The fear of bricking my iphone is the only reason why I haven't used the pwnage tool. Any one have theirs brick or is the pwnage tool safe and stable enough to go ahead with without any worries?
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How high is the risk of bricking your phone with pwnage?
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I'm hardly an expert either...just did it for the first a few days ago, but did quite a bit of research first. It seems the risks are really, really low. If I thought any different I wouldn't have just taken the leap.
Unless there is something really unique about your situation you can go back to "factory set up" via restore if it doesn't work for you.
Unless there is something really unique about your situation you can go back to "factory set up" via restore if it doesn't work for you.
If you just jailbreak and you don't unlock then the risk of bricking is zero. The worst that will happen is you'll have to do a full restore but you'll always be able to restore the phone.
Yea I'm not into unlocking the phone. I just want to add 3rd party apps not found in the app store.
Can you restore a brick phone? I thought you're pretty much eff'd if it happens.
The risk is the same as restoring with a regular update from apple!
very very small!
No you can not.
But generally you can not brick it by pwning either.
You simply confused different things, that way you looking at the risk of bricking your own brain, and for that there's no easy restore procedure either.
Bricking is a very recently made up word, so it has multiple definitions.
If, by bricking, you mean: "Screw up the iPhone to the point where it is presently not usable," yes, you can do that, but you can also fix it fairly easily.
If, by bricking, you mean: "Render the iPhone not only presently not usable but also not fixable," then by definition there is nothing you can do.
More experienced users don't use the word very often because they usually mean the latter. Less experienced users have a low filter and call everything bricking.
Pwnage is extremely unlikely to brick the iPhone according to the second definition.
dfu? school the noob.
DFU is a restore mode built into the iPhone; essentially, because the phone is designed to be able to be restored even with a completely trashed firmware, it's pretty impossible to truly brick it.
The general consensus actually has been that it's almost impossible to completely brick any generation of iPhone using any unlocking tool. The vote is somewhat more out on whether the iPod touch can be totally bricked....
Oh God, if just 5% of posters here would be as good, helpful & informative as you
Life here (and everywhere?!) would be so much better !!!
Thank you MKrishnan, what you do is really appreciated, especially here!
Keep up the good work!
I NOW don't agree that it's really safe. Here's why...
Hi: I'd really appreciate some good advice. Somehow while updating from PwnageTool_2.0.1 to PwnageTool_2.0.2 on an Intel Mac I got totally locked out of my 1rst generation iPhone. I'm pretty bummed. (Up until PwnageTool_2.0.2 everything worked great. i.e. PwnageTool_2.0 and PwnageTool_2.0.1) I'm going to make a new thread with this info because I need to know if I'm screwed.
The iPhone will turn on, but the screen shows a lock at the top, an image of a USB cable pointing to an iTunes icon and 'IMEI' with a bunch of numbers under it, and 'ICCD' with an even longer string of numbers underneath that. If I shut down the iPhone and restart It says the SIM is locked and when I key in the PIN, the iPhone is still in the state mentioned above. Whether I remove the SIM or leave it in and try to restore my old PwnageTool_2.0.1, iTunes states "Only compatible SIM cards from a supported carrier may be used to activate iPhone."
Also, I went back to back to run PwnageTool_2.0.1 where everything worked and tried to restore back to iPhone1,1_2.0_5A347. It ran OK, but I'm still locked out.
I've been in forums and seen that some other folks have experienced what seem like similar problems, but as a read on, it appears that people are talking about problems and solution for Windows that won't help me and other Mac users. I'm new to this iPhone unlocking thing, but if anybody could tell me step by step how to unlock out/restore/start from scratch or point me to an address that explains what to do I'd be very grateful. Thanks.
Hi: I'd really appreciate some good advice. Somehow while updating from PwnageTool_2.0.1 to PwnageTool_2.0.2 on an Intel Mac I got totally locked out of my 1rst generation iPhone. I'm pretty bummed. (Up until PwnageTool_2.0.2 everything worked great. i.e. PwnageTool_2.0 and PwnageTool_2.0.1) I'm going to make a new thread with this info because I need to know if I'm screwed.
