Early morning, I saw my iPhone 3GS is displaying “Mobile Substrate Safe Mode” on the screen and I guess I must have installed too many apps last night thus getting this alert. If I can recall, the last app I’ve installed is Action Menu, which is used to customize the call out with more actions. Although my iPhone is still working fine after restart, but I’m afraid the alert will appear again. So, I think it’s safer if I perform the restore and jailbreak again.
Before Restore the iPhone
Since the data on the iPhone will be erased during the restore, I’ve sync my iPhone through iTunes to backup my contacts, transfer purchased apps and make a copy of the albums before I click the restore button. With AppBackup and OpenSSH installed, I can backup the apps saved games by SSH into the iPhone using WinSCP and duplicate the files that contain all the saved games to my hard drive created using AppBackup. After everything is backup, I’ve used the shift restore method to choose 3.1.2 firmware to perform the restore.
WinSCP login page
Restoring iPhone in Progress…
iTunes took about 5-10 minutes to restore and finally, my iPhone is successfully restored with 3.1.2 firmware and activated or unlocked through iTunes as I’m a legitimate user and my iPhone is a factory unlocked set. On the iTunes, I’ve chosen the option to set as new iPhone instead of restore from the backup and then type in the name for my iPhone. I heard that a lot of the iPhones freeze after the users have chosen to restore from the backup. Thus, I always choose to set up as new iPhone whenever I’m performing the iPhone restore or update.
unlock complete
After iPhone has been Restored
All of my contacts, purchased apps and albums were synced, but the apps saved games were still on the hard drive as I only can restore them to my iPhone once it’s jailbroken. There are 2 iPhone jailbreaking tools that support iPhone firmware 3.1.2 namely blackra1n and pwnagetool. Since I’m using Windows Vista on my PC, the only tool I can use is blackra1n Windows version created by GeoHotz, which can jailbreak all iPhone generations within a minute. And pwnagetool created by iPhone dev team is only available on Mac and I’m definitely will use pwnagetool if I’ve got the iMac, MacBook or Macbook Pro.
Jailbreak iPhone using Blackra1n
Blackra1n had successfully jailbroken my iPhone and I’ve installed both Cydia and Rock App installers to install AppBackup and OpenSSH to restore my apps games saved. Now, I’ll need to install all the Cydia apps again and I know that there is an app that can reinstall all the apps in one short. But, I still prefer the clean install for all the apps I always used such as, SBSettings, MxTube, dTunes, WinterBoard, Terminal, Categories and etc.
GeoHotz's Blackra1n
Though this is a very long post, but it can be a good reference for those who wish to restore and jailbreak their iPhone again and an useful guideline for those who want to do more cool things on their iPhone. All of the tools and files I’ve used can be downloaded here for free.
P/S: This guide is mainly for the iPhone legitimate users or the users who have the factory unlocked set of iPhone.
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Hi I have tried many time to jalbreak my singtel iphone 3GS 32G with Blackra1n. Installed sucess (springboard shown Blackrain icon} but when I reboot my iphone it come to DFU mode please help.
Hi David,
The newer batch of iPhone 3GS has been updated with newer version of bootrom (Read more about new iPhone 3GS). Currently, blackra1n is a tethered jailbreak for all new iPhone 3GS, which means you need to run blackra1n again if your iPhone 3GS is rebooted, turned off or the battery dead. If not, it will be stop at the iTunes with USB logo (recovery mode).