Is our iPhone 3G bricked?

[fishbrush]

My friend's wife's iPhone 3G was jailbroken and unlocked running iOS 4.2.1, I believe. They tried to do updates on it or something, and now the iPhone is stuck in recovery mode.

They're asking me to help them get it working again, so I tried to restore the iPhone in iTunes to iOS 4.2.1, 4.1, and 4.0.1. No matter what, at the very end when it was completing the restore and it says it is "Restoring iPhone Firmware" it seems to get stuck and I get the message: "The iPhone could not be restored. An unknown error occured (1002)".

After that, I got the iPhone into DFU mode and found out the ECID of the iPhone via the System Profiler in OS X. Then in TinyUmbrella I manually entered the ECID and created a custom device. I tried to save the SHSH of the iPhone in TinyUmbrella, but it said "Found [0] shsh files to cache...". Does this mean that my friend did not save the SHSH in Cydia when they jailbroke their iPhone 3G?

What are my options now? What can be done to get the iPhone working at least, even without a jailbreak?

[j3st3r]

since you have a mac create a custom firmware and restore to that. here is a guide for you

iClarified - iPhone - How to Jailbreak and Unlock Your iPhone 3G Using PwnageTool (Mac) [4.2.1]

[Orby]

My friend's wife's iPhone 3G was jailbroken and unlocked running iOS 4.2.1, I believe. They tried to do updates on it or something, and now the iPhone is stuck in recovery mode.

They're asking me to help them get it working again, so I tried to restore the iPhone in iTunes to iOS 4.2.1, 4.1, and 4.0.1. No matter what, at the very end when it was completing the restore and it says it is "Restoring iPhone Firmware" it seems to get stuck and I get the message: "The iPhone could not be restored. An unknown error occured (1002)".

After that, I got the iPhone into DFU mode and found out the ECID of the iPhone via the System Profiler in OS X. Then in TinyUmbrella I manually entered the ECID and created a custom device. I tried to save the SHSH of the iPhone in TinyUmbrella, but it said "Found [0] shsh files to cache...". Does this mean that my friend did not save the SHSH in Cydia when they jailbroke their iPhone 3G?

What are my options now? What can be done to get the iPhone working at least, even without a jailbreak?

The 3G still has at least iOS 4.2.1 signed for it (by necessity--that is the most recent version of iOS for the 3G), so something doesn't add up there.

Also, I've never seen error 1002, nor do my sources know specifically what is causing it... so I'm not much help here. You may want to try and get a warranty swapout (if you are somehow still under warranty).

[fishbrush]

since you have a mac create a custom firmware and restore to that. here is a guide for you

iClarified - iPhone - How to Jailbreak and Unlock Your iPhone 3G Using PwnageTool (Mac) [4.2.1]

In PwnageTool, in Expert Mode when I browse for the IPSW it tells me "Wrong firmware selected", despite it being the right one (4.1.0). I've tried downloading 4.1.0 from several sources as well and I still get that message in PwnageTool.

In Simple Mode, it says "No firmware bundle found! Would you like to search the web for this file?" and when I select "yes" it opens my default browser and does a Google search for "iPhone 3G, 3GS, 4 4.1 ipsw download".

I've tried to get 4.1 from a few sources with no luck and same messages from PwnageTool.

[j3st3r]

if you are using 4.1 ipsw try downloading pwnagetool 4.1, not sure if newer versions are backwards compatible

[fishbrush]

if you are using 4.1 ipsw try downloading pwnagetool 4.1, not sure if newer versions are backwards compatible

You're right, had to use an older version of PwnageTool. It let me create a custom ISPW but when I used it in iTunes to do the restore it still gave me the same 1002 error message at the end.

[j3st3r]

i found this when searching, you can give it a try Restore Error 1002 fix! - MacRumors Forums

i also read a couple of things that people said it was hardware so not sure if the above will work for you but it can't hurt to try

this is from the apple web site

Error 1002, 1011, 1012, 1014: These errors may indicate a hardware issue with your device. Follow the steps in this article. Also attempt to restore while connected with a known-good 30-pin Dock Connector cable, computer, and network to isolate this issue to the device. The MAC address being missing or the IMEI being the default value (00 499901 064000 0) can also confirm a hardware issue.