There may be a post regarding this but I wanted to share the information as this will save many a lot of heartache when looking to jailbreak and UNLOCK the Iphone and wanting to avoid 3.1 at all costs.

If anyone is in the market to buy a new Iphone from Apple or ATT here is a surefire way to make sure you DO NOT get a 3.1 version. Apple is now at a point to where they are pre-installing 3.1 on their phones. After EXTENSIVE research, I actually did this yesterday and it was awesome.

The serial numbers on an Iphone 3g and 3GS are defined as follows.

The 1st 2 number are the location that the phone was built
the 3rd number is the year it was built
the 4th and 5th number is the week of the year

Soooooo, here is the key. The 3.1 was released on Sept 9th. That is the 37th week of 2009. Bobbi Church and I went into an ATT store, told them specifically what we wanted which was a phone that had the following first 5 numbers. XX936 ----(or any thing LOWER that 37). He came out, it was XX936- we opened it up and VIOLA !!!!! 3.0.1 Version on the phone. Needless to say we were joyous

Here is the best part of the story. Our 1st stop was an Apple store. We went into Apple and talked to one of the reps. He actually said that he had NO IDEA about what we were talking about and that Apple has never educated any of their staff on the above info about serial numbers. (WTF) ? I actually kinda got the impression that he thought we were nuts. Well, the Apple store didnt have any 3GS that fell under any of the above parameters so we carried on to the ATT store. The same thing happened at the ATT store. They had no concept of what we were talking about and you could see the manger standing to the side listening with a, (these people are idiots) look on his face.

Truth be told. The above is true and it works. Walked out with a 32gb 3GS, 3.0.1 version, soon to be unlocked and jailbroken.

hmmm very useful thanks

yeah is an old info But its really a big help for newbie and forgetful people (including me). lol

Thnx for reminding me this. Cause im planning to buy a 3GS and dont want to get the updated one.

Sure man, not an issue. Whatever I can give back to the Iphone community is a big deal to me.

I just JB and UL mine today. Didnt upload the correct IPSW on it the 1st few times and I was SUPER concerned that I jacked up with FW and maybe en bricked it. I did some searching and after I used the 3.0.1 iPhone2,1_3.0_7A341_Restore.ipsw all went well. UL right after.

I love the dark side.