I have removed the firmware 313 spoofer from Cydia and instead placed a firmware 313 spoofer *app* into Cydia. This time, rather than rely on cydia to copy the files, I have an app that will let you load it and toggle the firmware from 3.1.2 to 3.1.3. Note that it does require a reboot after toggling in order for this to take effect. In hindsight, having Cydia copy the files was a bad idea because it seems Cydia has crashed on some installs or the scripts have not completed for some reason causing problems on uninstall. The new app will solve that as it removes all the scripts from cydia.

The app still just edits the file at /System/Library/CoreServices/SystemVersion.plist, which you can manually edit if you so choose.

If you installed the previous version of firmware spoofer, I suggest you do not remove it (ever) as there was a bug in the uninstall script that could remove your firmware plist. Just use this new app instead to select which firmware you want. Selecting 3.1.2 and rebooting is equivalent to uninstalling the old tweak

App is basic but functional:

And some quick comments to some questions I keep getting:
1) No, this does not actually update your firmware to 3.1.3
2) No this does not impact tethering tweaks or other tweaks. It just changes the *reported* firmware version
3) No this does not break your unlock or cause “no service”

Remember that you have to reboot for this to take effect even though the settings app shows the version change immediately.

Final note: if you want this to remain permanent you can uninstall the app after selecting the firmware so you don’t have to have the icon. The last firmware you have chosen will remain. If you wish to change it later you can always reinstall the app and change it again.

Edit: Today (March 10) I have removed this in exchange for an actual app that does the same thing but does not rely on cydia to copy the files. See “Firmware 3.1.3 App” in cydia, which is probably much safer and should fix / repair the problems some of you have had.

Today I released a firmware spoofer called “Firmware 3.1.3″. This of course doesn’t really update you to firmware 3.1.3. But since firmware 3.1.2 and 3.1.3 are so identical minus the jailbreak, it is close enough. If you install this then reboot, iTunes will even show you as running 3.1.3 and will stop bugging you.

This is perfect for setting up someone else’s iPhone that may accidentally update to 3.1.3 because it prevents iTunes from hounding you or prompting you for an update.

This also allows all those iTunes 3.1.3 only apps to install and work. I believe there are no actual API changes between iTunes 3.1.2 and 3.1.3, therefore this should allow all 3.1.3 apps to run.

Note: This does not really update you to 3.1.3. Instead it just tricks your device into thinking you are updated by updating the file at /System/Library/CoreServices/SystemVersion.plist. In general, I think firmware spoofing is a bad idea. But this is a unique time where many users are accidentally updating and losing their jailbreak. Therefore, this package will help prevent that.

Only supported on 3.1.2 since 3.1.3 and 3.1.2 are virtually the same. If you want to spoof firmware other than 3.1.2, you can manually edit the file listed above (assuming you know how). But do not expect everything to work fine doing this. Some apps require the newer firmware.

Uninstall to revert to firmware 3.1.2.

For those of you using Cydia, it got a pretty big speed upgrade today. In Cydia you will find updates for some APT packages (up to 3 depending on what you have installed). Make sure you take these essential updates. It should dramatically reduce the time “reloading” dialog is present.

I have pushed v2.99.4 out which is mainly to add the enhanced icon selector screen. Those of you on older devices like 2g, 3g with lower memory may have experienced a lot of crashing trying to select an icon for a folder. The more icon addon packs you install, the worse the problem was.

This version of categories changes the behavior by separating the icons into icon packs. Now when you select an icon, you will be given a list of icon themes. You select that and only view the icons in that theme. This way less icons are loaded at a time and you should avoid running out of memory.

Here is how it looks:

To anyone making an icon pack, icon locations have moved, and existing icon packs need to be updated. I have updated all the ones I host. Icons go in /var/mobile/Library/Categories/Icons/packname folder. Please try to keep the icons in the folder under 100 and group them together if you have a lot of icons.

Update: Appsidy will issue a refund to everyone that bought this in the next 5-7 days.

Today some developer released a “pay” package called “Vroom” which sounded too good to be true. Unfortunately, it is. Do not install this package. Not only does it not do what it claims, but it is also somewhat dangerous and will wear out your iPhone with limited use. Read below for details. (Note: Zodttd has removed this package from Cydia, but it may creep up somewhere else).

First, this package claims to speed up your iphone, increase your free memory by managing your daemons, and increase your battery usage. Sounds amazing right? Who wouldnt want this?

So what does it really do? It enables memory swap on your device.

What are the results of memory swap on your device? The free memory will appear to be better. That’s because it is using your disk as memory.  But that’s not all. This package is actually just a stolen file that is already on your device, renamed. So that means the “developer” decided to take a file off his iPhone, rename it, and sell it to you for $1.99.

Here is proof that the file is stolen. The original file is dynamic_pager that is provided by Apple in your /sbin folder. The new file from this app is called Vroom_data. Check out the md5sum of both proving that the files are identical:

BigBoss-iPhone:~ root# md5sum /sbin/dynamic_pager
e57afa9289e98fbd336eff14b996370a  /sbin/dynamic_pager
BigBoss-iPhone:~ root# md5sum /sbin/Vroom_data
e57afa9289e98fbd336eff14b996370a  /sbin/Vroom_data

Ok so the package is fraud.

