OMG 3G meltdown

First of all I have read through alot of previous posts and to be quite frank it may as well be in another language. So before you put "i have just answered this question for god sake read through previos ones, you are not the only person to have this happen to them", Dont watse your time.

I have an 8gb iphone 3g. it will not recognise my sim and therefore i dont think i have any way of checking any of the info i need, e.g. fimrware, ios? (i presume im using the right terminology).

i have seen some programmes stated in other posts which refer to upgrading from ios such and suych to such and such but how do i make a start??

I am completely lost?

I understand you ladies and gentlemen answer this question a million times a day and the excitment of helping me is massively low on your list of cutting edge technology adgenda but youd be making an iphone virgin a happy man.

right, to show im trying

Device model MB489B/A iphone3g
Firmware - 3.1.3.
Baseband 05.12.01-6.4_M352
ECID (DEC) 2366964813175
ECID (HEX) 2271A18CD77

48 veiws, please help!

I hate to do it, BUT, funnily enough, your questions have been answered a bunch of times ;)

1) You can use TinyUmbrella or f0recast to determine the current version of iOS running on the device. Looks like you figured this out already though.
2) It's very unlikely that restoring your phone will fix the issue, but since you're using a 3G, it will be easier for you than others if you want to try. Restoring to iOS 4.x will require either you having a pwned LLB (this happens if you use PwnageTool to create a custom firmware that jailbroke your 3.x iPhone 3G or if you used redsn0w to jailbreak the 3G), or you having an SHSH for the target version of iOS. Beyond that, a lot of people who upgrade to iOS 4 on the 3G end up not liking it due to performance -- so you may want to go to 3.1.2 at the highest.

In either case, you can do the restore in DFU mode -- either to custom firmware or to standard firmware. If you don't know how to get into DFU mode, GOOGLE IT ;) or use iReb.

That said, if what you really mean is that you want to unlock, then you'll need to do the above and then install ultrasn0w to unlock.