Sébastien Page

Sebastien is the Founder and Editor in Chief of iDB. Once a BlackBerry user, Sebastien instantly fell in love with the iPhone when it was first announced in 2007. Shortly after, he decided to start sharing his knowledge of the iPhone and its nascent ecosystem, which led to the creation of this blog. Sebastien currently owns 14 iPhones, 4 iPads, a MacBook Pro with Touch Bar, a MacBook Air, 2 Apple Watches, 3 Apple TVs, countless HomePods and AirTags as well as a few pairs of AirPods.

iPhone 3GS Jailbreak & Unlock Confirmed

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated February 5, 2016

Less than a week after the launch of the iPhone 3GS, the Dev Team confirmed it will soon be possible to jailbreak the 24Kpwn exploit that the hybrid team used on the iPod Touch 2G. This 24Kpwn exploit applies for the bootrom of the iPhone 3GS. In other words, you will soon be able to use RedSn0w to jailbreak your iPhone 3GS.

The other news is that once jailbroken, you will be able to use the current version of UltraSn0w to unlock the iPhone 3GS.

This is great news, but how did it happen? Why didn’t Apple fix this in their normal cat&mouse fashion? Well it seems this bootrom was cut in about the August 2008 timeframe, so the unintended early reveal of 24Kpwn earlier this year didn’t affect the iPhone 3GS.

Important: Apple has not given up on the cat&mouse game, and in fact there are challenging aspects of the 3GS jailbreak that aren’t in the other devices. It’ll take some time to safely work these into our tools, but the fundamental weaknesses are there: The bootrom is exploitable via 24Kpwn, and the baseband is exploitable via ultrasn0w. (And just like with the 3G, ultrasn0w for 3GS requires that you not update your baseband when Apple comes out with new firmware.)

If you're really into iPhone hacking, the Dev Team released the technical notes about the 24Kpwn exploit in the iPhone 3GS. These notes can be found here.

There is no information so far on the expected release date of the iPhone 3GS jailbreak but I am confident the Dev Team will have it ready within the next 2 weeks. The sooner, the better. I don't know about you guys, but I'm going nuts with my unjailbroken iPhone.

Hide SMS Preview in iPhone OS 3.0

Sébastien Page ∙ June 25, 2009

Imagine you're having a wonderful dinner at a fancy restaurant with your wife or fiance. As usual, you put your iPhone on the table so the others can see what a cool kid you are. All the sudden, the following text message arrives on your iPhone. Before you have time to hit "close", your wife has already ripped your head off.

This accident likely happened hundreds if not thousands of times since the iPhone came out in 2007. Until then, there was nothing you could do. A few jailbreak applications allowed you to hide this but for some reason, Apple never felt it was a feature worth including in the iPhone OS.

Things have changed with the release of the 3.0 firmware which now allows you to hide the preview of any incoming SMS.

To activate this feature, simply go to Settings > Messages > and turn "Show Preview" off. As you can see on the image above, Apple also added a feature that will alert you two more times after receiving a SMS if you don't read it right away. This is a feature that has also been available for a long time to jailbreakers.

Hiding the preview of an SMS won't completely hide it from showing up on your springboard. You will still get a popup showing the name of the sender and "text message", with the option for you to view the SMS or just close the popup.

That was a much needed option but I think it's too bad you still see the name of the sender (or his phone number if not in your contacts). It's a matter of privacy. A name showing up on your iPhone can still lead to awkward moments...

Have you ever had an awkward because of a SMS arriving on your iPhone? If so, please share it with us in the comments.

psx4iphone PlayStation Emulator Running On iPhone 3GS

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated January 23, 2016

iPhone "jailbreak artist" ZodTTD released a video showing psx4iphone, a PlayStation emulator, running on a non-jailbroken iPhone 3GS and it looks great (see video below).

I now have psx4iphone running very speedy on the 3GS. It’s at the point where Final Fantasy 7 is fullspeed at very least without sound. The build is rough around the edges, as you can’t switch games without restarting the emulator, and only memory card saves are currently working, no save states just yet. Both these issues are being worked on.

