Apples and Oranges

So good news, everybody! Apple's lovely, lovely iPhone is available on Orange now. My carrier is officially supported! I shall be upgrading to a shiny new 3GS in about 4 weeks, which is the earliest my contract allows.

In the meantime, I'm still using the iPhone 2G, suitably unlocked to accept my Orange SIM. Unfortunately, it all nearly went terribly wrong. I did a routine reboot yesterday and when it came back on, it was deactivated. This means that it was prompting me to plug it into iTunes to allow Apple to reactivate. Bugger.

So, what the hell, I tried it. Sure enough "Your SIM is not supported." Arse. It's been working fine for 6 months on official firmware, but no longer it seems. As soon as I put an official Apple firmware on there, it immediately locks me out. Fortunately I am in the habit of backing up regularly so all (well, most) of my data is safe. I just need a way to activate the thing.

A quick Google indicates that redsn0w is the way to go. Sure enough, I found instructions on jailbreaking iPhone OS 3.1.2. Marvellous. Oh, no, not marvellous. It basically says "here is how to do it with 3.0. It might work with 3.1.2. Best of luck!"

So after jailbreaking with 3.0 and upgrading to 3.1.2 with iTunes, I was less than impressed. As soon as I did the upgrade, I was locked out again. Worse,  I couldn't just stick with 3.0 because my backups require 3.1.2.

So back to tried and tested methods. I got PwnageTool 3.1.4 which reportedly activates 3.1.2. It worked like a charm. Took a little while to generate the firmware, but now I have it I can install it as required. The backups all restore perfectly,  and I am a happy chappy.

Still, can't wait to not have to do this any more ...