It’s official. Four out of four Mac|Life editors still using the iPhone 3G have said sayonara to iOS 4. Many of its marquee features aren’t compatible with our two-year-old handsets anyway—no multitasking, no nifty orientation lock, not even background wallpaper. And worst of all, it hobbles our once-functional phones until they’re near-useless. Apps crash, or they’re teeth-pullingly slow to open. Download speeds are so slow we feel like we’re back on dialup. The entire OS even crashes back to the Apple-logo screen. It’s just not worth it. So we rolled back. And if you feel our pain, we recommend you do too. Here is everything you need to know.
iPhone OS 3.1.3: It’s the last truly great OS for your iPhone 3G. (Sorry, Apple.)
Difficulty: medium
What You Need:
>> iPhone 3G
>> iTunes (free, apple.com)
>> RecBoot (free, www.sebby.net/443-recboot-final-release/)
>> iPhone OS 3.1.3 firmware image (see Step 3)
1. Check Your Back(-ups)
I’ve got some pre-June 21 backups, but alas they are all for various office iPads.
Not to get ahead of ourselves, but before you restore your iPhone with the older OS, it’s a good idea to consider if you’ll be setting up your newly downgraded phone from scratch as if it were a new phone, or if you’ll be restoring it to a backup. The catch is that you can only OS 3.1.3 backup, not to a backup made after you put iOS 4 on your phone.
iOS 4 came out June 21. So to see if you have any iPhone backups made with OS 3.1.3, navigate to ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup and see if any of the folder inside are dated before then. But since iTunes doesn’t keep more than one backup per device, if you’ve synced your iPhone to iTunes after upgrading to iOS 4, you probably don’t have a backup of your phone with OS 3.1.3.
2. Data Dump
Get all your photos into iPhoto, or lose them forever.
So it’s pretty safe to assume you’ll be setting up your iPhone running OS 3.1.3 as a new iPhone. In that case, it’s crucial to get any important info off your iPhone before you attempt the restore. Sync any Notes to your Mac, or email them to yourself. Take screenshots of your home screens so you can set them up the same way later. Take screenshots of your email account pages if you think you’ll need help setting them up again (we always need help remembering what to enter for our Microsoft Exchange account, for example). Transfer those screenshots and any photos you’ve taken to iPhoto.
3. No Data Left Behind
iTunes can transfer iTunes Store and App Store purchases onto your Mac.
If you buy music or apps directly on your phone, connect it to your Mac and choose File > Transfer Purchases from [Phone Name] in iTunes. You’ll also lose your SMS and MMS messages, so take screenshots of those, or follow the instructions at insend.de to back them up as a PDF, CSV, or XML file. Basically, you need get every scrap of information on your iPhone onto your computer somewhere, because you’re about to wipe your iPhone completely. One more note: Any apps you put back on your restored phone will behave as if you’ve never used them. So if you use apps with accounts tied to them (Facebook, Flickr, Instapaper, etc.) you might want to jot down your account info. And sadly, you’ll lose your progress in any games, plus lose access to the iBooks app, which requires iOS 4.
4. Downloads
These are the two items you need.
Now that you’ve come to terms with what restoring will do to your phone, it’s time to get started. First, head to iclarified.com/entry/index.php?enid=750 and download the 228MB disk image of the iPhone OS 3.1.3 firmware for the iPhone 3G (or the iPhone 3GS, if that’s what you’re restoring). The exact filename is iPhone1,2_3.1.3_7E18.Restore.ipsw. Save it to your Desktop. Then download and install an app called RecBoot from www.sebby.net/443-recboot-final-release/. RecBoot requires 10.5 or later and an Intel Mac.
5. DFU Mode
When you see this dialog, you’re in DFU mode and can proceed to Step 6.
Next, put your phone in Device Firmware Update mode. Plug the phone into your Mac, and turn the phone off by holding the Sleep button and using the “Slide to Power Off” slider. After it’s off, hold down both the Sleep button and the Home button while you slowly count to 10. Then release the Sleep button but keep that Home button pressed down. After a few more seconds, iTunes will throw up this window. If that doesn’t work, repeat this entire step until it does.
