Why do the guys behind jailbreaking iPhones need to make their information so difficult to understand? More people would jail break if they knew how easy it was to do.

For the record, a jail broken iPhone (or iPod Touch) is one that can install software from sources other than iTunes. This has many advantages that I will not go into now.

I jail broke my iPhone initially with firmware 3.0.1 when I was convinced to do so after seeing a mate at work do it so easily and what it enabled him to do on the iPhone, I was still dubious about it but after I had done it, I never looked back.

Apple has released several updates to their firmware since then and they keep trying to stop people from jail breaking, which means that there is a lot of conflicting information on the net about what can and cannot be jail broken. For that reason, I left my iPhone on version 3.0.1. That was until today. Today I spoke to a guy at work (new work, new guy) about jail breaking as I didn’t want to lose all my stuff if I upgraded my firmware. He told me about ‘aptbackup’ which backs up all the info on your jail broken apps installed through Cydia to a directory that is backed up by iTunes so you can easily restore your app’s once you re jail break.

My concerns were;

1. Loss of music
2. Loss of pics
3. Loss of apps
4. Loss of jail broken apps

Here is the no bullshit way to upgrade to 3.1.2 and jail break;

1. Install aptbackup from Cydia
2. Open aptbackup and backup the iPhone (only takes a second)
3. Backup your phone using iTunes (right click your iPhone on the left and select ‘backup’)
4. Copy all your pictures over (I sync’ed them using iPhoto, but you can copy them over using windows explorer too)
5. Open iTunes and upgrade to 3.1.2 (If a later version is available then do not proceeed!! Odds are, Apple has closed the hole in any later version, I cannot guarantee that these instructions will work on a later version!!!)
6. Download blackra1n and run it – it will jail break your phone in about 15 seconds.
7. Open the blackra1n app on the iPhone and choose to install Cydia
8. Once installed, run any updates available
9. Install aptbackup
10. Open aptbackup and hit ‘Restore’ – this might take a few mins depending on how many apps you had

All done!

As a side note, I had ‘categories’ installed on my iPhone and this caused a lot of problems when aptbackup restored it. My app’s were there but unusable, after hours and hours of attempted recovery, I had to delete the apps through ssh and then re-install them. My recommendation is to remove categories before using aptbackup and then install it afterwards.

Hopefully this helps, please ask any q’s you might have.

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