Best Tips to UnBrick Your iPhone 4S/4/3GS (Guide)

A bricked iPhone resembles an ordinary brick in terms of its functionality, as it can’t be used for performing any of its usual tasks. If your home screen is blank, you’re unable to turn it on, unable to use it or make any calls and if your phone is not being recognized by iTunes, your iPhone may be bricked.

How To UnBrick iPhone

Your iPhone can sometimes get bricked when you attempt to replace the iPhone’s firmware with a slightly modified version (jailbreak), or when you upgrade or downgrade your iPhone firmware. In this article, we will be discussing how to un-brick your iPhone.

What is required

In order to un-brick the phone, you will need – your bricked device (iPhone), USB dock connector, USB 2.0 port on your computer/laptop and the latest version of iTunes installed on it. To begin with, you need to check if the phone is still working.

First Step

Switch on the phone to see if the Apple icon comes up, as a bricked iPhone can shut down completely sometimes. For repairing the iPhone, you need to put the device on Device Firmware Update (DFU) mode. To do so, press the power and the home button until the phone switches off completely. Afterwards, start your computer, load iTunes without connecting iPhone yet. Make sure that the USB connector is plugged in without the iPhone. Now, take the iPhone and press the home button. While doing so, plug in your iPhone with the USB connector without letting go off the home button.

Second Step

You should be seeing the Apple logo pop any moment now. The iPhone will be in recovery mode now, which will help you restore the phone to an earlier firmware version. Once restored, you can install all your data on to the iPhone and sync your apps, music etc.

If you do face any error while un-bricking your iPhone with the above mentioned method, try using another computer/laptop. Also, remember to update your iTunes software version, as that sometimes may result in an unexpected error.

Method 2

Step 1

Another method to un-brick your iPhone is to downgrade your firmware. To do so, you should have a copy of the 1.0.2 firmware (iPhone1,1_1.0.2_1C28_Restore.ipsw) stored in the iTunes folder destination (youruser/library/iTunes/iPhone Software Updates). Then, switch off the phone, start iTunes manually. At this point, iTunes will find iPhone on restore mode. Then, you need to click on the options key and then the restore button. The firmware file must be taken from the destination where we saved the copy earlier (youruser/library/iTunes/iPhone Software Updates).

Step 2

The phone will then restart, followed by an expected error at the end. At this point, we shut iTunes, and then launch iNDependence (only available for Macintosh users). The phone needs to be activated using an expanded 1.0.2 file (which could be made by creating a copy of the 1.0.2 ipsw file, then selecting “Open with…” from the Finder’s action menu and using BOMArchiveHelper.app which appears in the menu. A few errors come up on the screen later on, but in the end the iPhone gets activated. However, many people may require the paid version of iPhone Sim Free (IPSF) to get full functionality of the iPhone (send receive calls/sms/emails and surf the web) back.

As a conclusion, you should be aware of the consequences of jailbreaking the iPhone’s firmware. If the above mentioned methods also do not assist you in un-bricking your iPhone, then please consider taking the device to Apple or a third party repair center.