Whited00r: Saviour of old iOS devices

If you are like me, you don't have a huge budget to spend on new phones, especially in my case where I am provided a work phone and cannot justify purchasing a new phone at a $50-60/month cost with a 3 year commitment. So you end up stuck with older hardware, as I am stuck on Apples 2009 2nd generation iPhone3G feeling a bit left behind and very envious of people (including my wife's) iPhone4G/GS.

So as Apple would like, I followed the upgrade path... from iOS3 to iOS4, coming full stop at iOS4.2.1 where Apple then abandons those of us with older hardware. The abandonment is not so bad, but the forced upgrade to iOS4 and what the conspiracy theorist in me thinks was the deliberate introduction of performance issues with our older hardware to coerce help us decide to purchase of newer hardware. Almost everyone I know that had an iPhone3G felt that iOS upgrade to their iPhone was unbearable and with the newer, shinier and faster iPhones beckoning to them, the easiest thing to do to fix this problem was to go out and do your bi-annual hardware upgrade (mission accomplished Apple).

Of course, this isn't a great fix for me, since I don't have a cell plan and leaves me to suffer with my iPhone3G (iOS4.2.1) that is running about as fast as a 1998 PC... but what can you do?

I have tried to survive with the iPhone3G by doing this:

• Jailbroken the phone on iOS4.2.1: But the system was horribly unreliable. Simply clicking a link or trying to share something would crash it.
• Jailbroke the phone on iOS4.0.1 using jailbreakme.com: This I have found to be the most reliable jailbreak.
• Disabled multi-tasking, enabled multi-tasking.
• Set the processor to 600Mhz from the original limited 400Mhz.

No matter what I did to this phone it was at best sluggish, even when the multi-tasking and wallpapers disabled like Apple wanted. There seemed to be nothing that I could do to address this, so I was starting to accept the fact that I had to continue to use this hobbled piece of hardware never to run more than 3 apps at any one time.

But one day, while watching my feeds I had seen a Life Hacker article come up stating that I could have iOS5 like functionality and performance on my old iPhone3g, which definitely caught my attention. When I went to the site it was describing something called Whited00r.
When reading through the article in more detail and the Whited00r web site, it seemed too good to be true (and in some ways it is) but it seemed fairly easy to install. So after an entire day of trying to convince myself that my phone is already setup and that Whited00r is not worth the trouble I took the plunge and downloaded the software to get ready to install. Yay will power.

So I got started installing the OS and a few minor hiccups (I will describe and mention how to skip them in the install process below), I was up and running. But rather than getting into a wordy review of the OS, I will boil it down to bullet points to make the information quick and easy to digest:

The Good:

• It is blazing fast: If you were tormented by the speed of iOS4, you will feel like you have a brand new phone.
• Multi-Tasking: It has it, but you have to do a bit of reading to figure out how it works, so let me save you the trouble. It is not 'ON' by default, that is to say that you can't just return to the home screen and expect the app you were just in to show up on the task bar. You have to hold down the home button for about 2 seconds, at which time you will see a "Backgrounding Enabled" dialog appear and now you will find the app in the task list for as long as the app runs.
• Includes Wallpapers: Not only do you get to use wallpapers, but you get a selection of all the wall papers that have been available on iOS (even 5).
• Includes iOS5-ish applications: This is something I found to be misleading on the site, both in regards to the version of Whited00r and also how it is described. You are NOT getting any iOS5 applications at all, but what you do get are reasonable substitutions:

1. An up to date version of Cydia
2. A video recorder application (Cycorder) that seems to work great.
3. A 'reminders' application, much like the one found in iOS5 (if not the same one).
4. HDR camera application that from my testing doesn't appear to do much (based on the pictures taken with my wife's iPhone4 HDR).
5. A working terminal. I don't know about you, but I could never get a working terminal running on my jail broken device, so this was refreshing.
6. A 'custom' application store. This seems to be designed about taking out some of the pain of not being able to run iOS4 applications. They do mention that they are only doing this with free applications. It also enables you the ability to install a .ipa file right on the device from the internet without having to connect your device to a computer.
7. An 'iCloud' type application: This application appears to be designed around storing your application and phone configuration in the cloud, but on Dropbox instead of apple's servers. You can store some phone configuration and application data there, though I am not sure whether or not it works. Would also recommend creating a new phone specific Dropbox account to store the data.

The Ugly:

1. No Apple App Store Icon. While you can still access the Apple app store, you can't do it as simply as pressing the icon on the screen. It will instead take you to something called '3Store' which is where the Whited00r folks are 'fixing' free applications over to work with iOS3. The only way you can access the app store is via a web link in Safari.
2. It is iOS3.13. Despite the fact that it looks fresh and new and is responsive, under the hood it is iOS3 based. This means that a whole lot of games and apps that you may be used to won't work. You might find some like Twitter, Facebook & Citrix in the Whited00r app store, you will have to live without some iOS4 applications.
3. Must setup as new phone: There are no backups. Many places in the forums and guides it mentions that things may go wrong if you try to restore the phone to a previous state. So you need to start from scratch.

Overall, I would say it is a no-brainer to do the upgrade to Whited00r if you are running an iPhone3G. There isn't a game or application that I can't live without if I am getting the kind of performance that I am now with the custom firmware. However, if you have many existing jailbreak apps, a lot of data and some games you can't live without then don't bother. You will be spending a lot of time getting all of that back on.


Installation:

The process itself was pretty straight forward, and is quite a bit less involved then performing a regular jail break. But there are some caveats, so I will outline the install process and add in a few steps to avoid any delays in your move to Whited00r iOS:

1. Go to the Whited00r download page and download the ipsw file (appropriate for the device you are installing it on).
2. Do yourself a favour (to avoid iTunes 1600 errors) go here and download iReb. Put your device in a Pwned DFU mode by following the instructions in the iReb application before trying to restore the whited00r .ipsw file.
3. Once in DFU mode, open iTunes and once it detects that there is a device in DFU mode, hold down the shift key (Windows), alt (Mac... I think) and click the restore button.
4. Select the whited00r .ipsw and let iTunes load the firmware onto the device.
5. Once done, ensure that you set it up as a new phone in iTunes and do not restore from back up.
6. Also, do not sync any of your book marks yet as the whited00r team has an app store link in Safari bookmarks. I made the mistake and had to find a web page that offered an app that I could download.

That's it... just 6 easy steps to get from sluggish iOS4.x to a very fast functional whited00r OS. Give it a try, if you don't like it, you can always go back to iOS4 (though I hear there is or will be a version of whited00r based on iOS4).

Note: I am on the hunt for a way to put the App Store icon back on the iPhone, so if I do I will be sure to mention it here.

Update1: Interesting article in the same vein as my blog entry:



Update 2: Found a reasonable work around to the lack of access to the app store. Just enter this URL in Safari "itunes.apple.com/it/app/dropbox/id327630330?mt=8". Before it fully loads, stop the browser and make a bookmark both in the browser and on the home screen. Only problem is that it loads Safari first, also you will always go to dropbox (though you can change that to what you want).