They did it! No, it wasn’t the venerated iPhone Dev Team that figured it out. The folks at ModMyi have posted an iPhone 3G baseband firmware downgrade utility, developed by “pH,” that should give bricked iPhone 3G owners new hope. Thanks to pH and the “pHasebandowngrader” utility, the iPhone 3G baseband firmware version 2.30 can now be downgraded to the more unlock-friendly 2.28 baseband firmware! But only if you’re running bootloader 5.80…
But, why would you want to downgrade your iPhone 3G’s baseband? Because the newer 2.30 version of the iPhone 3G modem firmware (baseband) will not work with the only true software-based SIM unlock utility, known as “yellowsn0w.” The iPhone Dev Team’s iPhone 3G unlocking utility can liberate many iPhone 3Gs to work on any GSM network in the world, but will only work an iPhone 3G running baseband version 2.28.
To downgrade your iPhone 3G’s 2.30 baseband:
- Download pHasebandowngrader here.
- Download to Desktop
- Connect via SSH to your iPhone
- Open MobileTerminal
- Type “login”
- Default login/pass is root/alpine
- Copy the downloaded “phasebandowngrader” folder to your iPhone’s “Applications” folder
- The folder MUST named phasebandowngrader with lowercase letters!
- Type “cd / Applications/phasebandowngrader/”
- Execute pHasbandowngrader
- Type “./phasebandowngrader”
- You should now be running iPhone baseband 2.30!
More complete instructions and warnings can be found in this MMI thread.
The pHasbandowngrader is only intended to be used on iPhone 3Gs that were accidentally flashed to the latest 2.30 baseband firmware. Those same users that are now looking to unlock their iPhone 3G to roam the globe can now downgrade their baseband and run the yellowsn0w utility (available from Cydia). Unfortunately, most newer iPhone 3G units have upgraded bootloaders that prevent baseband downgrades. So, if you recently bought your iPhone 3G, thinking you could unlock it for use overseas, you’re out of luck. Sorry.
But, if you’ve been waiting for the day when you would finally be allowed to downgrade to 2.28 and use yellowsn0w, consider this your lucky day!
Warning: pHasbandowngrader has only been tested with baseband 2.30 and commercially available iPhone OS versions. iPhone Devs out there that have updated to iPhone OS 3.0 will be testing pHasbandowngrader at their own risk
[Via: gadgetlite]