Wanna test this on your own iPhone 3GS? Hurry up! ZodTTD is giving a chance to 40 lucky peeps. Check out his blog for more details.

iPhone 3G S Now Called iPhone 3GS. See the Difference?

Sébastien Page ∙ June 24, 2009

When the new iPhone 3GS was unveiled at the WWDC earlier this month, I wrote it "iPhone 3GS", with no space between the "G" and the "S". At the time, it seemed to make sense to me. I quickly realized that I was mispelling it, according to Apple's website, who added a space between the "G" and the "S". So I changed the way I spelled it.

Well, I guess I have to change that again and go back to no space again as Apple quietly changed back the name of the new iPhone to "iPhone 3GS" with no space. Any mention of "iPhone 3G S" on Apple's website has now been replaced by "iPhone 3GS". Why such a move? Nobody knows except probably a few people at Apple.

Meaningless change will you say. Not so meaningless for bloggers and even for iPhone 3GS consumers.

First, we bloggers are used to tag articles with specific keywords related to the article. You may see these tags at the top of the page of each article on this blog. This article for example is tagged with "Apple", and "iPhone 3GS". By doing this name change, Apple is forcing bloggers to update their tags, which just takes a few seconds, but most importantly to update articles written in the past that were linking to these tags. Not sure if I'm clear here. If not, don't worry because you don't care about that.

Where you do care though, is if you make a search on Bing.com (note I don't use Google anymore) for the term "iPhone 3GS battery information" for example. The search engine will return information about iPhone 3Gs, not iPhone 3GS. Do you see the difference? The search engine thinks you typed the plural of iPhone 3G. While that seems like a detail, it could have its importance, especially for e-commerce sites.

Anyways, now you know how to correctly spell iPhone 3GS. I'm sure it makes you day.... Not!

Is This A Potential iPhone 3G S Jailbreak?

Sébastien Page ∙ June 23, 2009

George Hotz aka GeoHot, the iPhone hacker who was responsible for the first hardware unlock on the first gen iPhone, just posted an interesting image on his blog.

iClarified was the first site to break the news and give us some insight about what all these crazy codes mean:

Details of the exploit are still being gathered; however, it looks like GeoHot was able to insert a custom command to iBoot meaning sigchecks have been bypassed (thanks mav). This should be a start for the iPhone 3GS (N88AP) jailbreak which has been dubbed purplera1n.

That is some very good news for iPhone 3G S owners (me included) who are eagerly waiting for a jailbreak. I guess time will tell. Keep your fingers crossed!

AT&T Releases Turn By Turn GPS In the App Store

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated May 26, 2017

There's a bunch of new GPS application being released in the App Store these days. Even AT&T took a shot at it by releasing AT& T Navigator. The app is free to download but $9.99 will be added to your bill every month to use it. Pretty pricey if you want my opinion...

AT&T Navigator was developed in partnership will TeleNav and includes some of the following features:

voice-guided navigation automatic rerouting real-time traffic updates and more...

At $9.99/month, you might as well buy a cheap TomTom. Thanks but no thanks, AT&T. I'll wait for the TomTom app that was presented at the WWDC a few weeks ago.

iPhone 3.0 Jailbreak & Unlock Roundup

Sébastien Page ∙ June 23, 2009

The new iPhone 3.0 came out about a week ago and the Dev Team already managed to jailbreak and unlock it. All the info available about jailbreaking and unlocking might be a little confusing so I wanted to write some sort of summary in order for you to figure out what's the best solution for you.

iPod Touch & iPod Touch 2G

If you're an iPod Touch user and want to jailbreak it, then you will have to use RedSn0w. I wrote a tutorial on how to use RedSn0w for the iPhone but the steps are pretty much the same for the iPod Touch. Refer to this tutorial to learn how to jailbreak your iPod Touch or iPod Touch 2G.

iPhone 2G

You have 2 options to jailbreak your iPhone 2G. If you're on a Mac, the best way to do this is to use PwnageTool. You can read my PwnageTool jailbreak tutorial here. If you're on a PC, you may want to use RedSn0w, for which I also wrote a guide here.

