DTMark Posted April 15, 2016 Share Posted April 15, 2016 Once upon a time I had an Apple iPhone 5S that worked perfectly. After a series of OS updates, it is now riddled with bugs and something seems to go wrong with it every day. I currently have iOS 9.2.1. I've managed to block Apple software updates at home so it doesn't even prompt for newer versions. Looking at when I bought it, I think I want iOS 8.4.1. Which I can download at https://ipsw.me/ However I'm led to believe that this isn't going to be easy. Indeed what I'm reading suggests that it's going to be impossible. I thought I'd be able to Google this and come across a handy guide, but it all seems a bit "Mr. Robot" and shrouded in technical mysteries. Is it impossible or am I stuck with it as it is? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thombleached Posted April 15, 2016 Share Posted April 15, 2016 I don't think it's possible, as to downgrade apple needs to be actively signing the firmware your trying to change to. 9.3.1 appears to be the minimum still being signed for the 5s http://api.ineal.me/tss/status Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thombleached Posted April 15, 2016 Share Posted April 15, 2016 Only way I can think you could do it is buy one off ebay that's been left at the IOS version your after, fully backup your current and then load it on the new phone. Though I've no idea if you can backup from a forward IOS. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Masked Tulip Posted April 15, 2016 Share Posted April 15, 2016 You may as well consider putting a jailbreak version on if you are going to do this - get some extra flexibility. Oops, forgot the link: http://www.iphonehacks.com/download-jailbreak Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DTMark Posted April 15, 2016 Author Share Posted April 15, 2016 You may as well consider putting a jailbreak version on if you are going to do this - get some extra flexibility. It would be nice if I could plug it in to the PC and just drag and drop music files on to it without having to use that piece of bloatware called iTunes. Mind you I was able to use Media Monkey to do just that until an iOS upgrade broke that. I'd just like it not to crash when I use the torch and make the mistake of turning it upside down, to show the right email counts in folders, not to change the sender email address to match the recipient's when both are in the contacts and then lock up (guess: it's trying to send via the wrong SMTP server), to always beep when I get a text message instead of just most of the time, for the odd Wi-Fi dropouts to go away, I could go on.. Ironically I moved away from Windows Phone, which worked very well, because of certain issues that were addressed in updated versions, but you couldn't actually get them because the provider/manufacturer didn't "make them available". Now I have the opposite issue in that the OS updates have been pushed out and each introduces more bugs than the last one had while not actually fixing the trail of broken things behind it. I can see how to download 8.4.1 but it won't restore in iTunes. It seems to need some trickery with the device's hosts file to trick the device into thinking the OS has been "signed" by redirecting the DNS to a third-party server. I was hoping to find a one-pager "Here's how to do it". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DTMark Posted April 15, 2016 Author Share Posted April 15, 2016 You may as well consider putting a jailbreak version on if you are going to do this - get some extra flexibility. Oops, forgot the link: http://www.iphonehacks.com/download-jailbreak Ah, just seen the link. Doesn't work for the iOS version that I have "There is currently no jailbreak available for iOS 9.2.1, iOS 9.2 or iOS 9.3." Perhaps I need to be patient and wait for one to become available. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
R K Posted April 15, 2016 Share Posted April 15, 2016 9.3.1 seems to be latest update. Not sure why you wouldnt upgrade to latest iOS -perhaps thats your problem? Isnt that the point of buying Apple? If you buy an iphone and want to use it like an android phone then why not buy an android phone in the first place? Did you buy it 2nd hand off ebay or new? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Masked Tulip Posted April 15, 2016 Share Posted April 15, 2016 Ah, just seen the link. Doesn't work for the iOS version that I have "There is currently no jailbreak available for iOS 9.2.1, iOS 9.2 or iOS 9.3." Perhaps I need to be patient and wait for one to become available. Nah, it should work (Quick caveat, that I may be wrong.) What is says on that page is that there is not a jailbreak version for the IOS version you currently have. But you don't want that do you - you want to go back to a previous version of IOS don't you? That is there to download. You are effectively, for example, running a Windows 10 PC and are going to wipe the hard drive to stick on Windows 7. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DTMark Posted April 15, 2016 Author Share Posted April 15, 2016 9.3.1 seems to be latest update. Not sure why you wouldnt upgrade to latest iOS -perhaps thats your problem? Isnt that the point of buying Apple? If you buy an iphone and want to use it like an android phone then why not buy an android phone in the first place? Did you buy it 2nd hand off ebay or new? Bought new/outright, just after the iPhone 6 came out and the price of the 5S went down. I don't want to upgrade it any further because I can't honestly see any difference or improvement since 8.4.1, and every update breaks something that used to work properly. It is now rather like an Android phone (from a few years back, may be better now) with apps closing themselves and having to turn it off and on again when it begins to "misbehave". Could be battery failure, except that it still holds charge for about two days so I don't think it's that. I've dug out my old Windows phone and put that on charge while I "experiment" with the Apple one in case it all goes horribly wrong and I manage to kill it completely. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Masked Tulip Posted April 15, 2016 Share Posted April 15, 2016 I've dug out my old Windows phone and put that on charge while I "experiment" with the Apple one in case it all goes horribly wrong and I manage to kill it completely. Hundreds of thousands of people jailbreak their iphones all the time and downgrade to previous IOS versions. It should be simple enough. Just back up all your data beforehand and make sure you turn off any PIN code security on the phone as you don't want the phone going to sleep halfway through the process. Should be just fine. Once you do it once you will want to do it again and again. Oh, same is true for jailbreaking your iphone. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DTMark Posted April 15, 2016 Author Share Posted April 15, 2016 In a slightly comical way I've just had an SMS on my iPhone to tell me that my Windows phone needs a new app password (same phone number). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Masked Tulip Posted April 15, 2016 Share Posted April 15, 2016 In a slightly comical way I've just had an SMS on my iPhone to tell me that my Windows phone needs a new app password (same phone number). Let them fight it out over who wins you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Masked Tulip Posted April 15, 2016 Share Posted April 15, 2016 Let us know when you have done it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gaztastic Posted April 15, 2016 Share Posted April 15, 2016 This might be helpful : http://osxdaily.com/2010/11/23/how-to-use-ipsw-files/ The only word of caution for all of this is that the apps on the appstore tend to upgrade often, so if you roll your phone back to 8.x, you may find there's very little that will work on it. Good luck Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Snafu Posted April 15, 2016 Share Posted April 15, 2016 Aaaaaaandroid....I know you love it really. Deep down. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DTMark Posted April 15, 2016 Author Share Posted April 15, 2016 Let us know when you have done it. It's not having it. It knows the phone is already "past" 8.4.1 so it won't work It needs a more hard-core "reformat the hard drive and install the older OS from scratch" approach. I wondered if another option might be to upgrade my Windows 8 phone to 8.1 or 10 but there is still no upgrade path like Apple has managed. So the Windows phone is still pretty useless since apps have to use phone memory to store files (they can't use the space on the SD card), and just a few audiobooks uses up all the memory, that being the reason I abandoned it in the first place. I think I'm stuck with the buggy iPhone unless I buy an older one with 8.4.1 on it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrPin Posted April 15, 2016 Share Posted April 15, 2016 The latest gadget is not usually much better than the last one. Stop buying them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Masked Tulip Posted April 15, 2016 Share Posted April 15, 2016 It's not having it. It knows the phone is already "past" 8.4.1 so it won't work It needs a more hard-core "reformat the hard drive and install the older OS from scratch" approach. I wondered if another option might be to upgrade my Windows 8 phone to 8.1 or 10 but there is still no upgrade path like Apple has managed. So the Windows phone is still pretty useless since apps have to use phone memory to store files (they can't use the space on the SD card), and just a few audiobooks uses up all the memory, that being the reason I abandoned it in the first place. I think I'm stuck with the buggy iPhone unless I buy an older one with 8.4.1 on it. Nah, your current version is too far advanced to go back to 8.4.1 - this is one of the limit of IOS. Apple basically f*cks you... or something like that just in case Apple's legal team are reading this. You need to use itunes to go back to the version that Apple will allow you to go back to. It might not allow you to go back to anything at all. If you go back to the oldest IOS that Apples allows you then find the jailbroken version that you can go back to from that version of IOS. Apple knows about the jailbroken versions of IOS and is constantly updating its versions to stop the jailbroken versions from working. So don't faff about - get on itunes and see whether you still have the option of going back to your previous version of IOS. If so, do that. Then go back to that page I gave you and find out which jailbroken version you can use. Personally, I would not bother with that and simply go back to the last available jailbroken version. Anyhow, yaboo sucks for buying Apple. If you want control over your phone then buy an android. We really are not doing this well here are we. First a windows phone, now an apple. Get yourself an android and you can f*ck around to your heart's content. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DTMark Posted April 15, 2016 Author Share Posted April 15, 2016 It will only go back to 9.3 which is actually later than I have now. The jailbreaks seem to only work on whatever the current version is, they don't do "downgrades". I had an Android phone once. They must surely be better now than they were but my one, a Samsung Galaxy thing from a few years ago, was a total shambles. Nothing worked properly and consistently and it was forever needing powering off and on again and regular factory resets. Just opening Google Maps crashed the whole phone. It needed so much work that I find it hard to believe it's ready for market yet. Maybe it is.. But then the advantage of Apple - it being "flawless" - died when iOS 9 came out. I'm not that tolerant of crap software given what I do for a living and it's no "one thing" but a culmination of more and more bugs that has me investigating some kind of fix and reluctant to upgrade to the latest version because while it might well fix the old bugs, history shows that it won't, and it will bring new ones. Software/testing isn't what it once was. Even Outlook 2016 was riddled with so many bugs (just adding two mail accounts, once Exchange and one IMAP, didn't work) I ended up having to uninstall it altogether and go back to 2013. It seems that the race for the latest thing sees testing go out of the window. