Can’t wait for the iPhone Dev Team to update their tools for the iPhone 3GS? Well, George Hotz (aka Geohot) has released a very simple application called purplera1n to jailbreak your iPhone 3G S! Both Mac OS X and the Windows application have very similar interfaces so this tutorial will work for both operating systems (Windows is being used in this tutorial). Before we begin, some important notes worth mentioning:

• This one is only for iPhone 3GS users. iPhone and iPhone 3G users use this tutorial
• Make sure you’re running firmware 3.0 (If you’re not sure then you most likely do have iPhone OS 3.0)
• Jailbreak apps like WinterBoard, VOiPOver3G etc don’t seem to be working on iPhone 3GS, so you might have to wait for the developers to release updated version of the jailbreak apps
• Use at your own risk. Please pre-read before attempting anything so you know what you’re getting yourself into ahead of time.

Lets begin:
1. Download purplera1n HERE – for Mac OS X or HERE – for Windows
2. Once you have it downloaded, double click the .exe that you downloaded (if on Windows). If on Mac OS X double click the .zip and it should unzip and then double click the purplera1n.app icon to launch the application.

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Apple has posted up an Online iPhone 3GS availability database for people to see if the iPhone 3GS is available at their local retail store. This comes extremely handy if you’ve been visiting the Apple store day after day trying to get your hands on an iPhone 3G S but it always seems to be sold out, this will put an end to that.

Now, you don’t need to waste precious petrol to an Apple store and come back home empty handed. Visit the source link to get to the database.

- source: apple.com

Well, I know many of you have been waiting for this news, so here it is: iPhone Dev Team has found out that 24kpwn, the same exploit used to crack open into the iPod Touch 2G, lives in the iPhone 3GS bootrom. That means the iPhone Dev Team can apply the same technique that they use to jailbreak and unlock on their current redsn0w tools. The baseband is also exploitable with ultrasn0w. Awesome news, ey?

From iPhone Dev Team:

Important: Apple has not given up on the cat&mouse game, and in fact there are challenging aspects of the 3GS jailbreak that aren’t in the other devices. It’ll take some time to work these into our tools, but the fundamental weaknesses are there: The bootrom is exploitable via 24Kpwn, and the baseband is exploitable via ultrasn0w. (And just like with the 3G, ultrasn0w for 3GS requires that you not update your baseband when Apple comes out with new firmware.)

If you would like to know the technical notes, from the iPhone Dev Team, on where the 24Kpwn exploit is in the 3GS visit here

Now it’s time to wait for the iPhone Dev Team develop and release the tools for users to use and jailbreak and/or unlock their iPhone 3GS’

- source: blog.iphone-dev.org

Apple announced that they sold over 1 million iPhone 3G S models over this past weekend.The press release includes a quote from the one and only, Steve Jobs:

“Customers are voting and the iPhone is winning,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “With over 50,000 applications available from Apple’s revolutionary App Store, iPhone momentum is stronger than ever.”

In addition, Apple also reports that six million customers have downloaded the new iPhone 3.0 software which works on the existing 40 million iPhone and iPod touch models.

- source: apple.com

Well, the iPhone 3G S has officially launched Friday June 19th, 2009. The iPhone 3G S is the fastest and most powerful iPhone released till this date. Apple reports it’s 2 times as fast as the iPhone 3G. It features a 3 megapixel camera with the ability to record video at 640×480 at 30 frames per second with audio. It also features tap-to-focus, tap anywhere where you want the camera to focus. The 3G S sports a new display, the same size but with a Fingerprint-resistant oleophobic coating.

One French company has already obtained an iPhone 3G S and done a disassembly on the device:

CNet blog documented the opening at the 5th Avenue NYC Store:

In addition people seemed to be having activation problems:

Due to current iPhone activation volumes, it may take up to 48 hours to resolve your issue. We will send a confirmation to {e-mail address redacted} once your activation is complete. We apologize for any inconvenience this causes. You can set up your iPhone and enjoy features that do not require access to the AT&T network. To get started, please disconnect and then reconnect your iPhone.

Did you get an iPhone 3G S? Do you like it? What was your first impressions? How did the activation go? Let us know in the comments!

Cnet reports that ARM will be delivering multi-core ARM chips in 2010, making multi-core iPhones and other smart phones possible.

