Since iPhone firmware 1.1.2 was released (read here) people have been hacking away at it to see if they can get it jailbroken, and well, they did. But, more on the jailbreaking in a minute first I want to mention to all of you a little something interesting about iPhone 1.1.2, custom ringtones.

If you remember back when ringtones were first introduced into iTunes and the iPhone there was a little workaround where if you took a 40 seconds or less AAC file, change the extension from .m4a to .m4r and double click it, the file would be added to iTunes as a ringtone. Well, with iTunes 7.3 this works again, but what is different now is that with iPhone firmware 1.1.2 they actually work!

So if you want custom ringtones on your iPhone without having to pay $15 for iToner, download iPhone firmware 1.1.2 here (to install iPhone firmware 1.1.2 option-click or shift-click “check for update” in iTunes and select the ipsw file downloaded) and make sure you have iTunes 7.3 installed. Here’s the steps in list form:

1. Encode your 40 seconds or less ringtone in AAC format.
2. Change the extension of the AAC file from .m4a to .m4r
3. Double click the .m4r file to add it to iTunes as a ringtone
4. Sync
5. Enjoy your custom ringtone

Now back to the whole jailbreaking story…

I have to be honest with you, I am not planning on jailbreaking my phone and actually don’t think that you should either. In my opinion you should just wait until February to get apps. But, I know that a lot of you would like to jailbreak your phone so…. read TUAW’s post about jailbreaking 1.1.2. The jailbreaking process takes about 10 minutes and does involve downgrading to 1.1.1.

Update: the limit for ringtones is actually 40.04 seconds.