whited00r: The Last Hope for the Original iPhone

I have been singing the praises of whited00r for a long time – but it’s importance is greater than ever now.

The original iPhone is still a superb device, but it is severely showing its age – and at 8 years any smartphone would be. Its meager single-core 412 MHz processor and 128 MB RAM and only 2G/EDGE mobile data puts it at a very low end.

Another nail in its coffin is that it is stuck on OS 3 from 2009 – now five revisions old, it is really lacking in software support.

To get anything more than a phone that can call, text, email, and take pictures, you need to look at either a new phone or custom firmware.

For the past few years, the whited00r team have been producing customised firmware to add extra features and speed tweaks to keep the original iPhone going. With the release of whited00r 7 in 2013, they followed Apple’s iOS 7 revamped UI, bringing the new look to a long left behind device.

Using an original iPhone on stock firmware has severe limitations these days. It has no video recording, no multi-tasking, no notification centre or control centre, and no folders option, to mention just a few things.

The App Store still works on stock firmware, but good luck in finding apps that still run under OS 3. There are a few, but nothing that everyday users would need. It even missed out on the last compatible version that Apple introduced a while back for software as that requires iOS 4 – so it isn’t possible to install an older version of a current app without jailbreaking and shoe-horning it in.

One final thing to mention is if anyone who was introduced to the iPhone in the last two years they will be used to the new look UI – so anything iOS 6 and prior will look unfamiliar.

This is where whited00r saves the day.

whited00r 7 brings the new look UI to a device that runs OS 3 – adding in a lot of the newer features such as video recording, multitasking, notification centre, control centre, wallpapers, folders, and the lock screen camera access – as well as increasing speed tremendously – and the biggest addition is its own App Store.

This houses a collection of over 1200 OS 3 compatible versions of popular apps including Facebook, Twitter, WordPress, Skype, Spotify, Shazam, Dropbox, Adobe Reader, Dragon Dictation, and QuickOffice Pro, to name a few – and even games such as Fruit Ninja, Arkanoid, Annoying Orange Kitchen Carnage, and Deer Hunter 3D.

whited00r is incredibly fast and incredibly stable and all these tweaks and additions to an old device do not come at the expense of battery life – which also holds up surprisingly well on these old devices.

whited00r is compatible with the original iPhone and iPhone 3G as well as the iPod touch first gen and second gen. It is downloaded from the whited00r website, which has full installation instructions – it simply requires putting the phone in DFU (Device Firmware Upgrade) mode and restoring the phone in iTunes using custom ipsw.

For any owner of these devices, whited00r is now essential if you want to keep using these devices.

There is also an option to download a version of whited00r that will SIM-unlock your iPhone – which is handy if your phone is locked to a specific carrier.