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.

ScreenDimmer allows you to save battery life by automatically dimming your device’s screen after a pre-defined time; or if you wish by turning the backlight off.
Most users suffer unnecessary battery drain while having their iPhone not on standby. Setting auto-lock to a short time makes it better, but is an inconvenience most of the time [...]

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.

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.

Ever want to fake your device into believing it’s anywhere in the world? Now you can, with Location Spoofer available on Cydia Store!
Location Spoofer allows you to get around all of the location specific locks that some apps put in place to prevent you from viewing content in certain regions, as well as creating a [...]

Did you know your iPhone/iPod Touch can play videos on your TV? Did you know Apple wants you to pay $50 to get a cable that lets you do such?

Did you know you don’t need to?
There are plenty of accessories on the market that allow you to play video out with iPods, but when plugged [...]

There are plenty of accessories on the market that allow you to play video out with iPods, but when plugged into the iPhone, display “This accessory is unsupported by iPhone”, and refuse to play video out. Or at least used to.

Resupported is a safe and cheap alternative to paying the Apple tax. It enables video out through many unsupported AV cables and devices, and it does not modify system files!

Here’s a simple check to see if your cord is likely to be supported:
-Does it plug into the dock connector?
-Will audio play through it when connected to your device?
-Does it have a video output or a screen?

Available in Cydia for $1.99

AnyRing - The popular Mobile-Substrate extension from RockYourPhone just went up on Cydia Store !
With AnyRing (3.2) you can easily select any song on your iPhone (or Record you own voice) to play as a Ringtone or SMS Ring. AnyRing even lets you select the starting/ending point in the song to play when the Ringtone [...]

There is a problem with a particular source this morning. Signs point to it being Zodttd’s repo sending data that Cydia has a problem with. This causes Cydia to go into a crashing loop.

You should NOT need to restore your firmware to fix this problem. Please have patience, a fix is being worked on. If the coming solutions do not help there is still the possibility that a restore may be needed.

Update #1: Some good advice and instructions in the comments below. You can also try the FIXES AND SUGGESTIONS HERE, as the problem is the same as it was then. You must remove the zodttd source list that is causing the problem.

Update #2: A quick fix for some (works only if you have apt7 installed)

• Log-in as root using MobileTerminal or SSH and run this command:
• apt-get update
• This will update your lists and then Cydia should work.