The iPhone will turn on, but the screen shows a lock at the top, an image of a USB cable pointing to an iTunes icon and 'IMEI' with a bunch of numbers under it, and 'ICCD' with an even longer string of numbers underneath that. If I shut down the iPhone and restart It says the SIM is locked and when I key in the PIN, the iPhone is still in the state mentioned above. Whether I remove the SIM or leave it in and try to restore my old PwnageTool_2.0.1, iTunes states "Only compatible SIM cards from a supported carrier may be used to activate iPhone."
Also, I went back to back to run PwnageTool_2.0.1 where everything worked and tried to restore back to iPhone1,1_2.0_5A347. It ran OK, but I'm still locked out.
I've been in forums and seen that some other folks have experienced what seem like similar problems, but as a read on, it appears that people are talking about problems and solution for Windows that won't help me and other Mac users. I'm new to this iPhone unlocking thing, but if anybody could tell me step by step how to unlock out/restore/start from scratch or point me to an address that explains what to do I'd be very grateful. Thanks.
dfu? school the noob.
check it
dfu mode is a low level mode of the phone that you can boot into before you hit the firmware, you can think of it sort of as a bios or post for the phone. the phone becomes stuck in a base state which allows you to push firmware to it with no obstructions as very little software is running on the phone
restore mode, is different. in restore mode you have already booted into the firmware so there is more obstructions to get in the way of you loading firmware
i've yet to see an issue that couldn't be fixed by restoring a phone using dfu
I think everyone is right, you can't really perma-brick it, only have some easily corrected problems
If you are locked out the situation is exactly like that of someone who bought the original iPhone and didn't sign up for a contract and wanted to use a different SIM.
I'm 99% certain you didn't click on alt and choose your custom firmware when restoring! Assuming you even made a custom firmware.
Either that or you didn't click "no" when pwnagetool asked you if you were legit!
Just make a new custom firmware make sure you click on no so it's unlocked and activated. Put your phone into DFU restore and select the custom firmware and restore.
Your phone will then unlock itself and be activated. Easy.
As for "bricking" for me that means its broken and unfixable - the worst that will happen using pwnage just jailbreaking is that the phone doesn't restore and so you try again or its buggy and you restore again neither of which is a big issue and can happen when using Apple firmware as well!
If your unlocking then of course there is a chance that the unlock will go wrong and mess up the phone but the beauty of bootneuter is that you can try the unlock again and it should fix it - worst case scenario the next apple update will fix it.
So really unless your a hacker and trying to unlock the phone for the first time then its not going to be bricked!
I don't know how many of you saw this post on the iPhone DevTeam blog but:
With all this upgrading and downgrading, we were worried about bricks, so weve developed a method to dump the WiFi tables and the seczones. Now we can modify without sweating, since a successful recovery can be made at any point. With this out of the way, changing our underwear every 5 minutes isnt necessary!
So it seems the devteam even have a method of not bricking your phone if you do mess with it in a really complicated way like they do! I am sure that in time they will release that as well so that you can always undo any problems you have!
So its Never going to get bricked using pwnage is the point i'm making!
I'm 99% certain you didn't click on alt and choose your custom firmware when restoring! Assuming you even made a custom firmware.
Either that or you didn't click "no" when pwnagetool asked you if you were legit!
Just make a new custom firmware make sure you click on no so it's unlocked and activated. Put your phone into DFU restore and select the custom firmware and restore.
Your phone will then unlock itself and be activated. Easy.
As for "bricking" for me that means its broken and unfixable - the worst that will happen using pwnage just jailbreaking is that the phone doesn't restore and so you try again or its buggy and you restore again neither of which is a big issue and can happen when using Apple firmware as well!
If your unlocking then of course there is a chance that the unlock will go wrong and mess up the phone but the beauty of bootneuter is that you can try the unlock again and it should fix it - worst case scenario the next apple update will fix it.
So really unless your a hacker and trying to unlock the phone for the first time then its not going to be bricked!
I don't know how many of you saw this post on the iPhone DevTeam blog but:
With all this upgrading and downgrading, we were worried about bricks, so weve developed a method to dump the WiFi tables and the seczones. Now we can modify without sweating, since a successful recovery can be made at any point. With this out of the way, changing our underwear every 5 minutes isnt necessary!
So it seems the devteam even have a method of not bricking your phone if you do mess with it in a really complicated way like they do! I am sure that in time they will release that as well so that you can always undo any problems you have!
So its Never going to get bricked using pwnage is the point i'm making!