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StainlessSteelCat Posted April 15, 2016 Share Posted April 15, 2016 As I understand it, there is only a small window of opportunity around release of a new version where you can upgrade and then downgrade to the last version. Perhaps your phone is simply getting old - 9.3 was working perfectly fine on my iPhone 5s (recently upgraded to a secondhand 6 plus). You could try a full back up, clear all settings/data etc and then restore. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thombleached Posted April 15, 2016 Share Posted April 15, 2016 It's not having it. It knows the phone is already "past" 8.4.1 so it won't work It needs a more hard-core "reformat the hard drive and install the older OS from scratch" approach. I wondered if another option might be to upgrade my Windows 8 phone to 8.1 or 10 but there is still no upgrade path like Apple has managed. So the Windows phone is still pretty useless since apps have to use phone memory to store files (they can't use the space on the SD card), and just a few audiobooks uses up all the memory, that being the reason I abandoned it in the first place. I think I'm stuck with the buggy iPhone unless I buy an older one with 8.4.1 on it. See. Told you As I said earlier, you can only go back as far as apple are signing the OS. Mainly to stop people downgrading to a version which has been jailbroken. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DTMark Posted April 15, 2016 Author Share Posted April 15, 2016 As I understand it, there is only a small window of opportunity around release of a new version where you can upgrade and then downgrade to the last version. Perhaps your phone is simply getting old - 9.3 was working perfectly fine on my iPhone 5s (recently upgraded to a secondhand 6 plus). You could try a full back up, clear all settings/data etc and then restore. The screen has a bit of a dead-spot at the top right but otherwise it seems fine. Except it's a lot slower than it once was after successive "upgrades" which don't seem to actually bring anything new at all apart from adverts for Apple Music when I go into "Music". I'll do a factory reset and then let it upgrade to 9.3 later on and see what that accomplishes. Otherwise I guess it's a case of either a new Windows 10 phone or simply continuing to wait to see if Apple fix the bugs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Masked Tulip Posted April 15, 2016 Share Posted April 15, 2016 Apple have admitted today, in a roundabout way, that one of their devices has a maximum 3 year life cycle. This has been known for years but, hey, nice of them to admit it via their new recycling green initative. I have had Samsung Galaxy's - great hardware - but I stopped buying them as the price is just ridiculous now. If you are going to pay that much money you should buy an iphone as they, at least, have some re-sale value. What cheesed me off about Samsung's though is their TouchWiz version of Android that they use - it is slow and so, despite paying a premium for superior hardware, they thing slows down and crawls. Also, you are lucky to get one update of Android during the life cycle of a Samsung - after that, they forget about you. Cr*p. They just don't support their own phones in terms of OS so you find yourself hideously behind the latest Android stuff. Not something you can afford to do if you work in IT. I bought a Samsung Galaxy with lots of extra memory but then discovered, as did all the buyers, that you could not move apps to it so, effectively, it was worthless. It had a tiny partition for the OS and for apps, which filled quickly and slowed the phone to a crawl, despite the phone have loads of free GB on a separate partition. Sod that - never buying an android again. The latest S7 Galaxy phones still sorta have this problem - they have not implemented the adaptive features of Android where you can use all memory as one big partition including even the SD card. Rubbish. Basically Galaxy is dumbing down Android. Nah, the way to go is to buy as basic a version of Android that you can and then get all the latest updates. Pay not more than £200 for an Android phone and update it every 12 or 15 months. That way you stay up to date and have some fun with your phones. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Masked Tulip Posted April 15, 2016 Share Posted April 15, 2016 I'll do a factory reset and then let it upgrade to 9.3 later on and see what that accomplishes. Otherwise I guess it's a case of either a new Windows 10 phone or simply continuing to wait to see if Apple fix the bugs. Buy yourself a white android tht physically looks like an iphone - Vodafone Smart 6 in silver looks close - and then install one of the IOS launchers on it that makes it look like an iphone. See how long it takes for all your iphone friends to realise. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Masked Tulip Posted April 16, 2016 Share Posted April 16, 2016 Lumia 650 for £145 from Amazon. http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01ABU7UI8/?tag=hotukdealsev-21 If you have Amazon Prime this apparently gives you a tenner off - 30PRIMENOW Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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