6. Restore
Option-click Restore, choose the 3.1.3 firmware, and watch the progress bars go.
Dismiss the “iTunes has detected an iPhone in recovery mode” dialog. Now click the iPhone in the iTunes sidebar and Option-click the Restore button (as in, hold down the Option key while clicking the Restore button. If you're using Windows, hold down Shift). You’ll be asked to choose a file. Select the iPhone OS 3.1.3 firmware file you downloaded in Step 4. You’ll see an extracting software progress bar, then a preparing iphone for restore progress bar. Your iPhone will have a progress bar too while it’s being restored. expect this to take 10 minutes or so, maybe more. Don’t dismiss the error dialog that pops up when it’s finished.
7. Enter RecBoot
Don’t dismiss the error message until after RecBoot does its thing.
To repeat, when you see the error dialog “The iPhone could not be restored. An unknown error occurred (1015)” DON’T DISMISS IT YET. (At this point, your iPhone is showing a “Connect to iTunes” screen.) Instead, go to your Applications folder, where you installed RecBoot. Look in the RecBoot 1.0.2 folder, and you’ll see a ReadMe file, plus applications called RecBoot and RecBoot Exit Only. Launch the latter, RecBoot Exit Only. It displays a large Exit Recovery Mode button. Click that. The Connect-to-iTunes screen will disappear from your iPhone, and you can now dismiss the error message in iTunes.
8. Set It Up
No, no, no, no. Don’t ask me again. Cancel.
The next dialog will be about helping Apple improve its products. Agree or disagree at your leisure, and then after another minute or so your iPhone will display the “iPhone is activated” message, and iTunes will launch the Set Up Your iPhone screen, which asks you if you want to set up as a new iPhone or restore from a backup. As explained in Step 1, you most likely won’t have a backup to restore to, so go ahead and set it up as a new iPhone.
Your “new” iPhone will be running fresh as a daisy, and ready for you to refill with apps, music, photos, contacts, and all that other iPhony goodness. The next time you get a message about updating to iOS 4.0.1, check the box for “Don’t ask me again” before you say no.
Howi27
March 15, 2011 at 10:04pm
Hi, can anyone tell me were I'm going wrong downgrading from iOS 4 to 3.1.3? First of all i am using my windows 7 laptop and everything was going great up until i get to the point were it says the iPhone can't be restored unknown error occured 1015 and then when i go to Recboot i have the problem, i ignore the 1015 error and click on large exit recovery but when i click on this it does nothing and the connect to iTunes screen doesn't disappear on my iphone but i know everything else has worked, i waited the 10 mins while it restored smoothly but its the Recboot that's not working for me, is this because I'm not using a Mac? Any help on this would be much appreciated, i even have the instructions on my iPad in front of me so i know I'm doing it right, is there something i have to do to recboot after I've installed it because when I click on the large exit recovery it's like a blank file, it's very frustrating, does the Recboot still work? Apple it's not much to ask to let us have are iPhones back to how they were, i thought i was doing a good thing updating my iPhone, how wrong was i, i even updated my iPod touch and iPad and the battery life is terrible on them now, what the hell is going on?
pipsonian
January 11, 2011 at 2:35pm
thanks for the posting however it wasn't very successful for me and now my iphone is stuck on the "connect to itunes" screen.
A little background: I jailbroke my iphone couple of months ago so i wasn't planning to update to 4.0 but my friend (without asking me) updated to 4.0. Once the update was done, itunes showed me the message which looked somewhat like "This sim card does not belong to this phone. Please insert the sim card that came with this device".
Now i decided to downgrade. Everything went according to what you have mentioned in your article but now when i turn the phone on, it always shows me "Please connect to the iTunes" although it is connected to the itunes and itunes is still giving me the same message "This sim card does not belong to this phone. Please insert the sim card that came with this device".
