iPhone 2.01 Hacking Help

December 12, 2008 12:33 PM

I want to give my old iPhone to my girlfriend, but I'd like to get rid of my information first and turn it into a perfectly usable iPod Touch.

She's in another nation and can't use it as a phone. But she would love to use it as a Ipod Touch. So how do I wipe the iPhone of all information while retaining it's usefulness on wifi? I just read here that if I hit the "reset" button, it will reset the phone to the factory condition. I want it to be usable as an iPod Touch, but without my info on there. Plus I'd like to hack it but I don't know how anymore. It's got the iPhone 2.01 software on it and currently I don't know if I should update it to the 2.2 software or not?

posted by aburd to computers & internet (4 comments total)

Don't upgrade to 2.2 quite yet.

If you want to jailbreak it, check out the iPhone Dev-Team Blog for instructions on how to do so. I just have an iPod Touch, but chances are that it'll work just fine without a simcard.
posted by dunkadunc at 12:48 PM on December 12, 2008

So how do I wipe the iPhone of all information while retaining it's usefulness on wifi?

Specifically you want Settings->General->Reset->Erase All Content And Settings

(the reset category as at the far bottom of the General screen)

I just did this two days ago, in order to give my old iphone as an ipod touch to a friend of mine for Xmas. All of the Wifi stuff works fine. I did end up putting it in airplane mode and turning the wifi back on, just to make sure that it isn't searching around for a cell network.

Thus far it is a perfectly servicable iPod Touch.

Dunno about hacking it, though.
posted by tkolar at 1:01 PM on December 12, 2008

A lot of used non-3G iPhones are going for over $300 on eBay. (I'm assuming yours is non-3G). Once you've wiped yours, you could sell it and buy a brand new iPod Touch, and come out ahead by a hundred bucks or so.
posted by Dec One at 1:38 PM on December 12, 2008 [3 favorites has favorites]

The earlier advice not to upgrade to 2.2, as the site that is linked above says, is because the 2.2 firmware update upgrades your baseband which makes it pretty difficult to "unlock" your phone in the future to allow it to work with different SIM cards and therefore different cellular providers...however, because it's not going to be used as such, you can go ahead and update to 2.2....

Hacking, or "jailbreaking", is actually really simple....all you need is to download Quickpwn 2.2.....it's a simple software program that allows you to jailbreak your phone and add some really cool features (video recorders, different themes, 5-icon dock, much more)...you can download the program here...

http://www.zshare.net/download/51721230fe4b9459/
or
http://www.badongo.com/file/12202173

Just download and the instructions are quite easy to follow...you have the option to install both Cydia and Installer...Cydia is much more popular currently, and I've had a few problems with Installer that required me to SSH into my phone...however, feel free to install both or just Cydia....you can also choose to replace the boot logo...which probably isn't the best idea if your phone ever bricks up and won't start and you take it into the store...they'll see a pineapple and not the regular apple and your warranty will be voided as jailbreak does void the warranty, even though if you reset the phone back to factory settings they'll never know it was done....let me know if you need any more information as I've had quite a bit of experience with jailbreaking....there are some pretty cool options with jailbreaking...check out what my phone looks like...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/8986689@N05/3104381998/

thanks!
posted by Hogermite at 11:17 PM on December 12, 2008