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1.1.3 iPhone Update Liveblog

Erica Sadun
Senior Writer
Updated ·5 min read

It's time to kiss my beautiful jailbreaked iPhone goodbye and to surrender to the inevitability of the 1.1.3 update. Goodbye delightful shell access. Goodbye beautiful 3rd party applications. I'm upgrading for the sake of my readers--and hopefully downgrading soon after! Read on for the liveblog...

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2:15 - Before getting started, I'm doing backing up parts of my iPhone disk. I've also put a few symbolic links in place--more out of hope than conviction that possibly I can use them to access my disk. I'm aware that the 1.1.3 upgrade will change my baseband software and that downgrading after 1.1.3 will probably lock my baseband and make it impossible to use my iPhone as an actual phone, so be aware of this if you chose to upgrade.

2:30 - I'm downloading the upgrade after having agreed to whatever terms and conditions Apple threw up there in iTunes. It looks like the download is going to take about 20 minutes total. Time to go get some Diet Coke, the liquid fuel of Champions. Direct download is here for the iPhone 1.1.3 restore file.

2:40 - iTunes says 10 minutes remaining...

2:50 - 37 seconds remaining. Schramm already has his icons wiggling. I am jealous.

2:55 - Fully downloaded, ready to install. I begin the update, with a heavy heart and a leaden stomach. "Preparing iPhone for Software Update"..."Updating iPhone Software".....It's at the part where I see the white Apple logo and the progress indicator spinning in a circle...Verifying updated iPhone software...Updating iPhone firmware...

3:00 - My iPhone has been updated and is restarting. I'm now being prompted for my AT&T/Cingular Account info. Hmmmm.... I have to enter my current mobile number, my zip code, and the last 4 digits of my social security number. Sheesh. Can you say BIG BROTHER?

3:01 - "Please wait while AT&T validates your account. This may take up to 1 minute." As far as iTunes is concerned, I'm now in but Bologna is waiting for activation from AT&T.

3:03 - New Welcome message: "Edit Home Screen". It tells me that I can touch & hold any icon until it wiggles (hi Mike!) and drag it to wherever I want. Press "Home" when done. Okay. RIP a major part of XLaunch's functionality.

3:05 - Hmm. Isn't this interesting. I connect via iPhuc and I can see my entire disk. No, maybe not. Darn!

3:10 - I go to Safari. I has an interesting new layout, with the bookmark add feature at the bottom of the page. It complains because having upgraded it no longer is patched to open local files, which was the last page I displayed.

3:15 - I'm heading back to iTunes, doing an option-Update and selecting the 1.1.2 firmware. Let's see how a downgrade goes...."The iPhone could not be updated. An unknown error occurred." The iPhone now goes into recovery mode. I have connected it to iPhuc and issued a cmd fsboot. And it reboots just fine out of recovery mode. Still running 1.1.3. I'm guessing I'll need to do a restore rather than a recovery--and jailbreakable 1.1.1 is probably my best bet.

3:20 - Custom ringtones were not affected--neither the ones from iTunes or the ones from SendSong. The modem firmware is 04.03.13_G.

3:25 - Restore. I'm attempting to do a restore (not update) back to 1.1.1. Lets see how that goes. Nope, another error. Not happening. Tried again, another failure. Back to iPhuc and cmdfsboot.

3:30 Thanks to iPhuc, I'm back in business. But still running 1.1.3.

3:35 On Nate True's advice, I'm trying the WTF method. I've manually used iPhuc to enter recovery mode, then did a filecopytophone of the 1.1.1 WTF dfu file from my 1.1.1 restore file. I then issued cmd go, connected to iTunes and tried the restore from the 1.1.1 file.

As you probably know, the ipsw files you download from Apple are actually zip archives. Inside the archive in the DFU folder is a file whose name starts with WTF. It's this file that I used with the filecopytophone command.

3:38 Verifying Software...And I get the (expected) 1015 error. Now, I'm connecting to iPhuc and just issued a cmd fsboot. Maybe it will work? Nope, not this time. Still stuck in recovery mode. Trying again... Back to Verifying...If I get 1015 again, I'm going to try Independence. Connecting to Independence now...And it works!

3:50 Connecting to iTunes...iTunes says I don't have a proper SIM (which I do, perfectly legal AT&T SIM). Back to INdependence.

3:55 I'm busy trying to jailbreak and get into 1.1.1. Unfortunately, jailbreakme.com isn't quite working...Another try and I'm IN. Settings > General > About and I'm clearly running 1.1.1 and Installer.app is on Springboard!

Reader Jose writes: "Looks like you can get the lyrics to come up (assuming your song already has them) by tapping on the "Cover" while holding the iPhone vertically. There is no lyric display I can find in the horizontal "Cover Flow" mode or in the "Song List" mode."

4:05 I'm reinstalling both the BSD Subsystem and SSH under 1.1.1 for the moment.

4:10 I've OktoPrepped and added another symlink and am reupgrading back to 1.1.3. Be aware that after you upgrade/downgrade that you will get INTERMINABLE "Wrong SIM messages". Damn you Apple.

4:15 And I'm back to 1.1.3. That's a wrap for now guys. More as I explore... (No, the Oktoprep and symbolic link were both complete dead ends. There is no working jailbreak for 1.1.3 at this time.)