I am so frustrated at the whole situation (not frustrated at the author). Any help is appreciated.
jazzyguy
November 05, 2010 at 1:53pm
If you usually use your PPC Mac as I do to sync my iPhone and you have an Intel Mac as I do( a MacBook PRO )you will not lose anything if you downgrade using the Macbook Pro thereby getting the necessary RecBoot application and of course when it is done all will be lost. THEN taking the iPhone over to your PPC machine where you usually sync it plug it in and you will get all your apps back. No problem at all. I make my own Ringtones so I had to do it one again but mysteriously the rest of my self made ring tones reappeared.
jazzyguy
October 31, 2010 at 10:30am
My observation on this situation with those that have been unsuccessful with the downgrade is that they relied on their memory (cerebral) to recall all the steps necessary to bring the downgrade to fruition.I printed out the directions and followed them step by step not relying on my recollection of the steps. The reason most users forgot to Option Click when in recovery mode is exactly because they simply forgot that step. The best thing to do is print out the instructions. Thank you Sue for the excellent article. I followed the steps and all worked out perfectly on my 3G iPhone.
Flyer34
October 20, 2010 at 2:54am
I was nearly giddy when I saw this article because of the pain and suffering caused from up grading to IOS4. Now I'm just as frustrated trying to downgrade because it appears Apple has thrown a wrench into this fix. I get the following message in Step 6:
"iPhone couldn't be restored. This device isn't eligible for the requested build."
The definition about this message according to Apple is as follows:
Cannot be restored. This device is not eligible for the requested build: If you receive this error, you likely do not have the latest version of iTunes installed. Check http://www.apple.com/itunes/download/ for the latest available version of iTunes. If you do have the latest version of iTunes, this can occur when you attempt to restore using an older .ipsw file. Downgrading to a previous version is not supported.
I know apple doesn't support it but how do I get around their total lack of support and get my 3GS back up and running on IOS 3.1.3?
Help Susie!
baldraver
October 13, 2010 at 2:26pm
Mid october, 2010, it won't accept the file in the first place...
Thoughts?!
macdude5150
October 07, 2010 at 6:05pm
These step-by-step instructions were EXCELLENT. I have not often tried such a process before, but when I do, I often get good results, especially when the details have been laid out so well.
I only had one small issue because my SIM card had already been deactivated. As a result, my iPhone did not smoothly move from step 7 (RecBoot Exit) to step 8. But after I disconnected and reconnected my iPhone to the USB cable, the "Set Up Your iPhone" screen was presented as expected, I selected "new" and things were rosy.
THANK YOU SO MUCH for a great "How-To" article. This is exactly why I subscribe to MacLife, and check out the website as often as possible.
Shawn17
October 04, 2010 at 9:08pm
Help! I followed the instructions to downgrade my iPhone 3G back to OS 3.1.3, but I didn't realize the extent to which EVERYTHING on my iPhone would be lost. I have several applications such as CarCare, LoseIt, RunningST and a few others that had extensive databases. I thought that these databases were stored in iTunes, but after the downgrade and resyncing I found that all that information was gone! With CarCare that amounts to two years of fuel usage, repairs and total cost of ownership for two vehicles. Is there any way to recover this information?
When I look at the iPhone backup folder in my Library I see a Backup folder dated July 1, with more than six thousand items in it. Most of them are 4KB in size, but some are 200 or 400 KB. I suspect these larger files are the databases I'm looking for, but the names of the files are complete gobbledey-gook to me. Does anyone have any information about this? Any help is greatly appreciated!
brooktondale
October 04, 2010 at 5:36pm
Please look at the thread on Apple Forums concerning this topic! Even new iPods are having battery issues and Apple ignores the problem.
Any suggestions toward a fix will be helpful.
brooktondale
October 02, 2010 at 7:05pm
Will this procedure work for iPod Touch?