The tools to unlock the iPhone 2G are the same as the tools to jailbreak it. If you're using a Mac, read my PwnageTool unlock tutorial here. If you're on a PC, read my RedSn0w unlock guide here.

Note that RedSn0w works on both PC and Mac, so if you're on a Mac, you can still use RedSn0w, which I recommend as it is a little more straightforward than PwnageTool.

iPhone 3G

Once again, you have 2 options to jailbreak your iPhone 3G. First option is to use PwnageTool for Mac (see tutorial here). The second option is to use RedSn0w, which works on both PC and Mac (see tutorial here).

Now if you want to unlock your iPhone 3G, you will first have to jailbreak it using one of the methods mentioned above, and then you will have to run UltraSn0w (see tutorial here).

iPhone 3G S

Unfortunately, there is no jailbreak or unlock method for the iPhone 3G S yet. The Dev Team just released the iPhone 3G unlock UltraSn0w and I believe they will now focus on finding a jailbreak and unlock for the 3G S.

Stay tuned for more information coming as these new tools are released.

Unlock Your iPhone 3G With UltraSn0w

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated August 1, 2009

UltraSn0w, the soft unlock for the iphone 3G 3.0 firmware is now available thanks to the good work of the Dev Team. Don't wait any minute to install UltraSn0w and unlock your iPhone 3G.

Note that this tutorial was originally written for the 3.0 unlock but the steps are exactly the same to unlock iPhone OS 3.0.1. I simply updated this guide with the latest info.

Before installing UltraSn0w, your iPhone 3G has to be jailbroken and running the latest 3.0 3.0.1 firmware. You can either jailbreak your iPhone 3G using RedSn0w (see tutorial here) or by using PwnageTool (see tutorial here).

After jailbreaking your iPhone 3G, follow these simple steps:

Launch Cydia. Add the following source to Cydia repo666.ultrasn0w.com (note there is a "0" in sn0w, not an "o"). After installing this source in Cydia, search for "ultraSn0w". Install UltraSn0w and reboot your iPhone. Voila!

Note that T-Mobile users should disable 3G before using UltraSn0w.

Unfortunately, the new iPhone 3G S still can't be unlocked because there is no jailbreak for it yet.

How to Import Videos Recorded With An iPhone 3G S to Your Computer

Sébastien Page ∙ June 22, 2009

One of the great new features of the iPhone 3G S is its improved camera lens, and most importantly the fact that it can record videos. After shooting and trimming a video, you can easily upload this video to YouTube, or even email it to a friend. But what if you simply want to import this video to your computer?

There is an easy way to copy a video recorded with your iPhone 3G S to your computer.

If you're on a PC, go to My Computer and look for "Scanners and Camera". You should see your iPhone there. Double-click on it and and save your photos and videos to the desired location.

If you're on a Mac, open the Image Capture app. It will recognize both pictures and videos recorded with your iPhone. Drag and drop the video where you want to save it and that's it.

How to Resell Your Old iPhone At the Best Price

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated January 29, 2016

With the new iPhone 3G S now available, some of you will most likely decide to upgrade their old iPhone 2G or 3G to get the "fastest iPhone yet". Depending on your upgrade eligibility with AT&T, you might be able to get the best price on the new iPhone ($299 for the 32GB), or if you're not eligible, the 32GB will cost you up to $699.

A good way to offset the price of the new iPhone 3G S is to sell your old iPhone. There are a few sites out there that "specialize" is buying out old iPhones but I recommend staying away from them. While they may be completely legit sites, they won't give you as much as you could get if you sold your iPhone directly to a third party. The following is what I did to sell my last 2 iPhones and believe me, it worked very well...

