So I set went on a trip and thought I would try some tethering with my 3g iPhone. First, I must say the tethering works great. I was able to download and install iTunes on my pc at about 120KB/sec! I was thrilled. However, most places had WiFi so I did not really need to tether.

The problems started on the last night of my trip. I stayed at a place with no WiFi, but my 3g was at 5 bars. So I started up the tethering apps and got in. After a few hours, I noticed that my iPhone was only at 50% charge. This seemed odd to me because I was plugged into the USB port charging the whole time. I thought that perhaps the USB was not providing enough power, so I moved the charger to the wall and continued my work. Checked up on it around 30 minutes later and it was now at 40% charge. Bottom line: iPhone tethering uses more power than charging circuitry can provide! Even powered, I am able to get about 4 hours at best. Finally, I had to disable the 3g and tether EDGE which allowed me to stay about even. Now, it’s possible some other stuff was going on and I will look into this possibility. However, be warned. Tethering uses a lot of power!

For those that are interested in how the tether was performed, I will produce a guide in our guides section on it shortly.

Ok I already knew it was virus / spyware free, but SoftPedia granted BossPrefs a safe software award.  It’s interesting. They actually have quite a bit of iPhone software on there - all of which can be, and should be installed from Installer / Cydia instead.

Anyways, I’ve been on vacation and also working on BossPrefs. You should see an update in a day or two to prepare the way for hiding apps from both Cydia and Appstore. This will pave the way for Categories!

A big thanks to FileHostia.com for providing me use of its servers for the repositories.

Filehostia is a file hosting and filesharing website. FileHostia Site features allows users to place upload files and link them directly into their website or message board, thus allowing website visitors to experience the full power of FileHostia’s image, movie and file hosting. If you get a chance, check them out.

Much better than rapidshare or something like this.

There appears to be a major bug in Appstore / iTunes which is a service that is constantly running on the iPhone.I have had many issues with just using AppStore with a lot of apps installed. It takes often 10 or more minutes to try to install. It fails over and over and has to keep retrying. If I log the events using “top”, I can see the iTunesStore binary running with most the CPU in the system and a crash report process constantly coming up. Often times, the phone reboots and takes forever to restart. It seems that deleting some apps helps this work better. I will be looking into this more.

This also seems to affect Cydia and probably will affect Installer 4. Sometimes you install something and find no icon. From what I can see, the above issue occurs during this state. When you install something even from Cydia, the iTunesStore app is again using all the CPU, the phone is running slow, there is a spinner next to the carrier icon, and no icon shows up. If this happens to you, try these steps to resolve it:

1) Uninstall the item(s) that are not showing up in Cydia
2) Reboot the phone
3) Reinstall them in Cydia

Repeat until it works.

I updated BossPrefs today and added a 3g toggle since it is frustrating to have to hit so many key presses to enable / disable the 3g. Enjoy.

Is your mail app crashing on 2.0?

This is generally caused after syncing your backup. This has nothing to do with jailbreaking or not. However, the fix for it is simple and is part of a jailbreak. The issue is that after syncing your backup, your mail folder is owned by root and your mail app running as user mobile does not have permissions to access it. You can fix it in SSH. But I also added a button in BossPrefs to solve it.

Step 1:Jailbreak your device
Step 2: Install BossPrefs from Cydia
Step 3: Tap “more”
Step 4: Tap “Fix User Dir Permissions”
Step 5: Sometimes, not always, you will need to load settings and reenter your mail passwords.

Here is a working winpwn 2.0 guide updated to include 2.0.1 firmware. Here is what you need:

1) Winpwn 2.0.0.4 or newer.
2) iTunes 7.7 or newer.
3) Boot images for 3.9 and 4.6.
4)  The proper restore file. Get your 2g restore image or 3g restore image.

Let’s get started.

Step 1: Install winpwn, iTunes, and extract your restore images and bootloaders to your desktop. Note: if you have a previous copy of winpwn installed, uninstall it before installing the new one.

Step 2:  Connect your iPhone to your PC and load up winpwn. You will see this screen:

Step 3: Winpwn will not allow you to do anything without selecting a firmware image. So, click “Browse .ipsw” button and select your firmware image from your desktop. Note: winpwn will determine if you have an iPod, an iPhone 3g, or an iPhone 2g based off the firmware image you select and downloaded. So make sure you got the correct image. 2g and 3g iPhones have different firmwares!