I believe mine is 2cnd generation, 16 gb.
rica
September 27, 2010 at 3:15am
Facebook previously looked into getting a Facebook phone. Right now, it entirely declines building a cell phone though. Many think that a Facebook phone is unnecessary which is why it would not do well. Others say that before Facebook tries to create its own development platform, it needs for making its Facebook app work better on existing Smartphone platforms. All of the Facebook cell phone gossips were noticed Sunday on the Web. Denial is what we learn from Facebook. Apple’s iPhone, Android phones and all other Smartphone's have a good business of rivalry right now. Facebook joining that with 500,000 supporting Facebook members with a cell phone would make sense. The Nexus One didn’t go very far, even with Google’s control. Microsoft had a worse fate. Its Kin was worse off.
dbac
September 05, 2010 at 4:50am
from the author of recbook.
http://www.sebby.net/671-recboot-10-4-x/Looks a little complicated tho.
But I can't take OS4 anymore. It's either this or I take a chisel and hammer to my iphone.
dbac
September 05, 2010 at 4:43am
- Any alternatives to Recboot for an old-ish Mac?
- Found a 3.1.3 backup in my trash.
dptt
August 26, 2010 at 11:43am
I'm thrilled to have a functioning phone (3G) again. At last INRIX Traffic isn't locating me in West Africa!
abrahamisaninja
August 20, 2010 at 11:34am
Heres another suggestion, restore your iPhone an set it up as a new phone. this works wonders your phone will be unthinkably faster than it was. once you set up as a new phone you should remove your icon shadows which for some reason hog your RAM. Phone must be jailbroken in order to remove shadow.
macman65
August 17, 2010 at 11:09pm
I followed the instructions and everything went as published, however I have one question before I complete the process and activate my old iPhone 3G. I replaced my 3G with and iPhone 4, which I don't want de-activated, however I would like to use my old 3G as an iPod Touch. Does anyone know how to complete the process without de-activating my current phone?
Thanks!
Thomo
August 17, 2010 at 1:48am
This looks so tantalisingly good. A solution to make my nearly unusable iPhone useful again.
Sadly, however, I have Mac OSX version 10.4.11, so I can't use RecBoot.
Is there a way of getting past this?
Many thanks....
madams6
August 16, 2010 at 4:05pm
having the same problem as ismatta. Any text with an image is unsent. Camera icon exists in text window, but nothing happens.
Wish I'd known this before I followed these otherwise lovely, clear instructions. Please advise.
Thanks
gwhizkids
August 12, 2010 at 6:26pm
Just followed the instructions - several times - and each time got the "Your Device is Not Eligible for the Requested Build" error. My guess is that sometime between the last successful downgrade by one of the commenters here and now, Apple altered the digital signature for the iPod Touch 3.1.3 firmware. Or maybe its that all the commenters here were downgrading an iPhone rather than iPod Touch.
In any event, any help anyone can give me on this would be appreciated. My 2g iPod Touch has slowed significantly since upgrading to 4.0 (and now 4.02) and is randomly disconnecting from my car's iPod port and rebooting.
Thanks!
ismatta
August 09, 2010 at 6:55pm
After "upgrading" my 3G to iOS 4, the phone was so slow in every area that it was not usable. I was fortunate enough to stop my wife, and several friends from performing the update and making their phones unusable. I followed instructions I found on the web to downgrade to 3.13, and the process was successful, almost. The iPhone 3G was performing at it former speed, and almost all was well. Since the upgrade, and then downgrade, I have not been able to send MMS messages. I can send text messages, but if I attempt to include a picture, it will not work. This seems to be a problem with the iOS 4 update, that the downgrade did not fix. I am looking for a fix for this mess, and I would like to hear from anyone who has any idea what I might be able to do. I would like to keep the iPhone, and I am not prepared to go with the seriously flawed iPhone 4. Any ideas?
altaee
August 07, 2010 at 5:52am
I downgrade OS to iPhone1,2_3.1.3_7E18_Restore.ipsw
Now, how can I jailbreak it?
My iPhone was working OK with T-Mobile using OS4 but I thought downgrade the OS is only step :(
ssellier
August 07, 2010 at 4:35am
Try to do the downgrade from a Jailbroken (Redsn0w) iPhone 3G and it get stuck on the 75% Progress bar, i left it over night, and nothing happen now i got my iPhone stuck on DFU Mode. I've tried to restore to iOS 4, re-Jailbrake, and get the same, result... any help or tips???
