How to unbrick iPhone 3.0 beta
// April 4th, 2009 // General ramblings, development
I was recently faced with a bit of a problem, I had upgraded my iPhone to the new 3.0 beta, but I forgot to create a provisioning profile for the device from within my newly activated Developer Portal before the upgrade, this resulted in what pretty much resembled a brick.
The iPhone 3.0 upgrade also includes a baseband update which is not compatible with previous versions of the iPhone firmware, and as the download site warns, there is no turning back.
Apple pre-install advisery
So back to the brick, if I connected my now bricked iPhone to iTunes it displayed a message saying I needed to be a developer and add my device to my development device list. This however was not as straight forward as they said, because Xcode didn’t recognise the phone so there was no way to get the phones UDID which is required to add the phone to my developer portal. After digging around the file system for a while I stumbled upon a file in ~/Library/Lockdown which had a 40 character file name followed by .plist (Property List File), the filename looked like a SHA1 hash, and knowing the device UDID was 40 characters decided to type that into the developer portal and kick it in the guts, sure enough it worked.
Developer provisioning assistant
I downloaded the provisioning profile and dragged it onto the iTunes icon in my dock, reconnected my phone and it activated without a problem.
Update:
As Marc mentioned in the comments, you can also get the UDID from the USBProber that comes with the Apple dev tools.
26 Responses to “How to unbrick iPhone 3.0 beta”
- Warwick said: Hi All Thanks heaps for this! Worked first go....
- matt said: Hi, How do I get iTunes to allow custom carrier...
- Ivan Vanderbyl said: @Kyle I wouldn't be worried. The worst the carrier...
- Nic said: Three cheers! Two notes for others: In Step 3, ...
- Kyle Woolf said: This is great! I'm doing it when I get home, but i...
- Jay said: Thanks Ivan, the trick with the command + I worked...
Smart arse
well done 
cya on tues? or wed? b4 blues?
Yeah if all goes to plan and the pacific highway isn’t flooded I’ll be up in your neck of the woods Tuesday lunch time.
I am facing this problem I was on 3.0 and I am bricked, I don’t know what to do.
Charles you’ll need an iPhone developer account (presumedly you have one if you legally downloaded iPhone 3.0)
Login to the dev portal at developer.apple.com and create a provisioning profile, once you have this, load it into itunes, reconnect phone and it should activate.
If you did not legally download the beta, you can still upgrade, so you have to wait until the next beta or the final RC. I was bricked on beta 1, and today updated to beta 3, it did go to the plug into iTunes message with a pink-purple background, but after that it worked fine. To stop the developer notice when syncing, disconnect from the Internet.
I am bricked as well. also a iphone developer. I cant figure it out…ive been working on it for 3 days. I cant make it recover or any thing it all ends up in the recovery mode
load what in to itunes? I think I have tried just about every thing
Hi Matthew, I’m going to revise this article soon to be a bit more precise, might even do a screen cast, stay tuned.
Have you tried firstly putting your phone into recovery mode (pink screen or death) then restoring to 3.0, once its done that drag your provisioning profile onto the iTunes icon.
my phone is stuck on the screen that shows the usb going towards the itunes logo if thats what you meen but draging to the icon isnt something I tried. I will look in to it. they should make it easyer
I tryed that and it doesnt seem to make a difference its still stuck in recovery mode
When your phone is in recovery mode (usb icon) restore it (dont reload your content though), it should display usual welcome page but only allow emergency calls, and it won’t be activated, thats when you load the provisioning profile into itunes and it will activate.
this just happened to me today and I found your post…
there is another easier way to get the UUID from a bricked iPhone.
with the iPhone connected you can look in your system profiler’s USB tree for the iPhone’s serial number which is really the UUID, as described here:
http://iphonedevelopment.blogspot.com/2009/01/uuid-hint.html
THis is killing me, I was bricked when i tried to go from Beta 3 to beta 5, I went into recovery mode and the best i have been able to do is reload beta 3 ( which actually completes then then itunes says expired version) and at least get xcode / itunes to see the device again but everytime i try and restore beta 5..BRICKED! any thoughts
thanks
David
David, firstly have you got an iPhone dev account with Apple? or did you download the beta from a torrent?
If you do have a dev account, make sure you have a provisioning profile for your device (see above), if not, find someone who does have a dev account and get them to create you a provisioning profile.
Secondly, try removing (Keep a copy somewhere) the Backup folder from ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/
Put the device into recovery mode, or DFU mode (Google it), try the latter if the former fails. Restore to beta 5. Load prov profile into itunes, device should now activate.
Good luck.
i have a dev account, created a prov profile and loaded into xcode. I cant get past “updating Baseband when trying to load beta 5 in xcode, then i get Baseband error. Not sure how to get from recovery mode to DFU, i am on pink plug into itubes screen , not sure how to load my prov profile into itunes.
Thanks for the suggestions. I figured it out. If anyone has this issue it is simple to fix, Beta 5 is the problem. I restored to beta 3 which is will say is expired, then i found a hidden link on iphone dev forums to Beta 4 and restored to Beta 4, presto chango everything is back to normal.
One thing I missed, and this is the issue with beta 5 – You need the pre-release version of iTunes 8.2 installed. I don’t have my phone restored yet, but this seems to be key.
David D’Alessio. I am in the same position you were in before you figured out the problem. So, two questions:
- Are you now running beta 4 or 5?
- Where is the link for beta 4
Thanks
Also you may have to put it in DFU mode (Google that) to put the new firmware on if you are stuch on the purple screen!
DFU mode is what fixed my iPhone. I was able to then restore from a previous backup using iTunes (not Xcode). No more pink screen. No more bricked phone. Of course, now I’m going to try to install OS 3.0 & SDK 3.0 beta 5 again which is how I bricked the phone in the first place
I get the image of the USB lead pointing to the iTunes logo. I need a provisional account so i would really appreciate if someone could make me one. I am desperate for my phone to work.
Very clever! Thanks very much.
Just an update, because my beta 4 expired and i was left with the same issue with beta 5 not working. The fix is simple, restore to beta 4 once you get the expired notice, update to beta 5 (option update) for whatever reason you CAN NOT restore to Beta 5 you must Update.
@David remember you need to have iTunes 8.2 beta installed in order to use iPhone 3.0 beta 5
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Hi, very nice post. I have been wonder’n bout this issue,so thanks for posting