lars backlund | blog of lasseman

This evening I’ve downgraded an iPhone 3G from iOS 4 all the way back to 2.2.1. It was a little bit tricky but I finally figured it out. I’m back at 3.1.3 since not enough apps worked on 2.2.1 (for a brief iOS history on what has changed, see here).

Should you ever want to do it, this is how you do it. Note: The guides that were out there did not work for me, I kept getting Error 1600 all the time so this is what I did to make it work.

First off, at least for me, I could not jump straight from 4.0 to 2.2.1, you have to downgrade in steps. This means we first have to go from 4.0 to 3.1.3 and then to 3.0 and then to 2.2.1. Going from 3.0 to 2.2.1 also requires iTunes version 7.7, so if you’re on a Mac with the latest iTunes, you’re shit out of luck – get on an old PC or run windows through a VM. I had to run iTunes 7.7 on an old crappy XP machine to make it work right also, it didn’t vibe well with Windows 7 x64.. And YES, I really had to go from 3.1.3 to 3.0 and THEN to 2.2.1.

To get a hold of all the old firmware revisions for the iPhone visit this page and select the right one, remember, you have to do it in steps, so if you want to go from 4.0 to 2.2.1, first you got to hit 3.1.3.

You’re also going to be needing a tool called iRecovery to get the iPhone out of DFU mode. If you’re on a Mac, unpack the tool into some directory then navigate to that directory (for instance Downloads) and in terminal type:

./iRecovery -s

Yeah that’s right, I had to drop in an absolute path to make it fly. Oh and if you’re going to be using iRecovery on Windows, instead of in Mac, don’t forget to install this little bad boy (Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Redistributable Package), otherwise the executable won’t work!

Anyway, to downgrade, you can follow this guide for instance, but don’t forget about the extra stuff I told you above – this is the shit that took me time to figure out.

Lol

Ahh..bliss…first of all, visit this site, CAT that has TV Calendars. Sign up, select your shows and then just add the ICAl file to your Google Calendar (oh, and if you’re a Swede like me, set your time-zone) – voila! Now you can check when your favorite shows airs in your favorite calendar!

• Via mlevit, this dude also has full instructions

I think it looks just awesome! So great to finally see something that really seems like a competitor to the iPhone (and no, I’m not counting the Storm as one since BlackBerries are rare here). Me thinks that Apple has a few tricks up their sleeve and as evident by their patents they were actually going to use that “dead” surface of their touch screen sooner or later. We’ll see when we get the “iPhone 2,1“

Ah. Not a day too early. Telia, TeliaSoneras brand in Sweden are today adjusting their mobile surf prices and now you pay a maximum of 9 SEK (approx 1.1 USD) per day when you surf on your cell. This in stark contrast of before today when you were forced to use a custom portal called SurfPort in order not pay a steep price per MB when surfing online unless you had a special surf service.

SurfPort would have been a great idea a few years back, today it’s an outdated and confusing concept especially for a customer with a modern phone with a good browser such as the iPhone. It doesn’t make sense for people to be forced to go through some weird start page in order for them not to pay a premium for every megabyte. New subscription plans are also being launched for iPhone and new flat rate surf plans are also being made available. All in all I am very happy about the adjustments.

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I just tried a Facebook app that automatically fetches pictures and birthday dates from Facebook and profile pictures. Thing about this app is that it “downgrades” any eventual full sized contact photos you are already using. I think it’s pretty much an undocumented, the fact that if you use a large photo within the iPhone to set a picture for a contact – it will fill the screen instead of just showing a small thumbnail to the upper right.

Here, lemme break it down. If you set pictures for your contacts using the Adress Book in your Mac, only small pictures will show on the iPhone. If you set pictures for your contacts using the iPhone – it will use large photos.

I don’t use the app mentioned above for this reason, nor do I use the Adress Book at all to set my pictures, I’ve done it all from within my iPhone to get the nice looking full screen photos. Below are screenshots from the iPhone showing the differences.

Here I have set the image using Adress Book in my Mac

Here is the same photo, set within my iPhone