Susie Ochs
August 10, 2010 at 11:02am
I honestly don't know enough about how jailbreaking alters the phone's OS to know how the instructions would need to be altered. My instinct would be to restore your phone (unjailbreaking), then do the OS rollback, then if that's successful, jailbreak the phone again.
I'll be working on a jailbreaking article over the next week or two, so hopefully I'll learn a little more and might be able to answer this better. But for now I'd check out the iPhone Dev Team wiki, since they are the jailbreaking ninjas. http://wikee.iphwn.org/
Masked3gman
August 06, 2010 at 10:34am
Hi, I am in the process of getting this together so that I can downgrade from 4.0.1 to 3.1.3. I have a question or two before I attempt this.
Last year (I think it was around July), I bought a new mac book pro. I had my iphone 3G set up with iTunes on an older mac notebook before I bought the mac book pro. I transferred the home folder on the old notebook that I synced with my iphone to the new mac book pro. Since that time, I have been using the iTunes on the newer notebook to sync with my iphone 3G.
The question I have is this: Can I somehow integrate the old notebook information with getting my stuff off of the iphone so that I don't have to go through a whole to do to get all my information back once I downgrade?
Also, does it matter what version of iTunes you have doing this downgrade?I also have this question, if I do a backup with the iTunes that I am using now before I go through this procedure, then I create a new account on my mac book pro and wipe my information off my iphone using the new account that I made, would there be any benefit to doing this? I mean, would it help in saving anything (like the music on my current iTunes account) or anything else? How does the current iTunes get affected when you do this upgrade using the current iTunes? I am a bit lost in what happens with some of the information that's in iTunes when you're doing this with the iTunes that you always use.
Mac.is.cool
August 05, 2010 at 9:06pm
Just a quick THANK YOU for posting this article guys!! Just downgraded to 3.1.2 and working smoothly. Jailbroke with jailbreakme.com which also worked flawlessly.
Great to be back on 3.1.2 :-)
mait88
August 03, 2010 at 2:35pm
When I go into the DFU mode, I get the "itunes has deteted the I the Iphone is in the Recovery mode...". After I dismiss this Dialog I do not get asked to choose a file when I hit the "Restore Button". Instead I get a Dialog that asks me if "I am sure I want to restore...and that the Newest Version of the iPhone Software will be installed" and my only choices are Cancel or Restore and Update. Why won't I tunes not allow me to choose the 3.1.3 Firmware file. Any Help is Appreciated
Thanks
RedMc
August 03, 2010 at 5:26pm
If you have a Mac you need to hold down option while clicking "Restore". This will bring up a dialog box and then you choose the iOS firmware that you want. If you have a Windows PC then you hold down shift while clicking "Restore". Hope this Helps!
RedMc
Susie Ochs
August 04, 2010 at 10:12am
I updated the how-to's language to make Option-click a little clearer. Yes, you have to hold down Option on your keyboard while clicking the Restore button, then iTunes will let you specify the firmware file to restore to.
jscardina
August 03, 2010 at 5:04pm
The same happend to me too. I hope someone can figure out a solution. My 3g is running sooooo slow on ios 4.
jscardina
August 03, 2010 at 10:54am
I am stock on step 6...the instruction say to dismiss the dialog box "the itunes as detected an Iphone in recovery mode" does that mean to click OK to that. Then I am supposed to get a choice of different version of firmware to install and chose 3.1.3...but I don't it auto installs the 4.0... Please Help!!!!
RedMc
August 03, 2010 at 5:39pm
If you have a Mac you need to hold down option while clicking "Restore". This will bring up a dialog box and then you choose the iOS firmware that you want. If you have a Windows PC then you hold down shift while clicking "Restore". Hope this Helps!
