As all of you already know (except my wife because she reads this blog to spy on me... ily honey) today @geohot is releasing blacksn0w which will unlock the 05.11.07 baseband for the iphone (3gs/3g). This is terrific news for all of you that are on unofficial carriers. If there are any of you reading this post now that have stupidly accidentally upgraded your iphone os from 3.0/3.0.1 and lost your unlock, you will be granted a get-out-of-jail free card (pun intended). As @geohot said, this is likely the best all of us have it. So be very careful from now on. One - three misclicks in iTunes can render your phone jailed and locked once again.
But what happens when @pple stops signing signature hashes for 3.1/3.1.2 for 3gs phones?
How will we be able to fix a phone that is stuck rebooting or needs to be restored for any reason once @pple decides that you MUST update to the latest iPhone OS because they won't sign your ecid SHSH to allow you to restore 3.1/3.1.2?
You have two great options: 1. Saurik automatically saves your ecid SHSH file on his secure servers if you install cydia on your jailbroken iPhone OR if you point to cydia.saurik.com in your etc/hosts file and perform an iTunes restore.
NOTE: ALWAYS be careful when trying to restore via iTunes.
2. TinyTSS and Umbrella are your local option. Using these two tools will allow you to save the all-important ecid shsh file locally on your computer. You can then load the same file using TinyTSS and putting "127.0.0.1 gs.apple.com" in your etc/hosts file will allow you to restore to whatever version of the iPhone OS you have an ecid SHSH file for.
Which approach should you use? Both. You simply cannot be too safe. Umbrella is incredibly easy to use and TinyTSS is a command line tool that I plan on updating with a neat GUI.
As it stands now though, the download link on the right will always have the latest version. Check back regularly for updates.
And yes, I still plan on adding soft-activation and local activation to TinyTSS. I'm just quite busy and life > this. :)
UPDATE: I've started working on the module that will intercept https requests from itunes to their activation server (albert). I'm adding a much-needed GUI to TinyTSS along with an option for soft/local activation. Soft Activation will (as of now) probably require some SIM information from your friend-with-an-official-carrier's SIM. Until/Unless I find a way to activate using an unofficial imei/imsi, this may be required.
UPDATE: I've been able to capture an activation request/response session. I'm looking at what would be required to turn this to an offline feature. After looking at it, this solution may soft activate unlocked phones as well. This means it would no longer be necessary to switch sim cards with a friend on an official carrier to activate your unofficial sim. I'll keep you all posted with more developments.
To make TinyTSS a bit more useful, I've decided to take a crack at implementing offline activation. Currently, TinyTSS will spoof the real TSS service but it still requires a net connection because of the activation request that is sent to albert.apple.com. I'm currently working on adding that functionality to TinyTSS and maybe (if possible) adding the activation response grabber to Umbrella. My hopes are that this will allow complete and total offline firmware restoration.
As this is quite a bit more difficult to implement, it will take me some time to implement. My motivation is luke-warm for the feature but I'm curious how many of you would be interested in this functionality. Vote with your comments (heh or your donations :) )
On Donations-
I've always sworn that Umbrella and TinyTSS will never have a donate button marring their UI. I don't believe in shamelessly begging folks for cash. So, because I have received quite a few emails asking how I can be reached for donations, I've decided to put a donate button on the sidebar. It's small and fairly tasteful.
Note that I appreciate anything you feel like donating. But remember that donations are completely voluntary. (Although big donations are a great way to get someone's ear). I never expect anything but I greatly appreciate what you do give.