Step 4: Next, we need to build the iPhone software image. Click “IPSW Builder” and you will be presented with some screens. Start on the Applications tab. On this screen you must select “Install Cydia”. If you need youtube patched then select also “YouTube activation fix”. You do not need to select this if you have a contract carrier such as AT&T. As far as installer goes, feel fee to select it if you want. But do not select installer instead of Cydia. Cydia has all the apps. Installer does not and installer is still very beta as of August 9, 2008 and contains virtually no packages to install. If you select installer, also select Cydia.

Step 5: Click the custom images tab. Here you can select custom boot images if you care to. This is optional.

Step 6: Click the custom payload tab. Here you can select some payloads in .tar format. At this time there are a couple built in payloads so there is nothing to do here. If you make your own payloads for packages you can select them here. So we are skipping this screen.

Step 7: Click Advanced tab. This is a critical tab. If you have a contract carrier such as AT&T you do not need to unlock. So you must make sure everything is unchecked here. Again, if you have a contract carrier, select nothing here! If you do not have a contract carrier, you will need to use this to configure activation and unlocking. Check activate phone, Enable Baseband Update, Unlock Baseband, Autodelete Bootneuter.app. Click the two bootloader file buttons and browse for your 3.9 and 4.6 firmware we downloaded at the start of this guide. Your finished screen needs to look something like this:

Note: If you are activating here by checking the “activate iphone” you should also patch youtube on the first applications screen.

Step 8: Partition resizer. Here is the partition resizer screen. With the current version fo Winpwn, move this to 550 mb. The extra packages will fill the root partition before Cydia gets to run and move things about. Do not make it any larger though because Cydia moves your apps around properly to the larger partition so if you resize this larger here you are just losing space.

Step 9: Build the custom IPSW. Click “Build .ipsw” at the bottom of the window. Note: save your file to some place sensible so you can find it. The default location is going to be hard to find. Try your documents or your desktop. Winpwn will crank away and finally you will see the success box:

Step 10: Note: if you are currently pwned, (phone boots with custom logo still) you can skip to step 12 and restore with the image you just made. Doing this step will not hurt but is not required for you.

Back to the main screen, select iPwner. This will ask you to select your custom firmware we just built in step 8. So select that file.

You will get a success message and you are done with winpwn!

Step 11: Get your phone into DFU mode. You cannot use any tools to do this. It must be hardware DFU mode only done by pressing the buttons on your device. Use my guide here for the steps. This works on every device so keep trying if you are having problems.

Step 12: While in DFU mode, load iTunes 7.7, and restore using shift-restore. Load the custom firmware image we made. And after about 10-15 minutes you are done. If you are having problems with iTunes or getting errors consult my restore guide. Note: if your device was already pwned and you are just upgrading, you do not need DFU mode. Normal recovery mode may work fine. You should try either one and if you have problems try the other.

Troubleshooting:

If you are getting errors in iTunes less than 20 you are not in DFU mode. Refer to my DFU guide.

If you are getting 160x errors (1600, 1601, 1602, 1604) you may have used the wrong firmware image for your device.  Make sure you got the correct image for your 2g or 3g phone. They are not the same. For help on iTunes errors refer to my restore guide.

If you are using winpwn version earlier than 2.0.0.3 you may see 160x errors.

If the last tab only lets you select activate, (step 7) you probably loaded the 3g firmware image. iPhone 3g cannot be unlocked at this time. If you have 2g, you loaded the wrong firmware image to start.

If you have no signal on a contract carrier (AT&T for example), you probably activated but did not unlock (checked the activate box on step 7). If you do not have a contract carrier, you need to unlock. Redo the steps again making sure not to make this mistake.

If your mail crashes after you sync your backup, use BossPrefs, more, fix user dir permissions.

If iTunes will not stop asking you if you want to restore your backup, see this.

The first Cydia 2.0 game is out!

Macman is a fantastic Pacman type game but a bit different. It plays very well and makes use of the accelerometer nicely. The controls are not bad. The game is fun! Check it out!

Here is a screenshot: