iOS 5 Upgrade - Yes or No?

Hey guys I have an iPhone 3GS. iOS 4.1 & It's on on Baseband 4.1 and unlocked through the Cydia Jailbreak. I had tried restoring the phone through the OFFICIAL iOS 5 IPSW from iTunes and my phone was stuck in a bootloop that could not be fixed until I had a factory reset done by a professional. He had opened up the whole phone and reset the hardware/software on it. That was the only way to fix it after I had try to upgrade, and I had tried everything to fix it but nothing but the hard reset had worked. Now what I'm thinking was the problem was that I should have created my own Custom IPSW using PwnageTool or sn0wbreeze and then restoring with iTunes. I'd really like to use iOS 5, and since the untethered jailbreak is out I really want to update but I'm stuck here with 4.1 not knowing if I should take the risk. If my phone gets bricked again I'll have to pay another $35 to fix it and I'm flat broke. So if anyone knows what I should do here please leave a response as this is urgent. Also does anyone know of any protective cases for the 3GS? Not an otterbox cause it's like a brick, a simple case that's protective, such as the speck cases but are not as expensive. Thanks!

--- Happy New Years!

You say it's on baseband 4.1, but you also say that you attempted a factory restore to 5.0.1 -- are you 100% certain the baseband wasn't updated? Also, your phone would bootloop if you had the 06.15.00 baseband on your phone and you attempted a standard restore to 5.0.1 -- are you certain that isn't what happened in the first place?

I recommend checking to be 100% sure what baseband you have and letting us know the actual revision of it. Beyond that, you don't say anything about whether or not you need an unlock for the phone. If you don't need an unlock and aren't worried about reselling the phone, you should be able to upgrade to 5.0.1 directly through iTunes, letting it upgrade your baseband, then just use redsn0w to jailbreak. Without telling us what caused the bootloop in the first place, there's no way we can use it to help diagnose or recommend any action for you as we really don't know what caused it nor what the person repairing it actually did, so we have no idea if it will happen again if you attempt to restore.

In any case, if you want to keep the baseband you have, download redsn0w (0.9.10b3 as of this post), use it to create a new custom 5.0.1 firmware without the baseband (under the extras option), then use redsn0w to kick your phone into Pwned DFU mode, and restore the no_BB firmware in iTunes. This will get you to 5.0.1 with an untethered jailbreak.

ah my bad, I meant the baseband is 6.15, and the iOS is 4.1 I was in a rush while writing this. This phone was a gift from a friend and I'm using it on a different service provider so I'm going to need to unlock it through ultrasnow since I'm not using it on its original carrier; and what you said in the first paragraph is what happened. So as of now I'm on iOS 4.1 and need to restore to iOS 5 with a CFW on iTunes right? Then Jailbreak with redsn0w?

That is expected behavior. When 06.15.00 was flashed to the phone, you killed any way for you to ever restore a non-custom firmware ever again. Any restore you do must be a custom firmware created by redsn0w/pwnagetool/sn0wbreeze, and you must restore in pwned DFU mode -- else your phone will just be stuck in a bootloop at the end of the process. It did not need to be hard reset, you could have DFU mode'd it and re-restored and that should be good.

Ultimately, what you need to do is download the latest redsn0w, use it to make a custom no_BB firmware for 5.0.1, then use iTunes to shift-restore the no_BB firmware you made from redsn0w. That is the ONLY way you will successfully be able to restore your phone, now that it has 06.15.00 on it. This should get you to 5.0.1, jailbroken, with 06.15.00 so you can install ultrasn0w to unlock. I'm not sure if they have updated ultrasn0w to include patching CommCenter, so you *may* need to replace your CommCenter with a patched one to get service.

I had tried that several times with different ISPW's to kick it out when it was looped and nothing work. I tried many different software's such as iReb and nothing worked except for the hard reset. But thank you for your information and i'll give it a try now and see how it goes. Hopefully all goes well so I don't have to pay another $35 to fix it.

Make sure you're using Pwned DFU mode from redsn0w -- using DFU from iReb will NOT WORK, it will just bootloop the phone again. You have to use Pwned DFU to restore custom firmwares without the baseband these days.