Restoring a new non-jailbroken iPhone using a jailbroken back-up

[chasev2]

So this is my situation. My first gen iphone broke last week. (The battery exploded, to be precise, but that's another story.) I used my unlocked first gen phone with T-Mobile. A few days ago I bought a non-jailbroken 3GS off of ebay. However, I was unaware of the issue with the jailbreak before I bought it and indeed, the phone has been upgraded to 4.0. This is fine. I am able and OK with waiting for the proper jailbreak/unlock to surface.

My question is this -- the new phone has already been activated. I can connect to my wifi network and use the web browser, etc without having a SIM card in the phone. There are, of course, no music, apps or contacts on the phone. When I connect the phone to iTunes it asks if I want to set it up as a new phone or restore from the last backup of my old iphone. Ideally, I would like to be able to use the phone as an ipod while I wait for the jailbreak/unlock. As long as I don't put the SIM in, can I restore the new phone using my old backup and recover all my previous apps, music and settings? Or if I try to do that, will I lose the functionality I currently have?

Please don't answer if you're not sure. Thanks.

[j3st3r]

it is never recommended to restore from the backup of a jailbroken phone, my advice would be to set up as new and sync your contacts, apps, music, to the best of my knowledge syncing with iTunes will not disable phone, but you can wait for someone that know for 100% to respond

[chasev2]

Is it possible to set the device up as new if I don't put a SIM card in it? (Since I obviously wouldn't want to set it up as new with a T-Mobile SIM card in it at this point.) Being able to have music and apps on it would be nice, but I don't want to lose the wifi and internet functionality I currently have if that's not possible.

UPDATE -- OK, having read some more topics, I've come to the conclusion that syncing with an old backup would almost certainly cause the new phone to revert to an "activation needed" state. I don't want that.

Does anyone know if the other option -- setting it up as a new phone -- would have the same effect?

UPDATE #2 -- Alright, hopefully someone can answer this question. If I click "done" on the screen displayed below, will it simply take me to the iPhone summary page from which I can sync music, apps, etc?

[THE TECH]

Interestingly enough, I did a restore from my 3GS to my new 4 when I got it and while it got rid of the new categories setup on the 4, I did somehow manage to keep my custom carrier name and all my contacts, messages, etc. even though the new phone is not jailbroken. So far, so good.

[chasev2]

Did you have an AT&T SIM in your iphone 4 during the restore process?

[THE TECH]

Did you have an AT&T SIM in your iphone 4 during the restore process?

Yep!

[chasev2]

Did you have any issue with space disappearing? I've read some posts that have said up to 1GB of storage space is shown as used after a restore from a backup.

But I'm thinking that might pertain to whether the user resized the root partition for cydia apps. I remember the recommendation being to expand the root partition by about 500MB. I didn't change the root partition size at all since I never installed much from cydia.

Any thoughts?

[SgtDeko]

Interestingly enough, I did a restore from my 3GS to my new 4 when I got it and while it got rid of the new categories setup on the 4, I did somehow manage to keep my custom carrier name and all my contacts, messages, etc. even though the new phone is not jailbroken. So far, so good.

I actually did the same exact thing with my 4. But my question is, do you know how I can fix my carrier to go back to default At&t? I've removed the advanced preferences and it still shows up. I just want to make it a regular jailbroken phone without messing it up.

[j3st3r]

you will have to either restore and setup as new or install either fakecarrier or makeitmine to change it back to AT&T, that is why in my first post I said it is not recommended to restore from backup, other issues can include instability and rapid battery drain, if you notice any of those things you will need to restore and setup as new

[SgtDeko]

Actually no, I don't have any of those issues. Phones working great and all. I didn't know I'm not supposed to do that until I did do it and noticed my carrier changed.
But I do know about the other tweaks. I just don't want it there anymore without having to re-setup my phone the way I want. Trying to avoid the restore.

[j3st3r]

I just don't want it there anymore without having to re-setup my phone the way I want. Trying to avoid the restore.

then install fake carrier and change to AT&T, that's the only way without a restore

[SgtDeko]

Thank you.