Friday, January 29, 2010

iPhone: DFU and Recovery Mode

I got confused between DFU and recovery mode on the iPhone while trying to restore a custom 3.1.2 firmware.

So here's the breakdown:

Recovery mode:
To put your iPhone into recovery mode, first disconnect your iPhone from USB cable and power off your iPhone. Then hold the Home button and connect USB cable again. Keep holding the Home button until you see a dock cable pointing to the iTunes icon (or yellow triangle for older version of iPhone or Steve Job logo for pwned iPhone). Now you are in recovery mode.
(found here)

DFU mode:
Connect the phone to the USB cable and turn it off. Then hold the Home and Power buttons for 10 seconds. Then let go of the Power button but keep the Home button pressed for another 10 seconds. If done right, iTunes should start automatically and tell you that the phone is in DFU mode and that it needs to restore.
(found here)

In order to restore the custom 3.1.2 firmware I had created using Pwnage Tool, I had to use Recovery mode. In principle, DFU mode should have worked as well, but I always got an error from iTunes when trying that. Recovery mode worked, though.

Flight security

I few from the US to Europe and back in the past 2 weeks and here's what changed, security-check-wise:

- On the flight out of the US, nothing changed. Everything is at is has been in the past years (take your shoes off and put them through the X-ray machine, along with your coat and carry-on).

- On the flight into the US, things have changed. They now manually search through your carry-on bag and look at every single thing in there. They also search through every single pocket of your coat/jacket. If one has a laptop or other electronics, they will ask to come to a room in the back where they run a check for explosives. They do this procedure for every single person.
Interestingly, they don't ask everybody to take their shoes off and put them through the X-ray. They seemed to only ask that randomly.
I was lucky that there weren't many people in line when I came there, but I can imagine that even an average amount of people will incur an annoyingly-long waiting-time.

Friday, January 8, 2010