Geohot released a better 3gs unlock. It installs with his Cydia repository and patches some files on install. After this, no process or daemon is left running. This sounds like a better replacement for ultrasn0w. However, unlike ultrasn0w, it cannot be disabled with a toggle. A restore will restore the iPhone to stock locked state. Sounds very nice. Here are details from his site:

Wifi fails? Battery fails? Unlock fails? You need purplesn0w, the geohot 3GS unlock solution. Now I know you here a lot about different colors of sn0w, but I’m here to tell you why purplesn0w is the best. First off, what is purplesn0w? It’s a soft unlock for your 3GS that I’d actually use day to day. It’s not a daemon that takes any resources, and it doesn’t add a task to your baseband. It’s very close to a true unlock. All it does is patch three files, CommCenter, lockdownd, and your wildcard activation plist(which you need, activate w at&t sim first, no hacktivation support yet). That’s it, no other files are installed. Props to Oranav for the at+xlog exploit!
A full explanation is coming soon, but I think you clever reversers out there will see what it does, and see why it’s so pristine :-) The payload is radically different from other varieties of sn0w. beta as usual, back up first.

Be sure to have legit activated 3GS
Disable 3G if you don’t have it(like T-Mobile).
Add apt.geohot.com to Cydia
Install com.geohot.purplesn0w
Watch for success output in Cydia
Reboot, and enjoy your unlocked iPhone

Fuzzyband has been updated and is now 3.0 ready.  It’s feature set has changed a little as yellowsn0w is deprecated. Features: Upgrades / Downgrades baseband to 4.26.08 for unlocking with the ultrasn0w tool released by the iPhone Dev-Team UPGRADING: Upgrading is for users that wish to remain on 2.2.1 but also unlock.  Upgrading will put the 4.26.08 baseband from [...]

I have made some minor updates to SBSettings tonight, but the major feature is the new “Free Memory” button in the processes widget. With this you can free up system memory without killing tasks.

Here is an example (note the free mb number in the statusbar):

We start with 3 processes running and 24mb free.

After hitting the button, we are down to 40mb free. Open SBSettings and still 39mb free and the same 3 processes still running.

8 July 2009 Added a new Close (X) icon in Quick Compose and Quick Reply, such that the [Call] option is now a permanent button. The [Call] feature is now back in Quick Compose and Quick Reply. You can now add smileys in Quick Compose and Quick Reply. If typing a free format number in [...]

We are proud to announce that iReal got LANDSCAPE QuickReply and QuickSend. As the inventors of “SMS from any App” it was only logical to put in the great effort that was necessary to achieve a solution for this as smooth as it is now. It was quite a challenge to get this working on [...]

The dev-team’s jailbreak for 3GS is released. You can view the guides and download the binaries from here.

This jailbreak supports 2g, 3g, 3gs, and iPod touch 2 on 3.0. Key features:

1) Stable jailbreak tested by dev-team
2) Icy + Cydia problem solved (we think).
3) Ultrasn0w tested and working on 3gs
4) Proper kernel patches which will enable logome (after it’s updated for 3.0).
5) Mobile Substrate + Winterboard now working on 3gs.

Again, for download links and redsn0w installation guide, go here.

Note: If you used purplera1n RC2 or newer, you do not need to redo your jailbreak. You will be unable to use logome in the future, but that should be the only downside. If you used purplera1n RC1 or older, you should redo your jailbreak. I believe you can run redsn0w right over the top of it.

FlowChat is by far the best internet chat (IRC) client for the iPhone and iPod Touch. I have personally been testing this IRC app for months. It feels more like a real desktop client than a mobile IRC clients. It’s really good. FlowChat combines a gorgeous interface with an extensive feature list that rivals that of most desktop chat clients.

Upload and share photos and screenshots immediately with your friends, type in either portrait or landscape mode, visit links and browse the web without leaving FlowChat using the embedded web browser, autocomplete commands, channel names and nicknames, use one of the 5 bundled themes or create and install your own on-the-go, manage user and channel modes, or even get down and dirty with an unfiltered console view. And all of this from a sleek and elegant interface designed by professionals committed to bringing you the best possible internet chatting experience.