RedMc
sfranco
August 02, 2010 at 5:03pm
I'm so glad the directions have been posted and more importantly that I did the downgrade. My Iphone 3G is working perfectly and better than ever. My wife does have the 3GS with 4.1 and it does work better for her but for the 3G it was an awful experience.
jenjennijennifer
August 02, 2010 at 1:45pm
I downgraded my sad, sad iPhone using these instructions this weekend, and it worked flawlessly. Thanks, Susie, for a detailed article!
powermixx
July 31, 2010 at 6:25pm
I just followed this process precisely and it works just fine. Maybe it has to do with the fact that I registered the SHSH blobs with Cydia before the downgrade. I don't know I just know it worked.
iPhone 3G iOS4.0 downgraded to OS 3.1.3 :-)
kevinmd63
July 31, 2010 at 10:01am
I just completed the downgrade and am extremely happy. It worked excellent except for one small hitch.
The file you tell everyone to look for and download is the incorrect fie. In the text of your article you identify iphone1,1_3.1.3_7E18_Restore.ipsw
as the correct file but it is not the correct file and attempting to use it will bring up an incompatibility error message.
However in the screen capture shot right above it you have the correct file identified which is:
iphone1,2_3.1.3_7E18_Restore.ipsw
The difference being the "2" and not the "1" in the plce of the second digit after the word "iphone"
I am assuming the difference is that the 2 stands for 2nd generation which is the iPhone 3G and the 1 stands for 1st generation which was never able to upgrade to iOS4 in the first place.
The_Quintessent...
July 30, 2010 at 9:45pm
If your iPhone 3G is running slow in iOS 4, you can do a hard reboot by holding down the home and sleep/wake buttons when you are on the slide to power off screen until the iPhone reboots itself. This probably clears some caches and buffers, so it could speed up your iPhone.
dougstrickland
August 05, 2010 at 1:11pm
I can count on one finger the number of times that this has had ANY positive effect, and that ONE time the 3g was right back to the same state after two application launches.
This is analogous to a computer support person saying to reboot. really? tell me somenting that works please...?
mike3k
July 30, 2010 at 12:41pm
This no longer works. When you attempt to install the firmware, iTunes will verify it with Apple, but Apple no longer validates OS 3.1.3 or earlier, so you won't be allowed to install it. You will get a message 'Your device isn't eligible for this firmware version" and it won't even attempt to install it.
Susie Ochs
August 04, 2010 at 10:10am
One person here had the same problem you did, but strangely, it works for the rest of us. I'm trying to get to the bottom of what the problem could be.
bjmcgeever
August 09, 2010 at 7:34pm
I'm having the same problem as above. I don't get the 1015 error, but I get the verification error. Any ideas?
arithehun
March 05, 2011 at 12:44pm
Yes, as of 3/5/11, it still works. Restore to OS 3.0, not 3.1.3. You may have to reformat your iPod's flash drive first to do that, go to Settings > General > Reset > Erase all Content and settings (on your iPod). Then, out your iPod to DFU mode after that, and try a restore. It worked for me on my iPod Touch 2G.
powermixx
July 31, 2010 at 6:27pm
I'm throttling back my wife's phone to 3.1.3 this weekend. HEHE, I used her phone as the crash test dummy. Sorry baby! Yes iOS4 is a pig on a 3G. Buh-bye 4...
Rich364
July 30, 2010 at 11:13am
I completed the 3G downgrade today - and I'm excited to have an operational phone once again. It was ridiculously unusable after upgrading to iOS4.
I'm a huge Apple Fan (otherwise I wouldn't be reading the Mac/Life website), but I'm really pissed that Apple's solution when I called in was to pay for the upgrade to the new iPhone 4 hardware. I feel like they know about the issue... but are aggravating people in to buying the new hardware instead of supporting the early people who where there for them in the beginning. The downgrade is the exact solution I needed to make my phone usable again.
Now if Apple would only allow users to easily downgrade their firmware right from iTunes!
jonk
July 30, 2010 at 10:51am
What is your experience with the iphone 3GS and os 4? I have been experiencing crashes since the upgrade and winder if it would be worth it for me to downgrade as well?
kgd001
September 25, 2010 at 11:15am
I tried running the procedure today, but after step 6 I get the following message: "The iPhone "iPhone" could not be restored because the firmware file is not compatible." Does this mean I am not holding down the sleep/home buttons long enough? I do get the step 5 alert about detecting an iPhone in recovery mode.
