Enter iPhone Field Test Mode (*3001#12345#*) to Check Your iPhone’s Signal Strength

Published on September 27, 2011 by Richard Ker

This is not exactly new, but it is a handy tip for new iPhone users or simply to show off to your buddies how “geeky” you are. :)

Go to your dial pad, enter the following and followed by tapping on Call:

*3001#12345#*

This will launch Field Test Mode as shown below.

Take note of the number on the top left corner. That indicates your iPhone’s signal strength in dB-microvolts per metre (dBµV/m) or in decibels above a reference level of one milliwatt (dBm).

The lower the number, the better your signal is. e.g. -51 is full signal, -105 is no signal. For my case above: -74 is a pretty good signal.

You can toggle between the number and signal bars by tapping on the top left corner of your screen.

This is relatively useful to test whether the iPhone casing you’re using is actually reducing the efficiency of your iPhone’s antenna. For most parts, your iPhone casing shouldn’t interfere with the operation of its antenna.

Now for more technical stuff, when testing it in a 3G environment, it is possible to determine the frequency being used by selecting: UMTS Cell environment, then select UMTS RR info. The screen displayed will list the Uplink and downlink Frequency in code form.

Uplink frequency on the 850 MHz cellular band will list an Uplink Frequency code between 4132 and 4233 and a Downlink Frequency code between 4357 and 4458. If you are operating on the 1900 MHz spectrum the Uplink Frequency code will be between 9262 and 9538 with the Downlink Frequency code being between 9662 and 9938.

Kinda neat, huh? How’s your iPhone’s signal strength? Do share…

USB Programmer Allows You to Program Your Own Turbo SIM for Any Future iOS Updates

Published on September 20, 2011 by Richard Ker

So you bought yourself a Turbo SIM to unlock your iPhone 4 and found out that it’s not working… Very frustrating. How about for future iOS 5 updates? Would your Turbo SIM work?

We are now giving you the option to program and update your own Turbo SIM, making it future proof.

The Turbo SIM programmer package comes with:

1. An updatable Turbo SIM

2. USB programmer
3. Binary (BIN) files – the software for Turbo SIM to work

  • iPhone activation file for AT&T iPhone 4 – this allows the Turbo SIM to activate your iPhone if you don’t have the original carrier SIM
  • Gevey Supreme BIN file (no jailbreak required)
  • Gevey Ultra BIN file (jailbreak required)

Our supplier is already testing this on the latest iPhone 4s/5. Remember a photo that was circulating on the web yesterday? That was from our supplier. Here’s another shot of it. They explained that the logic board is an actual iPhone 4s/5 board with A5 processor; the screen and battery used were from an iPhone 4′s.

When you purchase a Turbo SIM we believe that it should be yours completely.

This is available for pre-order in the next few days.

Download Redsn0w 0.9.9b1 to Jailbreak iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch on iOS 5 Beta, 4.3.x and More

Published on September 19, 2011 by Richard Ker

I just posted last night about the new redsn0w that was just annouced by MuscleNerd. It’s now available for download for both Windows and Mac version. Click on the links below to:

Download redsn0w 0.9.9b1 for Windows | Download redsn0w 0.9.9b1 for Mac

Detailed change logs on the latest version of redsn0w (from Dev Team’s website):

  • Uses DFU mode to try to automatically determine which device and FW you have
    fetches pieces of public IPSWs from Apple (once).
  • Non-public IPSWs must be provided manually (once). It then caches those pieces for future use.
  • “Just boot” is a tethered boot.
  • Uses whatever “Preferences” you’ve set for boot logo and kernel boot-args
  • “Pwned DFU” puts your device in a pwned DFU state for some of the iTunes stuff detailed below
  • “Recovery fix” gets past 1015 types of errors (when baseband portion of restore fails). Should work on iOS5 beta too
  • “Select IPSW” is for picking non-public IPSWs, or overriding auto-detection
  • “SHSH blobs” has a bunch of options…
  • “Fetch” – fetch current PARTIAL blobs on device. Should complete in under 10 or 15 seconds. Puts the set of PARTIAL of blobs on your computer as a plist. Checks if Cydia already has a full set for this device and build. If not, it submits this PARTIAL set and returns Cydia’s acknowledgement or rejection
  • “Verify” – cryptographically verifies existing blob files from either redsn0w, TinyUmbrella, or Cydia server. You can select a whole bunch of blobs to verify at once if you want (like the TinyUmbrella directory)
  • “Submit” – both verifies and submits one or more blob files to Cydia. This lets you copy your entire TinyUmbrella cache of blobs up to the Cydia server
  • “Query” – queries the Cydia server for all available FULL or PARTIAL blobs for a given set of ECIDs
  • “Stitch” – stitches either FULL or PARTIAL blobs to a STOCK or CUSTOM IPSW
  1. FULL blobs stitched to a STOCK IPSW gives you a completely self-contained signed IPSW that iTunes will accept without any tricks (no need to go into pwned DFU mode, no need to start TinyUmbrella TSS server, no need to redirect to Cydia server for blobs)
  2. PARTIAL blobs stitched to any IPSW requires you to go into pwned DFU mode before running iTunes. No need to start TU or use Cydia though.
  3. Stitching either FULL or PARTIAL blobs to a CUSTOM IPSW also requires a pwned DFU start before iTunes restores. No need to start TU or use Cydia though.
  4. Stitching is NOT yet supported on iPhones (well, at least not tested). Need to work out the baseband part of the restore process.
  5. Will eventually support fetching the blobs directly from Cydia instead of a file on your computer

Go ahead and download the latest version to try it out. I just tested it on a 3GS and it works seamlessly.

MuscleNerd Annouces New Redsn0w’s 1-click Jailbreak; IPSW Firmware Not Required

Published on September 18, 2011 by Richard Ker

MuscleNerd announced today that a major update for Redsn0w is coming soon. It works without the need to download and point IPSW firmware file.

On his Twitter yesterday:

“Will be pushing out a major redsn0w feature upgrade before my trip to Korea: http://is.gd/PMAdT1 (and look, no IPSW selection button!)”

How does this work? Well, the new Redsn0w will only download files required for jailbreaking. These files will be downloaded automatically from Apple’s servers and Redsn0w then applies the jailbreak – pretty much how the present version of redsn0w fetches the iPad baseband to unlock iPhone 3G or 3GS.

Based on the screenshots above, many other functions can be done in a single click such as boot tethered, pawn-DFU a device, recovery fix etc.

I believe the idea of 1-click jailbreak comes from comex, who brilliantly made jailbreakme.com which jailbreaks an idevice directly from the Safari browser.

Stay tuned as it’s expected to be released over the next few days!