Here are some of the features:

• Awesome user interface
• Monitor multiple chats with one glance
• Chat in portrait or landscape mode
• Manage your channels from a beautiful interface optimized for the iPhone
• Fantastic desktop-style nickname, channel and command autocomplete
• Share photos and screenshots with your friends
• Extensive logging with full search
• Supports all IRC commands
• Full support for SSL connections
• Full support for psyBNC, ezbounce, znc and all other IRC bouncers and proxies

Available in appstore here.

Update July 5, 2009: The purplera1n app is now released for OSX as well. Guides and links are updated. Install instructions are the same. OSX users can use the same guide.

Update July 4, 2009: The purplera1n app has been updated. Same download link. This fixes several issues such as Vista and Windows 7 not working. It also fixes teh kernel signing issues and Saurik’s vmcheck passes now paving the road for Winterboard soon!

If you already jailbroke with the old one, just run this from the pc over the top of your existing jailbreak. You will not get a freeze icon, the kernel and fixes will be updated wtihout it. If you didn’t jailbreak, now is the time as it works very well. Guide is updated for new version.

If you’re having problems such as it just hangs forever, make sure you have “purlera1n 3GS jailbreak by geohot RC2″ in the application window titlebar. If you don’t you may still have an old version.

—

So GeoHot released a 3gs jailbreak this evening. Exciting news (see SBSettings shows 159mb free RAM!):

It’s currently for Windows only. Personally, I don’t think that he wants to polish it but wanted to use this to egg the dev team to release theirs now. Anyway, there is a tool, it works in Windows only. Before you try to use it, please read my caution below and the guide.

There are issues with this jailbreak. As exciting as it is, I recommend that you guys wait. I believe that the dev-team will release something in the next couple days that will be more solid and proper. (GeoHot is amazing, and I have nothing bad to say about him). In case you didn’t want to wait, I do have a purplera1n guide below. Here are the issues (probably not a complete list):

1) The update on July 4 solves almost all the issues. The jailbreak is very easy to run! It is finicky. I had major problems running this jailbreak. First, the iPhone is put into recovery mode and if it doesn’t work (and it didnt many times), the iPhone is left in recovery mode. Most of you will have to restore to get it out of recovery mode after this. Not too fun. I will detail some steps to take you out of recovery if you cannot get things to work.

2) This is for Windows and OSX. This is for Windows Only, but not only that, it is for 32 bit Windows XP SP2 only. I do not know anyone that has had success on Vista.

3) You must have iTunes 8.2.0.23 installed.

4) This is solved on July 4th update. Winterboard does not run, it requires an update. Wait for it! The jailbreak is incomplete. The kernel vm_mem patch is not present so Winterboard will not work as some other critical tweaks. (SBSettings does work!).

5) Solved July 4th. The jailbreak has some code signing issues. I haven’t determined what this will mean yet.

In short, the process is very easy. You don’t even have to hassle with DFU mode. Just run the tool, click a couple buttons, wait, when it’s done, you have an app on your iPhone 3gs called “Freeze”. Run that, download Cydia, reboot, and you’re done.

Guide:
Geohot released a beta jailbreak called PurpleRa1n. It is beta and has some issues, but it gets the job done if you’re patient. Here are some steps and troubleshooting to accomplish the task:

Requirements: You must have
1) Windows XP, Vista, or Windows 7 or OSX.
2) iTunes 8.2.0.23
3) Purplera1n software downloaded get here.

Step 1) Connect your iPhone to your computer. Close iTunes if it is running.

Step 2) Run the purplera1n file that you downloaded from the requirements section. You will see this screen on Windows:

or this screen on OSX:

Step 3) Click “make it ra1n”. It will respond with “waiting for reboot”. Your iPhone will now reboot into recovery mode and you should see this image on your iPhone screen:

If you do not see this image and instead see the cable connecting to iTunes, wait 1 minute. If it stays that way then this did not work and you can assume you have to repeat the process. It’s ok to start it while you’re in recovery mode. It will just go right to the image above. If not, close purplera1n and repeat step 2 & 3. If you cant get past this, see troubleshooting.

