New Firmware Fixes Previously Bricked iPhones

drcagn writes "Ars Technica reports that Apple's new 1.1.3 firmware update unbricks iPhones damaged from unlocking and updating the firmware months ago. In September, users who hacked their iPhone's firmware to unlock it found their iPhone bricked when they updated to new firmware, creating a massive upset and internet furor. Although Apple claimed this was not an intended effect of the update, it held the stance that it is not their responsibility to ensure that updates work with users' warranty-voiding hacks, and many cried foul. This update, which provides new features Jobs showed off at Macworld, while not officially unbricking the iPhone, has restored iPhones from Gizmodo and a reader of the Unofficial Apple Weblog."

Confused

If a iPhone can receive an update that unbricks it, then it was never bricked in the first place.

Re:Confused

Obviously, it was only mostly bricked.

Re:Confused

Actually, it was just resting. On its back.

Re:

If a iPhone can receive an update that unbricks it, then it was never bricked in the first place.

Sssh! Don't say that too loud! You'll enrage the mob!

Don't listen to him folks, they're all still expensive coasters, that's right.

Re:Confused

The phrase "brick" is so overused as to be meaningless these days. It wasn't "bricked"; the firmware update got fubared on the hacked phones the last time it was updated, rendering the device non-functional. This one overwrites whatever chunk of firmware code that was causing the issue, and poof, it fixes the problem.

Same as if you screwed up a BIOS update on your motherboard. Do it again, correctly and you'll be fine.

Re:Confused

If this update could fix the iphones, putting it into recovery mode and doing a restore probably would have fixed it too. Anyone calling that bricked shouldnt be messing with their iphone in the first place.

Re:Confused

I think people splitting hairs about the use of the term "brick" are missing the point.

Bricked is when you need to take out the soldering iron and connect up a JTAG cable. If you can still communicate with the firmware loader over USB, it isn't bricked.

Re:Confused

If a iPhone can receive an update that unbricks it, then it was never bricked in the first place.

Correct. Welcome to the new age of blogger journalism where something is called bricked the moment even a single feature or other stops working.

My wireless keyboard is on the verge of being bricked, excuse me... ... I had to go put in a new battery before I finished this post. Looks like it un-bricked my keyboard, whew.

Software can't unbrick

If you can recover a device to a full operational state without opening its case or attaching a jTag cable, it wasn't bricked.

Flashed with a messed up firmware, or a bad flash, sure, but not bricked.

If you have to use a boot wait feature to load a new firmware over a network, it isn't bricked either because it was able to access a network and run a tftp server.

They are right

"held the stance that it is not their responsibility to ensure that updates work with users' warranty-voiding hacks, "

They shouldn't be held liable. You buy a product and modify it the manufacture can't, and shouldn't, be held responsible for the results.

It doesn't unbrick all iPhones

If you look at http://www.hackint0sh.org/ [hackint0sh.org] (forums for the anysim iPhone unlock method), you'll see that some iBricks don't get fixed using this trick. So while this method may work for some, it isn't the cure all for all iPhone hacking mistakes.

Re:

And if Apple bought AOL, we would have the iFrisbee.

ABout brick

Save yourself some frustration and realizer the term brick changed when it hit the mainstream market.
Like 'Hacker'. You can't stop it, just sigh and go on, otherwise your just screaming into the wind.

The brick it gracelessly

I bricked about this happening to "meme" [slashdot.org] a couple years ago, then bricked the solution, [slashdot.org] so I'd like to brick some words of encouragement to anyone who feels bricked by the loss: brick your vengeance. If you can't brick "brick," then nobody can.

Heretofore, "to brick" can brick anything. You can brick a beer; you can brick a pizza. You can brick a computer; and you can brick your girlfriend. You can brick your hat, except in Soviet Russia, where hat bricks you.

Go brick something, and then brick somebody about it in the hopes that they'll brick someone else. Brick the word, so the whole world will brick that they bricked "brick." Hopefully after that, maybe they will have bricked that some words are better off left unbricked.

Hackers Did This Months Ago

I "unbricked" my phone back in October. The iPhone development community built a utility that rebuilt your lockstate tables way back then. Welcome to the party Apple.

This is the link to the Ars Technica story

Somehow the link to the story [arstechnica.com] appears to have gotten lost.

Responsible or not

Any company that installs firmware on a system in an unknown state "unintentionally" are morons. They've never heard of checksums? Don't trust your expensive iphone to them for updates because they're obviously not performing due diligence. I they can't detect a hacked phone before blindly installing, they will be unable to detect other problems/conditions which would break the phone when patched. As a matter of fact, were there not also
a small number of non-hacked phones which got bricked as well?

Crap!

Crap! I managed to brick my iPhone into a firewall. But I didn't think that Windows CE-ME-NT would dry so quickly all over it! Seriously, the 2000 grade formula drys in XP amount of time. Please, feel free to brick me now with your brick iPhone that I know you think are now just useless bricks now. Mwa ha ha ha ha. Score.

Re:

This isn't flamebait, I'm just saying this scared me away from buying an iPhone

This isn't flamebait either, I'm just confused at your statement. The fact that Apple does not support hardware when the warranty has been intentionally voided scared you away? Or the fact that you are locked-in to AT&T with the iPhone?

Re:Cue the bitching

No you don't the $20 is for software that will turn the iPod touch into a PDA. Including mail client etc, that should have been included from the start.

Since the iPod touch is an iPod, and not a PDA, and since those features were not there to begin with and everybody who bought one knew that if they bothered to to do any research first, isn't $20 a small price to pay to add those features if you want them? Are you forced to spend the $20? Did Apple claim those features were there to begin with and then charge people $20 to get them?

Re:

WRONG. Punishing early adopters would be if Apple started adding these apps to NEW Touches, and NOT offering an upgrade to existing Touch owners at all.

What happens when you buy a computer with Windows XP and then Vista comes out and you want the computer

Re:stop saying "BRICKED!!!"

Until this firmware update was released, the bricked phones were "irrevocably" useless. [emphasis mine]

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Seriously, nothing indicates that these users updated the firmware by any abnormal method. The phone would be bricked if there were no way to get into recovery mode or whatever lets you update the firmware.

Re:Ugh.

Dude, if you were wanting a bargain product, Apple simply isn't making anything for you.

If you want a really nice product, particularly aesthetically nice, then Apple makes all kinds of shit you might like. But you have to give them MONEY for it.

That software was not advertised as included in the ipod touch. So you didn't get screwed. If you want this version of the software, pay 20$. Of course, a lot of people get it through a different avenue.

If you want a cheap PDA that has a lot of this functionality, you can get one pretty cheap. If $20 is a big deal for you.

Apple is going to always do this. They've found a niche that is profitable, has decent clientele, is fun to manage. I think Apple isn't going to change. They will charge you more for everything, but make good stuff.

Re:

Apple's continued stance that they know what's best for their customers and that their products are 'perfect' as-is prevents what could be revolutionary products from ever reaching that potential.

Um, WTF are you talking about?

That they disavow any damage a firmware update will do to a modified piece of hardware? If that is the case, I would submit that 99.9% of companies are in the exact same class.

If you are talking about the fact that an SDK is

Re:

They can innovate to extraordinary levels in many ways, but so long as they keep the snotty outlook on the world at large, they're just another tech company. Apple, you need to stop acting like assholes, and stop treating your customers like every last one is a worthless idiot.

Yeah! How dare they release a $20 upgrade to an MP3 player that turns it into a wifi-connected PDA! What jerks those guys are! The nerve of them! To show how big of jerks they are, they even went further and added those features to the new ones, for f