There are 3 things which make the iPhone 3G better than the previous version : 3G, GPS and the 2.0 software upgrade. Owners of first generation iPhones can download and upgrade their devices for free to 2.0. Unless, of course, you need your iPhone to be unlocked, in which case you’re out of luck. Just a week after the iPhone 2.0 software was released, the iPhone Dev Team have come up with a jailbreaking and unlocking solution.

The iPhone Dev Team’s Pwnage Tool 2.0 was released on Sunday. It jailbreaks and unlocks older iPhones, and jailbreaks iPhone 3Gs and iPod Touches. You can’t unlock iPhone 3Gs just yet. Currently the software is Mac only.

After reading about several successful upgrade/jailbreak/unlock attempts, I decided to take the plunge myself. The Pwnage Tool is quite easy to use, with large Web 2.0-ish buttons. What the tool will do is create a custom firmware for your iPhone. After this is done, the software will guide you to put the iPhone in recovery mode. The final step is using iTunes to restore your iPhone using the new custom firmware.

The process did not go so smoothly for me. I had to retry a couple of times — my main difficulty was putting the iPhone into recovery mode, since it involves pressing and releasing two buttons with precise timing. Once I got it right, though, everything was done automatically.

So, a couple of hours later, I had a fully functioning, first generation iPhone running the 2.0 software on my mobile service provider’s network. Overall, I’m quite happy with the new software, which I will write about in a later post.

If you have an unlocked older iPhone on the 1.x software, should you upgrade? I would say, unless you are willing to take the risk, just wait a while until the unlocking tools get better. For iPhone 3G users, there’s little benefit in jailbreaking since there are hardly any “unauthorized” third party software which are currently available for 2.0.

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