“You’ll definitely see handsets shipping with a dual-core A9 in 2010,” James Bruce, wireless segment manager for ARM, said in a phone interview earlier this week, referring to the next-generation Cortex-A9 processor from ARM.

The current iPhone is believed to use the ARM Cortex A8 processor. While still a notable improvement over the previous generation ARM chips, it remains a single core device. The move to a dual-core ARM chip will be a (hopefully) huge upgrade in performance and is expected to happen relatively quickly and should be seen in about a year, perhaps in the iPhone 3G ES (Extreme Speed).

An ARM representative reassured CNet that the dual-core ARM A9 is actually more power efficient than the A8.

“What we’ve done on the A9 is actually make it more power efficient than the A8. The dual-core A9 will be coming out on 45-nanometer rather than the (current) 65-nanometer process,” Bruce said. Generally, the smaller the geometries, the faster and more power-efficient the processor is.
Bruce continued. “With the dual-core running at maximum load there’s probably going to be an increase of about 10 to 20 percent in power consumption but in general day to day use you’re actually going to see better battery life.”

- source: news.cnet.com

The folks over at macrumors.com are reporting that Apple and AT&T have begun updating order statuses and providing UPS tracking numbers to the customers for their iPhone 3G S orders. If ordered from Apple, shipments are being sent from Shenzhen, China and are due for delivery on Friday, the official launch date for the iPhone 3G S. If ordered from AT&T, the order status appears as “in progress” and have been assigned tracking numbers, however, the shipments do not appear to have yet been picked up by UPS.

Visible signs of AT&T’s and Apple’s preparations for the launch of the new iPhone, as well as the corresponding release of iPhone OS 3.0 for older devices this Wednesday, have begun appearing in the days leading up to the new releases. Over the weekend, AT&T also sold out of its initial iPhone 3G S pre-order allotment, meaning that those who wish to obtain an iPhone 3G S from AT&T on launch day will have to do so in-person at an AT&T retail store.

BoyGeniusReport claims that the initial batch of iPhone 3G S shipments have already been allocated to pre-orders, so if you haven’t ordered yet, you will have to wait, sadly.

To make a long story short, if you did not pre-order an iPhone 3G S from AT&T yet, (we’re not talking about Apple because we don’t have information on their pre-ordering/stock levels, etc) your iPhone 3G S won’t be shipping to you/your store until 7-14 days after the order date. It seems that all AT&T’s pre-order stock is depleted leaving only iPhone 3G Ss for dying-in-line purchasing on this coming Friday, and all pre-orders going forward won’t be fulfilled until after the June 19th launch date.

There’s a high chance that the Apple stores will have a larger inventory of iPhone 3G S’s on launch day, as they did on the iPhone 3G’s launch day.

These photos were first posted in the Chinese verson of engadget.com. These photos show a shiny new 32GB iPhone 3G S unboxed and demoing the compass and voice control applications. Apple will be officially releasing the iPhone 3G S on June 19th.

The iPhone 3G S is physically identical to the iPhone 3G but offers several internal component improvements including the digital compass (shown above), video recording, and those mentioned in our previous post.

T-Mobile.nl has posted some technical specs about the iPhone 3G S revealing that the newest iPhone carries a 600 MHz processor and 256MB of RAM. A nice bump in processor power from the iPhone 3G.

The iPhone 3G had a 412mhz processor while the iPod Touch had a 532mhz processor, until now, the 2nd generation iPod Touch was the fastest device by a good margin on the lineup but the iPhone 3G S has changed that. The previous generation models have 128MB of ram while the iPhone 3G S has a whopping 256MB of ram, so, the new device offers twice as much of RAM. The processor/ram information seems to confirm many details that were first revealed in a Chinese forum post.

The new iPhone is also believed to use the new PowerVR SGX graphics processing unit which provides support for OpenGL ES 2.0. This notably improved performance may require developers to support these multiple device capabilities within their apps.

For those interested in more of a technical analysis, Anandtech offers a detailed breakdown of the new iPhone’s processor and GPU, according to their sources.

Although unannounced, the iPhone 3GS uses (again) a Samsung SoC but this time instead of the ARM11 + MBX-Lite combo it’s got a Cortex A8 and PowerVR SGX; just like the Pre.