Home » Jailbreak » The JBnator Diaries – Upgrading your jailbroken phone WITHOUT losing app information and savegames!

The JBnator Diaries – Upgrading your jailbroken phone WITHOUT losing app information and savegames!

Hey you, happy jailbreakers! Your favourite iPhone blogger ChiffaN here! I have decided that there is regrettable lack of comprehensive information on iPhone Jailbreaking. Well, not really. There is actually loads of such info on the web. But there are a number of issues, still left untouched by the general community, some of which were even deemed impossible! And here’s where I come in. In our new section, The JBnator Diaries, I will tackle such and try to put them in layman’s terms! Yeah, so even YOU can understand!

I will not bore you with what jailbreaking is. If you’re reading this, you likely already know about it. If not – google it, you’ll get more than enough results to satisfy your curiosity. And I will not describe the simple out of the box jailbreaking procedure, at least not separately. If you’re interested in that – you can check one of my recent posts on blackra1n, which has that. Rather, I will tackle one issue, any jailbreaker faces at the dreaded time when Apple releases a new OS version – upgrading without losing all the precious data on the phone. Yes, it CAN be done!

Ok, folks, you’re probably asking yourself: “Why can’t we simply use the stock backup/restore feature of iTunes?” Well, strictly speaking, you can. But I would seriously advise against it for the following reason – apps, installed through Jailbreaking go quite deep into the OS files, and not all of them are backuped using the stock iTunes option. This can lead to rather unexpected crashes after the upgrade and tracking them is hellishly difficult. A lot of such problems were the widely hyped about problems with battery life after the upgrade to 3.0 and beyond, as well as a lot of the connectivity issues. My way is a bit more complex, but gives you a stable iPhone without any bugs carried over from the older OS versions.

Our toolbox for today:

• iPhone 2G/3G/3GS or iPod Touch 1G/2G/3G already jailbroken
• blackra1n – download the latest version at Geohot’s site
• Windows or Mac OS personal computer with the latest version of iTunes
• iPhone Folders – download latest version at the author’s site
• Cydia apps
  • AppBackup
  • afc2add
• The original Apple OS for your specific device – you can download it using iTunes or from the links below for version 3.1.2:
  • iPhone 3GS
  • iPhone 3G
  • iPhone 2G

Ok, a couple of warnings prior to starting:

• iPod Touch 3G and iPhone 3GS with the latest bootrom only support a tethered jailbreak at this point, meaning each time at reboot you’ll have to have them connected to the PC and press the “make it ra1n” button on blackra1n. To find out whether you have to do it the hard way on the 3GS check the serial number:
  • If the 4 and 5 digits make up > 41 (i.e. xxx42, xxx43, xxx44, xxx45, etc.) – you have the updated bootrom
  • If the 4 and 5 digits make up <= 41 (i.e. xxx41, xxx40, xxx39, xxx38, etc.) – you have the older version and are in luck
  • You WILL lose all of your settings of the Cydia apps

Phew… So, armed and ready, chaaaarge!

Backup phase:

1. Run iTunes, transfer purchases, sync and do a complete backup of the iDevice just in case.
2. Navigate to \Documents and Settings\%username\Application Data\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup and sort by details to find the last updated folder
3. Archive it and store somewhere safe!
4. Run AppBackup on the phone and save the data of all apps and games you want to. You can also press “All” on the bottom of the app, but seriously, I usually have lots of apps I simply don’t care about and it will take a whole lot of time to do all of them.
   
5. Now open iPhone Folders and navigate to \var\mobile\Library\AppBackup and copy everything to your PC
6. Now it’s time to get the other stuff of the device as well (you may skip through some if you want to restore them after by syncing with iTunes)
   1. Contacts – navigate to \var\mobile\Library\AddressBook and copy everything to your PC
   2. SMS/MMS – navigate to \var\mobile\Library\SMS and copy everything to your PC
   3. Mail – navigate to \var\mobile\Library\Mail and copy everything to your PC
   4. Notes – navigate to \var\mobile\Library\Notes and copy everything to your PC
   5. Now take a piece of paper, go into Cydia, open the Manage tab, go into Packages and write down all of your installed apps. You can also do a backup of the list using AptBackup, but since some of the apps differ in name from version to version, I would advise against any automatic restoration of them. Believe, I had to do a complete rejailbreak once because of this.

Finally, we’re all set.

Jailbreak and (if necessary) unlock phase

1. Run iTunes, hold shift and click restore and browse to the OS file.This will take quite some time, so you can safely go and make yourself a spot of tea. After the process is over, you have a virgin iDevice running the latest OS version (3.1.2 in our case)
2. [Officially unlocked or original SIM card available iPhone only] Connect to iTunes and activate your iPhone
3. Run blackra1n (it will “hacktivate” the iPhone if necessary)
   
4. Press “make it ra1n”
   
5. The iDevice will go into recovery mode
   
6. Behold Geohot’s lovely visage
   
7. After the iDevice reboots, you’ll see a blackra1n icon on the Springboard
   
8. Set up a wireless (Wi-Fi) connection. If you run into issues, try resetting network parameters (Settings-General-Reset-Reset Network Settings) – that should fix the issue
9. Run blackra1n on the iDevice and choose what you love most (Cydia or Rock) and Sn0w (if necessary)
   

Congratulations, now you have a jailbroken iDevice, capable of working with any operator!

Restore phase:

1. Run Cydia, upgrade essentials, reboot
2. Run Cydia, install afc2add (it is required for all file managers), reboot
3. Run Cydia, queue all of your apps (that you wrote down), AppBackup and press confirm.
4. Now it’s time to put back all of the data you pulled from the phone in steps 5 and 6 of the Backup phase.
5. Connect to iTunes and set up the phone as new one.
6. Now check all of the apps that you had installed and run sync. Now you can really go drink some tea. My first sync took about 40 mins (provided I DID have more than 2 GB worth of apps)
7. Run AppBackup and restore all of your saved app and game data

Hooray, hooray, you’re now the proud owner of a freshly jailbroken and upgraded “Jesus” phone, running the latest OS.

By the way, you may have problems with Push and Youtube if you “hacktivated” your phone. I will cover the ways to fix it in an upcoming article.

That’s it for the the first installment of The JBnator Diaries. Hope you enjoyed it and feel free to comment with requests on future topics.