Is there hope for bricked iphone users?

[airfrancisco]

I'm wondering if there's hope for us with bricked iphone such as "incorrect sim" message? What are the chances that there's a way to downgrade the baseband then relock it so the iPhone is back to "virgin" state? Or should I take my losses and sell it on ebay/craigslist and buy another iPhone?

 

[Telp]

I have read that people have been able to unbrick their phones. How truthful these are I am not sure, and if they have released their little secret on how to do it I haven't seen it. Look around or wait for more people to post the opinions. I say your SOL but I am not the definitive word by any means. Good luck with your predicament.

 

[CANEHDN]

I'm just glad I've waited to get the iPhone. Now I know that doing anything against what Apple says is a bad idea. I'm not going to risk it. I sure hope they decide to open the OS up a little though.

 

[CD3660]

I'm just glad I've waited to get the iPhone.

Me too. I can't imagine how anxious I would feel if I was experiencing the problems that so many people with unlocked iPhones are having.

Or am I getting the wrong impression about how many people have these problems?

 

[Cleverboy]

WHY YOUR iPHONE WAS BRICKED

I'm wondering if there's hope for us with bricked iphone such as "incorrect sim" message? What are the chances that there's a way to downgrade the baseband then relock it so the iPhone is back to "virgin" state? Or should I take my losses and sell it on ebay/craigslist and buy another iPhone?

There are people (koff, Gizmodo) who consistantly report SOME hacking news and may actually be surpressing others. That means that while some stories, like the initial unlocking or the initial 1.1.1 bricking get a LOT of attention (and lots of fun graphics drawn up) other breaking news is entirely left out. Take this excellent report from TUAW.

http://www.tuaw.com/2007/10/10/first-signs-of-a-schism-in-the-iphone-dev-community/#comments

the "Elite" Team is claiming on its Google Code wiki that the iUnlock and AnySIM unlocking utilities contained critical errors that led directly to the 1.1.1-related iPhone bricking problems.

They posted a very enlightening post here, regarding WHY your iPhone got bricked... here's the skinny:

AnySIM and iUnlock were patched to make a routine exit with 0 (successful) to unlock the phone. Only problem was that that routine is not only called by NCK but rather by about six routines total because the baseband code is very well optimized. An analogy was made in IRC that it was basically like patching memcpy. The other five didn't expect 00 to be there and were therefore spammed across your BB during upgrade.

Ouch, huh?

The answer to a BRICKED iPhone, appears to be
found in downgrading your baseband:
http://code.google.com/p/iphone-elite/wiki/DowngradingBaseband

Another solution can be found by going straight to iPhone Sim Free, which you arguably should have just paid for to begin with. Apparently iPhone Sim Free promises to restore the baseband (something that the Unofficial iPhone Dev Team promised to do at the at end of September, but may have been distracted from after a while).

WHY DID iPHONE SIM FREE NOT BRICK MY PHONE?

The iPhone Elite Team also posted a write-up about how iPhone Sim Free apparently works. I thought it made a lot of sense.
http://code.google.com/p/iphone-elite/wiki/HowIPSFWorks

Here's the skinny:

IPSF does not change or patch things in baseband firmware, only temporary to put their patch in the nvram - some parts of IPSF software are not necessary steps to their unlock, maybe just obfuscation and distraction for reversers - when you run their app, a chunk of nvram is read and uploaded to IPSF server - the chunk is sent back modified where the LOCK is saved - then a custom baseband bootloader is flashed - the chunk is written to nvram by custom baseband bootloader - then they overwrite baseband with the untouched firmware again, original baseband in phone again - that's it.

iPhone Sim Free Tutorial
http://www.iphonesimfree.com/cgi-bin/iphonesimfree/engine.pl?page=tutorial

In the meantime, use this quick hack to use Safari on your BRICKED iPhone without activating or anything else (just some fancy fingerwork and your good!)
http://www.hackint0sh.org/forum/showthread.php?t=10378&page=2

DISCLAIMER:
Just passing along information here.


~ CB