Step 4) After a couple of minutes, your iPhone will reboot and you will see a new app with a blank icon called Freeze on your iPhone screen:

Step 5) Now we want to get Cydia installed. We’ll do this over the network. Make sure you have wifi or very stable 3g before running this step. When you do, run Freeze.

Step 6) Click “Install Cydia” and wait for it to download and install.

Step 7) When the install completes, close Freeze and reboot the iPhone.

Step 8) You now have a Cydia icon.

Step 9) Open Cydia and allow it to reorganize your apps (this eliminates the need for BossTool). After this, perform the essential updates or do a complete update.

Step 10) We no longer need the Freeze icon so let’s remove it. (Note: I do not recommend that we hide this icon using SBSettings as you may have this problem after you restore). Load Cydia and install “CyDelete”. Use the cydia search. By the way, notice how blazing fast Cydia runs on the 3gs! Wow!

Note: if springboard spins forever after the “restart springboard” just hold home and power until the iPhone shuts off, then power it back on. This seems to happen sometimes on 3.0 the first time mobile substrate installs. It all works after.

Step 11) Enable non Cydia deleting in CyDelete. Launch settings app and navigate to the bottom of the first page to find the settings bundle:

Step 12) Tap CyDelete and enable “Non-Cydia Deletion” (the top option).

Step 13) After the springboard reloads, hold any icon to get into wiggle mode and remove Freeze:

Step 14a) Optional. You no longer need CyDelete. You can uninstall this in Cydia now. I recommend keeping it however. It’s a very easy way to uninstall Cydia apps and you now have enough memory in your 3GS that you will not notice any overhead having it.

Step 15) Optional if you want to unlock now, you should be able to install Ultrasn0w. See my ultrasn0w guide.

Troubleshooting:

I would not be surprised if you’re in this section. This process was a nightmare for me. It took me many tries and several different computers. Here are some problems and possible solutions.

Purplera1n crashes as soon as you tap “make it ra1n”. Your Apple mobile device service is not running. On Windows press windows + r and type “services.msc” into the run box and hit enter. Then locate the Apple Mobile Device service and right click, say “start”.

An ECID Grabber that difrnt created. It makes the process of getting your purplera1nyday certificate faster and less complex. Read More / Download At: http://difrnt.com/blog/?p=25 *Getting your ECID and purplera1nyday certificate may be crucial to your 3Gs Jailbreak! Screenshot: UPDATE #1 difrnt also created a iBEC and iBSS Grabber! If you find it too hard to manually grab [...]

The dev team announced that it has a jailbreak for iPhone 3gs but has delayed release on it until after 3.0.1 firmware release. Many people are upset over this and really don’t understand why. Here are some details in layman’s terms:

1) Jailbreaking is done by exploiting bugs in existing hardware / software in order to gain access to the device (that Apple should have given in the first place).

2) On all devices to date, the jailbreak is permanent, meaning that it is at the hardware level and Apple lost those platforms.

3) On 3GS, Apple added another layer of security, an ECID. This is a key that is retrieved from Apple on restore to sign your IPSW image. If the image isn’t signed, the 3GS and iTunes will reject it and you will not be able to restore your device with that image.

On the 3GS, we can use an existing single exploit to retrieve the ECID and use that to sign “files” allowing to restore custom firmwares. (This is really dumbed down, but you should get the idea). Once the jailbreak is released, Apple will patch this hole.

The hole is such that anyone that has 3.0 firmware, you can obtain the necessary signing key. But once the jailbreak is out, Apple will patch it on the next firmware release. Those with the older firmware that saved off whatever was needed will always be able to jailbreak. Those that update without doing so will probalby never be able to jailbreak. Such is the nature of the exploit.

The logic in waiting is this. There are only a few iPhone 3gs devices sold. A 3.0.1 firmware release is due soon to fix some obvious 3.0 bugs and to patch up Ultrasn0w. If the jailbreak is released now, when 3.0.1 comes out, the only people that can jailbreak, ever, are those that had 3.0 and did not rush to update. If we release after 3.0.1 then 6 months worth of users should be able to jailbreak forever. (This assumes its 6 months from 3gs to 3.0.2 release, probably not that bad of an assumption). This should be a significant amount of people, which is better than nothing. Releasing now gives apple a chance to patch the hole before the 3GS is even released in all markets around the world.

