How can I Ensure a Retired iPhone Stays Activated After 4+ years (and one replacement unit) I finally retired my iPhone 1 and bought a new 4S.  I'd like to continue to use the original iPhone as a low rent touch device.  

I'm paranoid about doing a hard software restore on the device, or otherwise putting putting it back into pre-activation state, as I'm no longer with AT&amp;T. 

I assume jail breaking can help me here, but my initial google research led to a lot of pages written for people already familiar with the jailbreak community and technology. 

So, there's three concrete questions I have.


Can I somehow reactivate an old iPhone that gets put back into pre-activation mode without resorting to a jail break when I'm no longer under contract with AT&amp;T
If not, how can I do so with jailbreaking? (keeping in mind I'm a jail break novice)
Is there a a "Jailbreak for Dummies" style intro that will cover the terminology used by the jailbreak community, as well as the various options out there so I can start to make sense of the community and answer my own questions in the future?
I had the same "issue" with my iPhone 1. gen a few months ago. It was like four years ago I've been messing around with jailbreaks and what not. A buddy of mine asked if he could borrow my retro iPhone and there I was googling after an updated jailbreak.

Like you, I found a lot of forums with a lot of different solutions but I ended up with finding a download-link to a .ipsw which was already jailbroken/unlocked with the latest 3.1.3 version. Then I went to iTunes and restored the thing, and voila!

Of course I cannot find the exact .ipsw right now, but you cannot 'brick' the iPhone 2G, so you should be safe no matter what :)