by the iPhone Download Blog sponsored by the iPhone Store. Feel free to leave a comment or discuss this topic in the forum. For the latest iPhone info, don't forget to follow me on Twitter.

Now go to Cydia and look for the application called ActivateMMS2G from the iSpazio source. Install and reboot your iPhone and bingo!

"How to Enable MMS on the iPhone 2G" is an article by the iPhone Download Blog sponsored by the iPhone Store. Feel free to leave a comment or discuss this topic in the forum. For the latest iPhone info, don't forget to follow me on Twitter.