How to find bootrom version of iphone 3GS (new bootrom or old bootrom)

When the hackers released the pwnage(v4.0/4.0.1) jailbreak tool for iOS4, it is mentioned that the 3GS phones with the latest bootrom (iBoot-359.3.2) cannot be jailbroken. Only the old bootroom (iBoot-359.3) can be unlocked for now. So, now the big question is how to find which bootrom does your 3GS phone have.

The iphone week number will help as a thumb rule to find if your 3GS iphone is having old or new bootrom. The 4th and 5th digits of the serial number will tell the week number of the phone. If your iphone week number is <40, then you will definitely have old bootrom. If the week number is >45 then you will definitely have new bootrom. In between, we cannot say for sure.

The sure shot method to determine the bootrom is to use some tool like 'usbview' after putting the iphone in DFU mode (Connect your iPhone to iTunes, turn off, click power+home button for 10 seconds, leave POWER button after 10 seconds, holding HOME button). After putting the phone in DFU you can follow one of the following methods.

method-1
- put the phone in DFU mode
- run the application usbview
- check "config descriptors" and refresh
- in the left panel, click Apple USB device
- in the right panel, find an entry which reads iBoot 359.x.x

method-2
- put the phone in DFU mode
- In windows, got to Start > Control Panel > System > Hardware > Device Manager
- Find "Universal Serial Bus (USB) Controller" and go to Apple Mobile Device USB Driver.
- Right click and choose properties and go to details
- Select device instance path
- The end of the info string will tell the bootrom version

method-3
See this link to find one more method using forecast(f0recast) tool. This tool will give the final summary if your 3GS phone can be jailbreakable, unlockable. Note that this tool is not yet updated to give suggestions for iOS4. It can accurately tell if your 3GS phone is jailbreakable, unlockable only till 3.1.3 firmware.

Hackers release tools to unlock iphone os 4 (iOS4)

Shortly after the iphone 4 is officially launched with the latest firmware iOS4, hackers released the tools to jailbreak & unlock the latest firmware on the 3G & 3GS phones. Though the hackers found the exploits during the beta of iOS4 & 3.1.3 firmware they did not disclose is because apple would close them in the main release. Note that 3G & 3GS iphones are supported on iOS4 but not 2G iphones. They updated the following tools:
pwnage tool - to jailbreak the new iOS4 firmware (redsnow should follow)
ultrasn0w tool - to unlock the baseband

The good news is that the updated ultrasnow tool (v0.93) can unlock all the basebands till the latest one (5.13.04). The new firmware updates that baseband (responsible for gsm communication) to the latest one but the latest ultrasnow tool can unlock it so that the phone can be used on other networks. So, even if you accidentally updated your iphone firmware to 3.1.3 version (which also updates the baseband to 5.12.01) which rendered the phone not usable on other networks this latest tools will be your savior. The users with jailbroken phones on 3.1.3 firmware can also use ultrasnow without upgrading to iOS4.

The bad news is that the pwnage tool cannot *yet* jailbreak the 3GS iphones with the new bootroms (iBoot-359.3.2). The iphone week number will help as a thumb rule to find if your 3GS iphone is having old or new bootrom. The 4th and 5th digits of the serial number will tell the week number of the phone. If your iphone week number is <40, then you will definitely have old bootrom. If the week number is >45 then you will definitely have new bootrom. In between, we cannot say for sure. The sure shot method to determine the bootrom is to use some tool like 'usbview' and put the iphone in DFU mode.

Tutorials:
jailbreaking 3G(mac, windows), 3GS oldbootrom(mac, windows)
unlock of 3G and 3GS

update(5-July): If you have the 3.1.2 SHSH blobs stored (not 3.1.3 shsh blobs), there is a way you can jailbreak the 3GS phone with new firmware. See this tutorial.This tutorial is not yet for the faint hearted. These steps were released for the advanced users as the tool development will take some time.

iphone OS 4 vs android 2.2

The following is a nice link comparing the two latest OS. The highlights of the latest iphone 4 are the following.

• Front facing camera for video conferencing
• A4 CPU (used in the ipads)
• Multitasking capability
• Higher resolution display
• 5 megapixel camera (with flash) which can record HD video
• Second microphone for noise cancellation
• Thinnest smartphone with a glass body
• Folders to group applications

Combining two or more boradband internet connections

The other day my cousin asked me how to combine two internet connections and use both of them at the same time. As per my old knowledge, even if two ethernet cards are available on the PC, an application cannot directly use both the IPs, do load balancing, and pump up the overall speed. This is because a TCP cannot cannot be shared over two different IPs. Once a TCP connection is established, lets us say by a browser, it cannot switch to the other one on the same PC.

Having said to my cousin that this is not possible by default I explored and found some interesting stuff which proves me wrong (I am happy that I am wrong). I guess the technical word for the above is "Link Aggregation". This is also called LAN or NIC Teaming, multi-link trunking etc. Having said this, let me also say that you cannot achieve this with just having two ethernet cards and two internet connections. The LAN cards should be capable of providing this support and the OS should have corresponding drivers. I am not sure what kind of ethernet cards are capable of doing it. But read on...

There are ready made products to uncomplicate things for you, but they are a bit pricey as of now. They are called dual-wan routers. If I understand correctly, they do NAT translation internally and achieve load balancing and high-availability (failover support).

Links to related discussions: link1, link2, link3