Note: those of you that are interested, you can save your ECID in a usable format using these instructions. Windows users can find USBView here.

Personal speculation: I believe that we may be near the end of the software jailbreaks. In the future, new devices may require some sort of tethered jailbreak. This means when you reboot your device you must be hooked up to a pc or such, do the jailbreak, and then unhook the device and use it – until you reboot again. I predict small tethered jailbreak devices to be sold from hong kong that you will be able to keep in your car or your pocket in case you have to reboot your iPhone. Not a perfect solution, but not that bad either. Personally, I never reboot my iPhone. But if it did crash, it would work as a “normal” iPhone until you attached the device and “hit the button” again or whatever.

Of course, you 2g, 3g, and ipod touch users will never have to worry. Your devices should remain jailbreakable forever.

-
If you are decided that you want to try setting up your phone as a new phone after jailbreaking but want to keep all your SMS, notes, bookmarks, calendars, and mail accounts, please read and follow BigBoss’ 3.0 Preparation Guide prior to setting up as a new phone.
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Update 4 (6/25/09 8PM EST): My battery drainage problems seems to originate from bluetooth. I LOSE battery charge even when plugged in when bluetooth is enabled. When I shut it off, I no longer have that problem. This is a pretty big bug to have missed the beta testing, so it is either a) personal phone problem, b) jailbreaking problem, or c) SBSettings toggle bug. I’ll do more tests and update later.

Edit: I think I may have found a cause for the insane battery drainage: bluetooth A2DP. Right before I noticed the battery drainage, I tested out A2DP on my car stereo system with streaming music. I believe that before I noticed drainage the first time (2 days ago), I also tested the A2DP streaming. Another user commented that he also noticed high drainage after using A2DP.
——–
Update 3 (6/24/09 6PM EST): I was still having a plethora of problems with my jailbroken 3.0 phone on T-mobile. The battery drainage was above the roof, it would lose a percentage every minute or so – basically draining the battery within two hours. I did everything to try to diagnose the problem, and it seemed that a full restore did the trick. So many problems seem to originate from restoring your old phone backup, ESPECIALLY if it was jailbroken before. If you are having any troubles, whether poor battery life, unstable connection, etc; I suggest doing a full restore and setting it up as a new phone.

Another problem some users faced is the unstable T-mobile signal with ultrasn0w, which seemed to originate from MMS settings in conjunction with a backup restore.

So here is what I’ve learned over the past few days about 3.0, jailbreaking, and unlocking:

• Push is broken if you hacktivated your phone (2G or 3G)
• To get push working on your iPhone 3G, you must activate with any AT&T Sim
• No known push fix for the iPhone 2G
• Some users are reporting that you cannot have Push and MMS setup at the same time using ultrasn0w. Either Push stops working or your signal becomes unstable once you enter the MMS settings in.
• In many cases, restoring your old iTunes iPhone backup will cause problems – especially if the backup was made from jailbroken phones
• Old 2.x backups seem to cause some or all of the following: Poor battery life, unstable ultrasn0w connection, and unable to launch apps
• If you have ANY problems after upgrading: restore and setup as a new phone, this will fix 90% of the problems
• Apple is a bitch

——–
Update 2 (6/24/09): If you have an AT&T sim lying around (activated or not), you can try this method to get push working on iPhone 3G’s (from user “l1ceo1l” on macrumor’s forums):

Tip: if you SSH to /var/root/Library/Lockdown/activation_records and delete wildcard_record.plist, the next time you reboot your phone, it will ask for activation again, thus allowing you to easily put in an AT&T sim and activate with iTunes open – this should allow you to skip the restore and re-jailbreaking steps if you already are in that state.

