iPhone2G upgraded to 2.1: A Personal Experience

Successfully upgraded Belle from 1.1.4 to the latest firmware 2.1 about 2 weeks back. Was reluctant at first due to the fear of losing all my data on the phone and also the trouble to sync everything back again. Not to mention also the numerous negative remarks about the sluggishness, the extremely long backup/sync time with iTunes and such on the 2.0.1 and 2.0.2. But in the end, curiosity killed the cat and I took the plunge hahaha Man...the AppStore did contribute to the 'lust' to upgrade as well :-p Well...it seems that 2.1 did solve most, if not all, of the problems mentioned. So what is the verdict? Let's do it step by step shall we? :-)

Did the whole thing using the latest Quickpwn 2.1 which works on Windows and it can be downloaded here. This version of the software enables you to pwn your iPhone to any of the 2.x firmwares. But who wants to get 2.0.1 or 2.0.2 now that 2.1 is out?? Well....unless you have tried 2.1 and it gave you a really hard time getting things done :-) Yeah...some users reported that 2.0.1 works better on their phones than 2.1. But that depends on inviduals :-) But I've used Quickpwn to upgrade to 2.1 on 3 iPhones so far and *touch wood*... everything's working well on all 3 phones :-)

Quickpwn 2.1 offers the following 'services' :-p
- jailbreaks iPhone2G, iPhone3G and your iPod Touch (but not so sure about iPod Touch Gen2 though)
- unlocks your iPhone2G...sorry for iPhone3G, you have to get the officially unlocked ones as so far there's nothing available to unlock those yet :-(

So what do you need? Well, you actually do not need to worry too much as this Guide here will provide you with the step-by-step instructions of what to do. Very handy indeed... :-) I didn't follow any instructions/guides though hahaha simply because the Quickpwn GUI is so intuitive and so well done that you'll sort of know what to do at each step :-) Kudos to the iPhone Dev Team for their great work!! All in all, what you need to do can be easily summarized into these few steps

a) Backup your iPhone using iTunes...just a sync will do :-) But if you are real Kiasu, just do a backup using TimeCapsule on your phone if you already have it installed and then extract the backup files out using iFunBox or SSH-style...whichever what suits you :-) TimeCapsule backup files are located at \var\mobile\Library\TimeCapsule

b) Download the Firmware 2.1 IPSW file from the link to the Guide above and hit Shift-Restore in iTunes to upgrade your phone to 2.1. While waiting for the whole process to finish (about 15-20 mins or so), you can download the 2 Bootloader files, again from the Guide page provided. You'll need them when you use Quickpwn later.

c) Once upgraded to 2.1, run Quickpwn and followthe instructions. For iPhone2G owners, you have to tick"Unlock" to unlock your phone to be used with the telco of your choice and also you would want to tick "Cydia" and "Installer" too so that you can install 3rd-party apps.

d) Once done with Quickpwn, iTunes would prompt you to backup from a previous sync or setup the phone as a new device. For me, I backup-ed mine from the last sync before upgrade since I would like to keep my contacts and SMS and stuff... you can choose to setup as new device should you wish to do so.

And yippee...your phone has been unlocked, jailbroken, restored to previous settings and is ready to go!! It's that simple!! Now I have my scientific calculator when I turn Belle to landscape mode and being an engineer and also a part-time mathematician (:-p), this is extremely useful for me :-) But of course, the scientific calculator alone is not enough to like about 2.1. There's the AppStore..YES!!!...and the whole lot of goodies that come bundled with it. Head on to here to see what's new with 2.1.

hehehe...the pride of an engineer :-p

The final verdict: Well, although 2.1 offers much improvements and bug fixes compared to the previous 2.x firmwares, I still find it to be a tad bit slow compared to 1.1.4....although its negligible. Otherwise, I find that 2.1 is a great firmware altogether, but there's still no copy-and-paste function available yet... :-(


Pros
Scientific calculator...hahaha sorry I have to mention this one :-p
Cydia...it's even better than Installer on 1.1.4...trust me :-)
AppStore!!!!!
Faster sync/backup speed compared to 2.0.1 and 2.0.2. It seems that apps installation is faster too.
Repeat alerts for unread SMS.

Cons
No copy-and-paste funtionality
Feels a bit (just a little bit) slow compared to 1.1.4
Playing games on it can seriously drain your battery like mad :-p



Cheers