But if you already have dynamic_pager, whats the harm in enabling it? The reason you don’t want memory swap enabled on your iPhone is this:

1) Memory swap will create a disk file on your flash disk. The CPU will need to spend I/O cycles reading and writing to this disk file. The I/O cycles will cost you battery because it takes battery power to do disk writes.

2) Flash disk has limited life span. They say some 100,000 writes per sector then it is dead. Having a swap file running will be quickly writing to the same sectors wearing out your flash disk.

3) Writing to a page file takes some CPU cycles.

Now, lets examine the developer’s claims and compare them to what the package actually does:

Claim #1: Increases memory.  Sort of. It creates a disk swap. Result is iphone will appear to have more memory. Some apps may crash less. This isn’t all bad. (I think I will release a free package that enables disk swap with a strong warning on it for those that want this).

Claim #2: Manages your daemons. FALSE / lies. It is the apple dynamic_pager file. It does only that. It does not manage your daemons.

Claim #3: It speeds up your device: FALSE. In fact, disk swap actually slows down the device because there are extra disk write used in order to access memory.

Claim #4: It provides better battery performance: FALSE. In fact it actually causes your battery to drain faster because of the disk write I/O cycles and the extra CPU required.

Claim #5: It allows your iPhone to boot at 2% rather than 15% battery. FALSE. This is built into the device not the iPhone OS. (Just like DFU mode). You cannot make changes to this.

Claim #6: It allows your iPhone to run until there is 1% battery rather than 5% before it shuts off. FALSE. See #5 above.

Finally, the package in Cydia was packaged incorrectly. Daemon plist was owned by user 1000. Launchctl will not load any daemon not owned by root. This caused the daemon to not start. With that bug, the paging system is not even enabled resulting in no change in performance! (LOL again). Anyone claiming to install this and finding a boost in speed, battery, etc is experiencing the placebo effect.

This all reminds me of the scam last year with the fake app I dont crash. At least that guy wasn’t trying to charge you money.

Note: enabling memory swap also seems to break google maps app.

So to all your 3.1.3 3GS users that cant jailbreak, this is a reminder to you. Update your computer’s hosts file right now to point to Saurik’s server. This should be a permanent change everyone that owns a 3GS should make. This allows you to down grade your firmware in the future. Even if you don’t care about jailbreaking, it is still a good idea. What if Apple releases a firmware that you hate in the future? This at least allows you the option to downgrade. It also guarantees your SHSH is stored.

While it’s unlikely 3.1.3 will ever be jailbroken since it is utterly worthless, it is still a good idea to get your SHSH stored. Once your hosts file is set up, anytime you restore, the signature is stored for you so that you can go back and restore to that firmware again in the future whether or not Apple decides you should or not.

To fix your computer, simply follow these steps:

OSX: Open the file /etc/hosts with a text editor.
Windows: open the file C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts with notepad:
Add the line:
74.208.10.249 gs.apple.com

Note: on windows you may need to “run as” administrator your notepad to get the file to save. On OSX, you may need to use sudo or su to get to root user.

Edit: Ok, updated the deb to 2.99.1. I guess it wasn’t properly code signed. Sorry. Link below is updated.

It’s been slow going due to my lack of time lately, but I have revamped the Categories GUI making room for some future enhancements and adding some things to it. We (ashikase and I, mainly ashikase) have also added some internal clean up code which will help on cases where the conversion did not go well from an older version to the latest version.

I am holding the release now for some initial bug reports or to see if there are any major issues. Download it here and use dpkg -i to install it. (If you dont know how to do this, you should wait for the release).

After about a year of using various methods to get it to work right, there is now a Data Toggle for SBSettings. The problem with disabling data (EDGE) is discussed in my post from last July. Today, Anderson Vulczak contacted me with a working solution to both disable and reenable Data on 3.0 iPhone OS. So we quickly put together a Data toggle and put it into Cydia. In short, this solution sets a bogus IP address, (1.1.1.0) to your data adapter’s IP address. This seems to kill EDGE / 3G without any battery drain issues reported in using other methods such as entering a bad APN.

I recommend that anyone that needs to disable Data use this rather than the EDGE toggle. The toggle should work also with BossPrefs as well.

We are calling this “Data” toggle because when it is off, it should kill the data connection entirely. 3g can be on and you will not be able to access your internet via your provider’s data connection. You will notice you get an IP address, but it is a bogus one that we assign (1.1.1.0).

The only downside is that to reenable data, we have to kill commcenter which can freeze the device for up to 15 seconds. (Should come back to life after that though).

Just a note that Apple stopped signing 3.1.2 today. That means those of you 3gs or iPod touch 3 users that did not rush out and store your TSS in Cydia or Rock are screwed and cannot restore anything but 3.1.3. If you are a jailbreak user running a 3gs or ipod touch 3 (or later generation ipod touch 2) that has not stored the TSS in cydia, you should be very careful with what you do from now until the next jailbroken firmware. You will want to be careful in what you install to make sure you don’t have to restore for any reason. It would be a good idea to install open SSH and learn how to use it so that you can get in and fix any problems without a restore, also.

3g / 2g users need not worry as you dont need Apple to sign your firmware files.

Note: the warning applies only to 3gs, ipod touch 2 and 3 users. Regular 3g, 2g, and ipod touch 1 users can use redsn0w 0.9 to jailbreak 3.1.3.

iPhone OS 3.1.3 is now out from Apple. Supposedly it fixes some battery issues. (Doesn’t every release make things faster and fix battery problems?) There are no new features. The release only stops jailbreaks. That’s right. No new features.

DO NOT UPDATE YOU WILL BE SORRY.

Currently there is no jailbreak for this firmware. Unofficial sources have confirmed that they have patched up the method we used to jailbreak 3.1.2 so you will not be able to jailbreak. If you update you will lose all your jailbreak apps and will not be able to get them back. In other words, updating means you lose a lot of stuff in return for almost nothing back. In addition, there is no ETA on a jailbreak for 3.1.3. It may never be jailbroken. It is likely that they (dev team, geohot) will not waste another hole on 3.1.3. They will most likely hold it for the bigger update that will come with the release of the iPad and iPhone 4.0.

One more thing, as of right now, Apple is still signing 3.1.2 for you 3gs users but no one knows for how much longer they will be. Make sure you *rush* into Cydia or Rock and get your keys signed on the front page if you have not. This will make certain you can always restore 3.1.2 even in the future using Saurik’s server.

To summarize:

- Update adds NO NEW FEATURES, do not update.

- Update kills your jailbreak. Do not update.

- Get your 3gs 3.1.2 keys signed by Cydia/Rock now if you haven’t.

Read dev team info about this update here.

Backgrounder + ProSwitcher

I realize this isn’t new news, but I just had to write it because ProSwitcher is just awesome. (And yes, it’s totally free). I have updated my why jailbreak iPhone page adding ProSwitcher. ProSwitcher is written by developers rpetrich and chpwn and backgrounder is written by ashikase.

There are severe limitations imposed on AppStore apps. One of these is “no background processes.” This means that if you have an app, such as an instant messenger app, every time you press home to go to something else, the app is closed out. You are disconnected. You get no messages, no notification, nothing.

Backgrounder is an attempt to fix this. Backgrounder allows you to select an app that you want to allow to run in the background. Then when you press home, that app will keep running. Perfect for an IRC app (try flowchat + backgrounder) or such that you do not want to get disconnected everytime you tap the home key. This adds critical functionality that you cannot get unless you jailbreak! On 3gs, you have plenty of memory to use this fully!

Combine this with ProSwitcher and you have a beautiful and simple interface into backgrounding one app and starting another. Activate ProSwitcher (in my case I have it to activate by double tapping status bar) and you get a coverflow view of all your running processes:

With this you can background and kill apps easily. While composing an email, quickly look something up on the web without closing your email program. Uses are endless.

3g / 2g users: you don’t have enough memory to really background a lot of apps, use it sparingly. 3gs users, you are in for a treat!

As a point of interest, the iPhone dev team has released redsn0w v0.9b3 which handles 3.1.2. For the most part, if you are already jailbroken with blackra1n and everything is working ok, no need to use redsn0w. If you need to jailbreak and dont want to use blackra1n for some reason, you can use redsn0w as an alternative. Redsn0w also has options to change boot logos. The redsn0w page has more details as well as download links at the bottom for both MAC and Windows users.

Note: if you have a 3GS newer than week 40 of last year then you still have a tethered jailbreak. That means if you ever reboot, you have to rerun blackra1n (or redsn0w). You don’t have to restore. Try not to reboot if you have these devices.

With this app called BTstack Keyboard from Matthias Ringwald, jailbroken iPhone users can now use a bluetooth keyboard for text entry in your iPhone. Great for college or taking notes in a class or meeting at work! The app should work with most any bluetooth keyboard available. For more details see Ringwald’s product page.

The keyboard is available for $5 on Cydia Store. Added to reasons to jailbreak!

Interestingly enough, within one day apart from each other, two developers have released a tethering toggle for SBSettings. Yesterday “Tethering” toggle was released by Filipe Pina. Today, rpetrich released a VPN and Tethering toggle caleld “Tether”. Both tethering toggles work well although they both take a different approach on how to make the actual changes. Rpetrich’s toggle uses the preferences frameworks and calls the functions that the settings app calls. Filipe Pina’s version makes the changes to the files that the preferences framework makes and then restarts the internet service. In both case, you can tether with usb or bluetooth. If you want to tether with bluetooth, you must enable bluetooth in sbsettings separately.

Rpetrich released also a VPN toggle. I believe these two toggles were the most requested. Many thanks to the two mentioned developers.

Here is a petition that I recommend you all sign. Click here to sign it. It is to petition the FCC to keep the iPhone free. Jailbreaking lets you make a decision on what you want to do with your iPhone. Apple will have none of this. The utlimate goal of the petition is to have Apple open up access to us iPhone users without having to jailbreak.