• You need a Unactivated or Activated ATT Sim
• Take out your T-Mobile SIM and Pop in your Unactivated ATT Sim card (Just found out any ATT Sim is ok).
• Restore and Jailbreak with redsn0w

(If you deleted wildcard_record.plist, you can skip this step)

• Go to settings and turn off your 3G!
• Let iTunes activate the phone – you should get a “Waiting for activation.” message, dismiss it and Open cydia.
• Add the Ultrasn0w source repo666.ultrasn0w.com
• Install Ultrasn0w and turn off your phone
• Remove the unactivated ATT sim and insert your T-Mobile sim
• Turn on the phone, once you receive service you should get the message. “iPhone has been activated”

———
Update 1 (6/23/09): It seems that I did something else on top of replacing my lockdownd. Users on howardforums found out that to get push working with jailbroken phones, you MUST activate it with an active AT&T sim (sim that currently has service). I asked my friend with a legit AT&T service to send over his lockdownd and replaced mine – and it worked.

A few results have come back from both 2G and 3G users and apparently the lockdownd method does not work – after rebooting it has them activate again. Currently, the only sure way to enable push and stable ultrasn0w is to activate your phone (before redsn0w or after pwnage) with a legit, working AT&T sim.

It might have been a fluke on my part, but I apologize for suggesting a method that does not work. I will keep looking into this. The Dev Team does recognize this problem and are currently working on the push problem.

I will keep the original post intact, as it has good information to those who don’t know whats going on.

I released SBSettings 3.0-1 that fixes the catastrophic code signing error from 3.0. I also removed 3.0 from my servers so even stale package files cannot accidentally download it. It’s literally gone. Read on for fixes if you need them.

Tonight I released SBSettings 3.0 but code sign failed. Apparently on 3.0, if you don’t code sign, it still works. So when I tested the install, it was fine. This is new. On 2.x if code sign fails, the app won’t work. Since SBSettings is part of springboard, it put springboard into an endless reboot loop.You do not have to restore. Here is how to fix it.

For everyone on 2.x that updated to SBSettings 3.0 I am very sorry about your troubles. Here is how to fix it:

Delete the files /Library/MobileSubstrate/DynamicLibraries/SBSettings.dylib off your device and reboot.

Here are some ways you can do that:

1) SSH or SCP in and delete them. Here is the how to ssh guide. For SCP, navigate in to /Library/MobileSubstrate/DynamicLibraries folder and just delete the file.

2) In SSH prompt, type rm -f /Library/MobileSubstrate/DynamicLibraries. Note, using SSH or SCP, your device will reboot every 10 minutes as springboard crashes and watchdog timer reboots it. You will need to be patient in a reboot as it takes it a while for network system to come alive again. It will come up though.

3) WINDOWS USERS: Use iPhone Browser (download here) or iFunBox (download here). This works on PC by connecting to your device via USB. Dock your iPhone and load up iPhone Browser. Navigate to /Library/MobileSubstrate/DynamicLibraries folder and delete the SBSettings.dylib file. Note, if your iPhone is in middle of reboot you may need to wait for it to become recognized. Like SSH, it will be recognized you just need to give it a couple minutes if it is not yet booted up enough to be pc recognized.

4) MAC USERS: Use iFuntastic (download here) and follow step #3 above.

If you don’t know how to reboot your iPhone after completing the above steps, just hold home and power until the device powers off. Then let go of both and hold power to turn the device on.

Anyways, I feel terrible for anyone that has had problems due to this mistake. In the small amount of time that I released this and watched 1 tv show, it was downloaded 40,000 times. I hope almost all those are users on 3.0. I will make sure and test for this code sign error on 2.x in the future.

I updated SBSettings, Categories, Docs, BossPrefs to fix a launch crash that a small percentage of users were experiencing. Please update if you experienced this issue with any of the above apps not caused by missing dirname as outlined in my previous post.

There was also a temporary bug in my pack of sbsettings toggle pack 2.99-3. It was only out for about 30 minutes but I managed to get about 100 emails on it :(

If you try to update and it won’t install due to error 2, refresh your sources and you should see 2.99-4 to install. The updated toggle pack enables bluetooth on iPod touch 2g on 3.0. If you don’t care about this feature, no rush to update.