Tutorial: iPhone 2G Unlock Using RedSn0w

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated January 23, 2016

This RedSn0w guide & tutorial will show you how to unlock your iPhone 2G using RedSn0w. This guide is to unlock the iPhone 2G only. If you want to unlock the iPhone 3G, you will have to jailbreak your iPhone first using this guide, then run UltraSn0w, the unlocking tool for iPhone 3G.

This tutorial was originally written for jailbreaking firmware 3.0 but it also works with firmware 3.0.1. I just updated this guide with the latest information.

Note that this RedSn0w tutorial is for Windows users but I assume the steps are similar on a Mac.

1. Before doing anything, make sure you have the latest version of iTunes and the latest firmware 3.0 3.0.1 installed on your iPhone 2G.

2. Create a new folder on your desktop. In this folder, download RedSn0w as well as the 3.0 firmware (not 3.0.1) for your iPhone 2G from our iPhone downloads page (make sure you pick the right firmware). Also download the following bootloader files: BL 3.9 and BL 4.6

3. Unzip and launch RedSn0w.

4. Click “browse” and select the 3.0 (not 3.0.1) firmware you downloaded in a folder in step 2.

5. Once the firmware has been successfully identified, click “next”.

6. Select “install Cydia” and "unlock", then click “next”.

7. Browse for the bootloader files you downloaded in step 2, and click "next".

8. Make sure your iPhone is plugged into the computer and that it is off. Click “next”.

9. RedSn0w will then guide you to put your iPhone into DFU mode. Hold down the power button for 2 seconds. Without releasing the power button, also hold down the home button for 10 seconds. Without releasing the home button, release the power button but keep holding the home button for 30 seconds.

10. If done correctly, your iPhone should reboot and the jailbreak process should start. This step may take up to 15-20 minutes so be patient.

11. Once this process is over, you will get a message saying that it is “done!”

12. Click the “finish” button and reboot your iPhone. The reboot may take up to 10 minutes so again, be patient.

13. Congratulations, you just jailbroke and unlocked your iPhone 3.0 3.0.1 with RedSn0w.

Tutorial: iPhone 3.0 Jailbreak Using RedSn0w

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated August 8, 2009

This RedSn0w guide & tutorial will show you how to use RedSn0w to jailbreak your iPhone 2G, iPhone 3G, or iPod Touch 2G. Note that this step is required to unlock your iPhone 3G using UltraSn0w later on. For more information about the latest jailbreak methods for each iPhone, I recommend you read this before doing anything.

This guide is for PC users but I assume the steps are very similar on Mac. If you want to build custom firmware files with more flexibility it is suggested that you use PwnageTool on Mac OS X (PwnageTool jailbreak tutorial - PwnageTool unlock guide).

1. Before doing anything, make sure you have the latest version of iTunes and the latest firmware 3.0 installed on your iPhone.

2. Create a new folder on your desktop. In this folder, download RedSn0w as well as the latest 3.0 firmware for your iPhone from our iPhone downloads page (make sure you pick the right firmware).

3. Unzip and launch RedSn0w.

4. Click "browse" and select the 3.0 firmware you downloaded in a folder in step 2.

5. Once the firmware has been successfully identified, click "next".

6. Select "install Cydia" and click "next".

7. Make sure your iPhone is plugged into the computer and that it is off. Click "next".

8. RedSn0w will then guide you to put your iPhone into DFU mode. Hold down the power button for 2 seconds. Without releasing the power button, also hold down the home button for 10 seconds. Without releasing the home button, release the power button but keep holding the home button for 30 seconds.

9. If done correctly, your iPhone should reboot and the jailbreak process should start. This step may take up to 15-20 minutes so be patient.

10. Once this process is over, you will get a message saying that it is "done!"

11. Click the "finish" button and reboot your iPhone. The reboot may take up to 10 minutes so again, be patient.

12. Congratulations, you just jailbroke your iPhone 3.0 with RedSn0w. Cydia should now be on your springboard :)