Edward Redressing: Step 1 - Downgrade

I have been quite happy with my iPhone3G, despise its limitations due to apple's restrictive OS. I've had friends who jailbroke their iPhone, but I never felt the need to. Until recently that is. When Apple decided to bring out the 3GS, the 3G processor might have suffered just a bit to keep up with the new OS, but when IOS 4.0 came, with the brand new 4G with all its bells and whistles, it was the end of 3G life as 3Gers knew it. Even though most of the 4.0 features were not turned on on the 3G, the processor still couldn't handle the load. Or that's what I thought then -- the lagging and the crashing had to be a result of too much demand on the processor. It turns out that 4.0 just a crappy OS all and all. I now have almost all of the software features on my iPhone that I once coveted the 4G, and more. The only thing that I feel like I still lack, and I'm being honest, is the HD video-recorder and camera with the Flash. I like my reception just the way it is, thank you very much. Anyway here is my log, for those of you who might go the same way, or for in case I have to restore again: Step 1 - Downgrade. Specifics: iPhone 3G 16Gb from IOS 4.0.1 to 3.1.3 on Windows 7 (x64) using iTunes 9.2.1.4 and RecBoot 1.1 I decided to give up some new features of the 4.0, like the enhanced spotlight search and folders, to get rid of all the aforementioned problems. New to making any kind of software change on my iPhone, I was hesitant to download a previous firmware off the internet. But there is none officially available, even though there is a way to pick your software version to restore from... beats me. >> Download Previous Firmware
	Here is a good place to get any previous iPhone firmware; I went down to the previous one, 3.1.3 for the 3G.
>> Manual Backup
	Restoring your iPhone to an older firmware means potentially losing your profile and therefore your settings and data. This is because the backup Apple keeps will most likely not be backwards-compatible. Maybe it is, but Apple doesn't want to make your life easier, who knows. So I'd suggest manually backing up your info if you don't usually sync with a third-party software (like MS Outlook). Keeping your calendar and contacts on your Google account is pretty handy now that you can sync your iPhone calendar and contacts with Google OTA, just like Mail.
>> Restore via iTunes
	Once you're comfortable with/without your data backed-up, launch iTunes and plug in your Jesus Phones. On Windows, press Shift on your keyboard and click the iTunes Restore button. This lets you select a firmware file (.ipsw). Navigate to the location where you downloaded your firmware and select it. iTunes will continue with the restore process until the end when it moves on to verify the software (or something). Here, after downloading an entire firmware on your iPhone, iTunes will realize that you have rejected Apple's latest release, and because it cannot fathom as to why you would commit such an error in judgement, it will get confused and give you an error -- most likely the infamous error 1015. There is a whole family of restore errors that iTunes can throw at you, and you will find their definitions on Apple Support. Error 1015 is encountered when you downgrade your firmware. Why? Because doing so is not "supported".
>> Boot your Device outside iTunes
	iTunes will then prompt you to restore your iPhone again. Just ignore it, and close iTunes. Your iPhone is now locked in the recovery mode: this is where you see the picture telling you to connect to iTunes. You need a software to boot your device out of this mode: RecBoot did the trick for me. There were some issues with the previous version of RecBoot for Windows Vista and 7 users, so make sure to get the latest version that does NOT need libusb.dll installed. On the other hand, if you do end up needing to install this .dll, install RecBoot on an XP if you have one; you can use RecBoot separately from the rest of the downgrading/jailbreaking process. The instructions to RecBoot can be found on the site, and it's pretty straight forward. You launch the .exe and press "Exit Recovery Mode". Once this is done, you're iPhone will startup in the firmware you downloaded, and it will be activated. At this point, you would have successfully downgraded your iPhone.
Note: The new version of RecBoot might interfere with restore and jailbreak, even after it is closed. I found restarting my computer after using RecBoot removed any remaining processes that might conflict with other software accessing your iPhone.