IS this phone a 3GS or a 3G

nerak99 · Oct 30, 2012

I have restored a bricked "3G" back to 4.1 BB 5.13.04 nad was hoping to get it back to being a stock 3G. I have been stopped by a not eligible message that does not appear to be the well known hosts file issue.

Redsn0w reports the phone as white when in fact it has a chromed back.

The bottom line is

Model No.:A1303 FCC ID BCGA1303A IC ID 579C-A1303A

willerz2 · Oct 30, 2012

That would be an iPhone 3GS.

Source:Identifying iPhone models

Skull One · Oct 30, 2012

What???? Us hitmen can't answer the question for you? We not good enough?

Oh wait, you didn't mean "wiseguy" you meant "wise guy". Never mind.....

The 3GS was an upgrade of the CPU, GPU and doubling of internal RAM (256MB). It basically was twice as fast as the 3G in overall performance.

Skull One · Oct 30, 2012

I wasn't shooting for the improper part, but the lack of a space gave me a funny way to answer without being to dry about it.

nerak99 · Oct 31, 2012

I think some one may have changed the bezel/case since
uname -a gives

Darwin iPhone-3G 10.4.0 Darwin Kernel Version 10.4.0: Wed Oct 20 20:04:20 PDT 2010; root:xnu-1504.58.28~3/RELEASE_ARM_S5L8900X iPhone1,2 arm N82AP Darwin

And also, the serial number returns as 3G from AppleCare's site

willerz2 · Oct 31, 2012

Wait wtf? The A1303 is for the 3GS for US and the A1325 is for the 3GS from China. 1324 and 1241 are the 3G models. Well in either cases, you can test it out directly. Remove any and all gs.apple.com from your host files and untick "Set Host to Cydia" in TinyUmbrella if applicable. Then put your device into DFU mode and try installing a 3GS iOS and a 3G iOS. One of them will just tell you straight up that it's rejected since it's incompatible, the other will probably give you an error of some sort that we haven't closed the loophole for yet.

nerak99 · Nov 1, 2012

Yep, tried that and got incompatible. I think the simple answer is that someone put a metallic coated back panel and bezel on from an iPhone 3GS. What puzzled me for a while is that the Apple site implies that 3GS has a side loading mini sim and this has a top load older style sim. Apparently the 3GS has a top loading sim (or at least can have).
Anyway, the uname -a response is pretty definitive don't you think?

Anyway, I now have a working 3G on 4.2 with BB 06.15.00 and everything on the phone appears to work OK.

willerz2 · Nov 1, 2012

Scratch my last response. I read it as Darwin iPhone 3GS rather than 3G. I should've read further on with the build type on the iOS. iPhone2,1 is the 3GS. My bad for misinforming