If you know in advance where you’ll be going, you’ve got two options for making your life easier:

• Option One: Preload your Google Maps cache

Before you go, fire up Google Maps and make sure it’s looking at the area you want.  Make sure you zoom up tight on the areas you’re going to visit, and have the walking or driving directions already displayed.  Then quit the app and don’t look again until you’re there.  If you’ve got an iPhone 3G or an iPod Touch with OS 3.0, your GPS will work and show you the little dot.  And a 3GS will show the compass heading.  Unfortunately, this trick only works once or twice before you need a data signal again, unless you’re staying in that small area.

• Option Two: Use screencaps!

I did this before my Europe trip.  I knew in each city, I would want walking directions from the train station to the hotel.  I knew where each was, so I fired up Google Maps and got walking directions.  Then, I stepped through them, and on each screen I pressed Home and Power briefly, which captures a picture of your screen to your photo album.  The result?

Very handy.  And I didn’t spend a dime on Data Roaming overseas.

My phone seems more stable, but it’s only been a few hours since I’ve done it, so we’ll see. I’m hoping it addresses the slowness and increased application crashes I’d been experiencing since going to 2.x. That being said, the wireless Exchange syncing (which also works with Zimbra) has been totally worth the other instabilities, and why I didn’t really consider going back to 1.x.

As in my prior post on the subject, this one was fairly straightforward. Only difference is this time I used Expert Mode, which allowed me to turn off the pineapple logo at boot (the logo always seemed cheesy to me), and pre-populate my phone with the Cydia apps I wanted.

Also, I never have good luck getting into recovery mode, since my power button is kind of touchy (my iPhone’s been dropped more than I’d like to admit). However, an easier way to get it into recovery mode is to power it off traditionally, then hold down the Home button while plugging the phone into the dock connector. Keep Home held until the recovery screen comes up.

Now there’s Installer and Cydia on my phone. I’m hoping I can get Pool and Lockbox working again, those are the apps I miss the most.

Guess how I’m writing this post.

The iPhone Dev Team released their tool, and it works. It’s not as nice and simple as the last tool I used, but it does the job. It just required a little more footwork.

First up, you need to upgrade to iTunes 7.7, download the 2.0 firmware from Apple (but don’t install it yet), and do a sync to backup your phone.

You’ll also need a couple of Bootloader files, and you can find links in the comments on the above link.

The steps are pretty much then:

1. Close iTunes
2. Open the Pwnage tool
3. Select your phone (mine’s a first gen).
4. Select the downloaded firmware
5. Say no to searching the web for a bootloader, and yes to browsing
6. Do it again for the next bootloader
7. It’ll ask to continue, and ask if you’re a legit iPhone user. My understanding is it’s asking if you’re an AT&T user or not. I’m not, so I said “No”.
8. It’ll churn, get an admin authentication, and finally ask if you’ve used their tool on the phone before. I hadn’t, so I said “no”.
9. At this point the tool failed, but research tells me all it does is try to put your phone into DFU (factory restore) mode. That’s okay, I know how to do that (power down, hold power and home until apple logo appears, then release power until factory restore screen appears).
10. Fire up iTunes. It’ll say it needs to restore your phone. That’s fine, just hold down option while clicking “Restore”.
11. Browse to the .ipsw on your desktop, and select it.
12. Then the phone goes through some machinations and sits on a pineapple screen for a few minutes.
13. The phone will reboot – the pineapple replaces the apple logo.
14. After reboot, it says (on the phone) it’s flashing the bootloader and “DO NOT INTERRUPT!!!” So, don’t interrupt it.
15. After bootloader, it’ll flash the baseband (again, on-screen phone message). Takes up to 2 minutes according to the screen, and that’s accurate.
16. The phone reboots. And, voila, I’ve got a T-Mobile 2.0 iPhone (minus all my apps, natch).

I’m actually planning to get a 3G iPhone when I don’t have to stand in a line to do it, so this is mostly to tide me over and let me try the new features before then. This tool won’t SIM unlock a 3G iPhone either, but since T-Mobile has no 3G here, I was planning to switch to AT&T then anyway.

So far, I’ve been having much fun with the App Store. At some point over the next few days I’ll try to get as many of the old apps I loved so much back onto my phone, assuming they work with 2.0.

iJailBreak is literally a one-click Jailbreak/Unlock. I fired up iTunes, upgraded my phone to 1.1.3 (no revirginizing required, hooray), then ran iJailBreak. 3 minutes later, I had a phone with the latest firmware, unlocked and up on T-Mobile. I’d no idea it got that easy.

It’s friggin’ genius, I tells ya. Thanks, Arix and Ben. I’ve donated to the cause — this is amazing.

So… angry…

Wouldn’t it be grand if we had laws like that?

Enjoy.

Still, stay away from 1.1.1 if you’re unlocking or using apps.

I’m going to be in Europe for a few days in November, and wondered how I’d go about leaving my phone on, making use of WiFi where I could, but not have my Edge data connection active. The 1.1.1 firmware lets you prevent Edge roaming, but I’m not going there. So, along comes Services.app — this is something that should be in from the beginning.

It lets you individually control each of the following services:

• Edge
• Bluetooth
• WiFi
• sshd

This is *exactly* what I need. Now I can keep my Edge turned off while overseas, but still be able to make and take calls, and avail myself of any WiFi hotspots I encounter. Marvelous!

Details on the link, but the basics are that you need Intstaller.app and the BSD Subsystem to make it work. But if you need this application, you’ve already got that!