The iPod with a faulty Homebutton and me

  • Author Author saltyCake
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Today in my Tech Missadvantures, i want to write (and express my love to the faulty Homebutton) about (trying to) jailbreaking an iPod touch 3rd generation (which later turns out to be a iPod touch 2nd generation).


Well, first i want to express my love to the faulty Homebutton, which maked it unnecessary complicated and a pain in the a***! (love you baby!).



My Father wanted to use a iDevice as an Internet Radio station player, because he wanted to not waste an iPhone 4 for that simple task. He wanted to use an iPod Touch 3rd Generation as an Internet Radio station player, but the app he needed required a newer iOS version (old iOS 4 was on that thing). I searched for a solution and came up with the idea, to jailbreak it and then trying to spoof the iOS version to the Appstore. So i was going to work with this and noticed, that it would require to enter a pwned DFU-Mode, which becamed a problem because the Homebutton was a bit faulty and needed more force to register that the Homebutton was being held. Yay fun! Well, i tried everything and that damn thing would not go into DFU-Mode like a good boi, but go into recovery mode, which i didin't needed. I searched everything on the Internet and would later find out that Redsn0w could make a special IPSW, that would force the iPod touch to go into DFU-Mode. I tired that immediatly and it didn't worked (because i have always that luck, that if i want something, i won't get it because a supernaturell force would hinder me).


Later on, i would buy a Macbook early 2008 form someone for 100 Euro (which was a bit random, because i would first wanting it, because i wanted to take a look at Mac OS X and for the iOS SDK).


The next week i was again at the House of my Father and would try the same (what i tryed on the Windows computer) from the Macbook. And surprise surprise, it actually worked! i now had the IPSW that i needed and would only need it to flash it to the device. Well, the flashing part was also complicated, because iTunes would not allow flashing that IPSW. After a bit of research, i would find a programm (or something) that would pwn iTunes and allowing me to flash the IPSW. I finally was in DFU-Mode! From there i needed to try various jailbreak tools, because the tools were aprently relying on the fact that the device was able to boot into iOS (which it was not. NO!!). I got various results with the tools i tried. Some tool would turn the iPod touch into the all new iLight (becuase that Display was so bright, that you could use it as a flashlight). I then flashed the offical IPSW to the device and tryed to get into the DFU-Mode (with holding the Homebutton). I tried it many times (and failed), but then heaven would end the suffering and finally letting me into the DFU-Mode. I then tried the various jailbreak tools, but some of them failed because of unknown reasons and i needed to look, how i would preceed. On a research i found something called "Sn0wbreeze", which was a IPSW, that would be jailbroken by the Programm directly on the PC. I then proceeded with flashing the IPSW and it worked, because of the programm (or something) that would pwn iTunes to allow me to flash it. It showed the custom bootlogo of the IPSW and i needed to connect the iPod Touch to the Mac, so that i could activate it. Well, if it would that easy it would be good, but iTunes refused to activate the iPod Touch. But the iPod was jailbroken, becuase i could access the Filesystem from iFunbox and it showed up as jailbroken. Well, the iDevice was jailbroken, but you could do nothing with it, because it was stuck at the connect to iTunes screen, which would activate the Device (but it didin't because iTunes refused to activate). So i needed to restore the stock firmware again and thinking what i should try next. I then tried something (i can't remember what i did) and it would actually jailbreak the Phone (and would not be stuck on the iTunes screen). I finally did it (or so i thought), because i then tried to spoof the iOS version (by editing the SystemVersion.plist) and the appstore would refuse to work (but after restoring the real version in the SystemVersion.plist, it would work again). After all the things i tried, it would in the end not work. I procedded to flash the stock firmware again and to give up.


I learnt something by trying to jailbreaking it, to NEVER EVER TRYING TO JAILBREAK A IDEVICE WITH A FAULTY HOMEBUTTON AND WITH AN IOS VERSION, THAT WOULD REQUIRE THE DFU-MODE TO JAILBREAK AGAIN!



PS: What i written here happend arround 2018, so that i can't guarantee that i remember everything that happend.
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Old design of home button is not great, because it collects more dust than later design - my iPad Pro have good one with not as deep "stepping" that older older ones. If you somehow jb device you could find tweaks to use virtual floating virtual homebutton IDK for what iOS version, because i do not touch my old iPhone 4 for years. But home buttons are cheap on Aliexpress or Ebay...
 
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@wiewiec

"Old design of home button is not great, because it collects more dust than later design - my iPad Pro have good one with not as deep "stepping" that older older ones. If you somehow jb device you could find tweaks to use virtual floating virtual homebutton IDK for what iOS version, because i do not touch my old iPhone 4 for years. But home buttons are cheap on Aliexpress or Ebay..."


Ok. I think you mean the "assistive touch" option in the Settings with that Floating Homebutton tweak, right?



@Tenshi_Okami

"did you ever got to try greenp0ison?"

I tried it back then, but (i think) it didin't worked for me (i can't remember the Details anymore)
 
if you ever try to do the jailbreaking on it again, i suggest to give greenp0ison a go, from what I remember I did not had to use DFU on it
 
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@Tenshi_Okami


"if you ever try to do the jailbreaking on it again, i suggest to give greenp0ison a go, from what I remember I did not had to use DFU on it"

Ok. But did the iDevice you jailbroken had iOS 4.x? Because the iPod Touch that i had to jailbreak, had iOS 4.x. thanks for the sugesstion!
 
I mean I can ask my friend to lend me his IPod 2nd gen, restore it and check if it uses DFU Restore.

I believe the method it uses is rebooting into dfu, injecting the hack to the OS, and reboots back into normal OS
 
@saltyCake do not remember about this future, but this tweak does ability to use this as normal home button as overlay that you could use as normal button for screenshots or switch between apps.
 
S
@Tenshi_Okami

"I mean I can ask my friend to lend me his IPod 2nd gen, restore it and check if it uses DFU Restore.

I believe the method it uses is rebooting into dfu, injecting the hack to the OS, and reboots back into normal OS"


Thanks for the offer (and for the effort) to test it for me. I appreciate that.
From what i remember, the programm saids that you should put your phone in DFU-Mode and then it will get into the pwned DFU-Mode, to install the jailbreak. Maybe i used this programm to jailbreak it (because when the iPod restarted the first time after the jailbreak, it would show some skull instead of an apple at bootup).




@wiewiec

"@saltyCake do not remember about this future, but this tweak does ability to use this as normal home button as overlay that you could use as normal button for screenshots or switch between apps."


Ok. So it's pretty much similiar to assistive touch (i used assistive touch for my iPad 3, because the Homebutton was responsing incorectly)
 

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