I'm in a situation not covered by most tutorials I'm afraid.

I've got a 3 GS I bought with 3.1.2 and old bootrom (untethered jailbreak). At some point, it crashed and would no longer boot. And silly me went and upgraded it to 3.1.3 because I remembered that the warnings in Cydia were gone (at least no longer in red, the more I thought about it later).

SHSH are on file only for 3.1.3 upwards.

I don't know which original carrier the phone was (not T-Mobile Germany nor AT&T USA, that much I verified with cards of those companies), so I cannot activate it.

All tutorials I see say I'm chanceless if I've got the new bootrom (which I don't have - have also verified with some tool in the past), and continue a guide for the old bootrom phones I can't follow because of missing activation.

Is there anything I can do to get my phone back to use and up to iOS 4? A chance to find out which carrier it is tied to (to make activation possible), or some hacktivation thing I did not see, or a jailbreak that includes hacktivation?

Originally Posted by CCRDude

I'm in a situation not covered by most tutorials I'm afraid.

I've got a 3 GS I bought with 3.1.2 and old bootrom (untethered jailbreak). At some point, it crashed and would no longer boot. And silly me went and upgraded it to 3.1.3 because I remembered that the warnings in Cydia were gone (at least no longer in red, the more I thought about it later).

SHSH are on file only for 3.1.3 upwards.

I don't know which original carrier the phone was (not T-Mobile Germany nor AT&T USA, that much I verified with cards of those companies), so I cannot activate it.

All tutorials I see say I'm chanceless if I've got the new bootrom (which I don't have - have also verified with some tool in the past), and continue a guide for the old bootrom phones I can't follow because of missing activation.

Is there anything I can do to get my phone back to use and up to iOS 4? A chance to find out which carrier it is tied to (to make activation possible), or some hacktivation thing I did not see, or a jailbreak that includes hacktivation?

There is an activation option that works - see

Again for un-activated devices & no original sim, just if u can borrow one to activate then do it or else YouTube - iPhone Activation without original sim -) may help

Twitter / sherif hashim: Again for un-activated dev ...

Then run spirit and spirit2pwn and then you can install custom IPSW created with pwnagetool (or the unsupported sn0wbreeze) and finally unlock with ultrasn0w 0.9.3

I would advise this path - you can do it all at 3.1.3 and not need to update your baseband or anything.

Also.. if you find it easier to try and get a SIM card from the carrier your iPhone is locked to.
TinyUmbrella http://thefirmwareumbrella.blogspot.com/ will tell you your model number even if you are stuck at "slide for emergency" screen
The model number can be used to find which country the iPhone is from. Then you just need to try SIM cards for each carrier that sells iPhones in that country (You've already tried the two countries with only one carrier)

Wow, thanks a million times for the fast and great advice!
I seem to have missed that trick while searching

Already ordered one, and expect it in 3 weeks (all offers on eBay from Hong Kong, but I won't be back from vacation until then anyway).

ok a mate of mine, is giving me a used at&t sim card which is now de-activated.
can this unlock me to the menu's?

from what i seen in videos and read, it says u just gota insert the same sim its locked to, it didnt mention anything being locked or unlocked. please someone confirm this

Should be fine to get past slide for emergency. At least based on reports I have read. I can't test this personally. Won't hurt to try.

Have tried the above now. Sim card works fine to activate. Used both spirit and spirit2pwn. Then tried to install sn0wbreeze 4.0 image from recovery mode. No success. Tried to install 3.1.3 again, no success. Have been through errors 3014, 1600 and 13, and restarted by installing vanilla 3.1.3 again (TinyUmbrella, DFU mode).

But whenever I try to install the sn0wbreezed 4.0 image, I receive an error 1600 (in recovery mode) or 1604 (in dfu mode). Any suggestions?