iPhone over-the-air (OTA) update question
 

Hello Hax0rs,

I have had my iPhone 3GS since day 0, and as such have continually updated/formatted and jailbroken it to my hearts content.

With the introduction of OTA updates I was simply wondering:

Can I update my 5.0.1 3gs to 5.1 (I dont need custom BB as its factory unlocked) without loosing my jailbroken apps "collection". Appsync 3x/4x/5x etc.. has never worked for me so that isn't an option right now.

Fair enough if cydia vanishes because with the new version of redsn0w I can re-jailbreak AND maintain unteathered'ness (my 3GS is old boot rom ;) )

I just want to know if OTA is better than using the ABORTION of an app that is iTunes, and just to get confirmation that it will just update my phone and not format it.

It kind of stands to reason that it wont format it, can you imagine going into work, updating OTA and having no contacts on your phone.... :mad:

Also, while I have your attention, does anyone know if its even worth the upgrade considering its a 3GS?? I noticed when updating from 4.3.3 to 5.0.1 a HUGE wedge of ram is eaten even just booting the damned thing up.

4.3.3 = 140mb ram avg idle
5.0.1 = 98mb avg idle

*to be fair it could be a memory leak via the jailbreak, but still I think the OS upgrades are clogging the poor old bugger up.

Any thoughts much appreciated :)

As far as i am aware using the OTA update method is not advised with jailbroken phones, it was something i was reading when i jailbroke my 4S.

I am like you ever since i have had my first idevice i have always jailbroken them. The best thing i do to retain all my installs from cydia and the likes is to install "Openbackup"

This way you can backup all your installs and everything and it saves it on the device itself just have to SSH into it and retrieve the files for safety.

There located at "/var/mobile/Library/Preferences/OpenbackupFiles"

With that being said though when you backup your device with iTunes or with iCloud it all gets saves anyways.


I noticed what you mean about the missing ram even with a 4S you can see the difference straight away but i think it mainly has something to do with what is running through the Mobile Substrate as this takes a chunk out of the ram as well.
Then your pretty much good to go for updating.

Unfortunately though when you do updte you will always lose the apps installed especially if you use Installous or something similar with all the apps having the metadata modified.

Here is a little information in regards to updating OTA.

"A member of the iPhone Dev-Team known as MuscleNerd sent out a tweet saying:

The 5.0b4 OTA update won't work on JB devices due to an explicit check of /Applications..almost like a present from Apple

So OTA updates just don’t work on jailbroken devices. When attempted, the update fails every time. While this may initially be a disappointment, MuscleNerd said it was a “present” from Apple because, as I said before, an OTA update would un-jailbreak a device. If I had to guess, I’d say that the slew of hackers out there would prefer not have the ability to preform OTA updates over having them work, but un-jailbreaking their devices in the process.

What’s more, jailbreakers can still update to beta 4, they just have to do it the old fashioned way and then use the updated redsn0w to re-apply the jailbreak."

I believe that this is the same for all firmwares not just the betas.

Hopefully this info will help a little :D

If you have anymore questions i will try and help as much as i can :D

Excellent explanation, thank you @Gazra

In a way its great that OTA update wont work (I didn't know that) because I jailbroke my Girlfriend's recently and I told her not to update no matter what, but she's the sort of person who forgets and hits update to everything... atleast now it should be fool proof that she cant update and lose the jailbreak :)

Before you told me this my main "fear" was that OTA update would remove my contacts and apps and that due to the crappy memory leaks/substrate the phone would black out mid update and die, forcing me to use cruddy itunes.

I'm still unsure weather to update or not, I was testing my iphone battery yesterday and found that: without wifi on it only lasted 16hrs UNTOUCHED ( I didnt run any apps, nothing was touched after a full reboot, I left it on the side, locked, and only checked it once and hour/2hrs to not the battery % remaining). If 5.1 update fixes the memory issues and the battery bug that has been speculated since 5.0 I will definitely upgrade, but for now I guess if it ain't broke don't fix it?

Either way thank you for the info!

EDIT: 200th post :P

@DEFAULTDNB Your more than welcome i tend to keep up to date with jailbreaks for idevices as it is something that is interesting.

I noticed you said that you had problems with Appsync so i took the liberty to download the full Hackulous repo for you along with Opebackup so that you can install them if you wish.

I have attached a link with the deb files archived so that you can use them if you wish.

http://www.filefactory.com/file/3tmw...ackup_debs_rar

If you would like anything else i would be more than happy to help in any way i can with these things :)

Here is a list of what is in the archive.

appsync32-1.0.2
appsync40plus-1.1-6
appsync50plus-2.2
apt7_0.7.25.3-6_iphoneos-arm
com.zokunei.openbackup_2.0.1_iphoneos-arm
coreutils_8.12-12_iphoneos-arm
coreutils-bin_8.12-7_iphoneos-arm
crackulous-1.0.0.5
hresources-1.3.1
installous-4.4.2
preferenceloader_2.0.4-1_iphoneos-arm
security
sed_4.1.5-7_iphoneos-arm
sourcegui-1.2
translations-1.0-1
unzip_5.52-5_iphoneos-arm
zip_2.32-5_iphoneos-arm

Openbackup dependencies are also included so that you don't have to worry about them if you don't already have them installed.

Congrats on 200 posts as well bud :D

You rock :)

I'll download this and look over it in the next few days.

Thanks a lot @Gazra ! Legend!

your welcome mate :D

I've got an old Bootrom 3GS too, untethered JB on IOS5.1 idles at ~140mb when nothing is open. (I do have some Cydia packages installed but not many).

Had an original iPhone before my 3GS :)


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Great to know, did you use redsn0w to JB? sounds promising that I might claim some memory back if i do update.. I'm 99% sure its a memory leak that's draining my phone.

Yup Redsn0w, I had battery issues on 5.0 and 5.0.1 but seemingly no battery issues on 5.1 .


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Well:

I finally got time to update, thought I would throw caution to the wind and format the phone at the same time.

Updated to 5.1 > redsn0w > untether > restored contacts > re-installed SBS settings to check ram.

My 3GS now idles at 160-162mb after closing all apps and hitting "free memory" :D

Epic win!

Now I just need to see if my battery issue is fixed, but either way this is great news.

EDIT: is there a perma-fix yet for the white icons bug? (4-5 white icons including "ios diagnostic" etc come up as white icons on the SB after installing something from cydia or installous)

Thanks to @Gazra and @ps3hacker12 for the moral support and incredibly useful info!