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How To: Steps To Overclock Your iPhone / iPod Touch?

Posted by Ben on May 12, 2010

Do you know actually iPhone 3GS has 833 MHz processor but Apple has limited its clock speed to only 600 Mhz. Similarly iPhone 3G has a clock speed of 600 MHz which is limited to only 412 Mhz by Apple. Inorder to overclock your iPhone or iPod Touch, you must have a jailbroken device with iFile app installed via Cydia. If you haven't jailbreaked your iDevice yet, use Spirit tool which is capable of jailbreaking iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad running on latest firmwares with newer bootroms.

For those who don't know: iFile is a file manager for iPhone and iPod Touch which can cut, copy, paste, rename, email and zip files on your device including the system files. In order to make sure iFile works properly, install file-cmds, zip, unzip, p7zip, gzip, bzip2 and unrar through Cydia.
iPhone iPod Touch Overclocking
All you have to do is to rename the file in iPhone OS which actually monitors the processor. This will make your iPhone or iPod Touch processor to run at its optimum clock speed.

Steps To Overclock iPhone or iPod Touch

  1. Navigate to the following path with iFile app:

    2. System/Library/System Configuration/PowerManagement.bundle/

  2. You will find a file named "com.apple.SystemPowerProfileDefault.plist"
  3. Tap on the "Blue Arrow" next to the file.
  4. Rename this file to "SystemPowerProfileDefaultBACKUP.plist" so that your iPhone may not be able to find / recognize the file. Inorder to rename a file using iFile, just touch the field with the file name and it becomes editable itself.
  5. Reboot your iPhone. Thats it! Your iPhone is overclocked now.

Checkout the difference in speed of an overclocked vs non-overclocked iPhone:

DISCLAIMER: Please follow the above procedure at your own risk. We do not take any responsibility for any kind of damage caused to your device by following the above procedure.

You may also like to read:

[via HackYouriPhone]



  • anon…

    hee hee this post is stupid. If you remove this file, you're the biggest idiot in the world. :P
    If you really want to overclock an iPod or iPhone, open that plist mentioned and look for ReduceClockSpeed or something like that and change the value to 0. Reboot and there we go, ovrclk'd.

    *there is a thermal management bundle in the same directory, but I don't know what it does. Maybe preventative measures for overheating. (processor dies should never be taken over 105 C)

  • wow

    Wow. It probably got faster because when you reboot, it cleans up the background processes.

  • Alex

    This does not overclock your CPU.
    There's a reason why Apple underclocked the CPUs: In order to preserve battery life and to prevent ridiculous overheating.
    However, changing the .plist here is useless, and is in fact, more damaging.
    The file here tells your iDevice to run more efficiently, and deactivating that would merely tell it to run less efficiently.
    An example would be your processor underclocking itself when locked--to preserve battery.

  • Michael

    hi i just overclocked my iphone 3g ios4.2.1 with iFile but not changes on cpu speed i SysInfoPlus . does anyone know the propa way to overclock iphone 3g running ios 4.2.1 and proper way of checking CPU Speed ?

    Please Help...

  • Breaking Benjamin

    i just overlocked my ipod touch 4g and its a bigg difference and im running ios 4.2.1 tethered and its really fast

  • Alber

    I think it depends on what OS you have:I mean, my iPhone 4(iOS4) has that file with no values, you can see some words but nothing related to speed.I followed this tutorial and the result were the same than before tricking.Maybe it works in 3.xxx firmwares.

  • Andre Messado

    I am using a 16GB 3GS and this does nothing. I used 'iPhone explorer' (mac and windows) to browse the iphone on my computer and changed the file referenced in this article. I then rebooted the phone and ran a 'geekbench' test using the geekbench app. There was NO change in processor speed and the test results were the same compared to before I changed the file.

  • Mat

    Is there any app to check the new clocked speed?

    • Ke

      Try SystemInfo On Cydiaa.

      • Kel

        I tried downloading SystemInfo, it doesnt show me the running speed though

        • Raman

          i just used geekbench 2 and apprently i ipod touch 4 is an ARMv7 0.00hz idk how that spossible becuase the A4 is based of a cortex A8. but i dont think i should over clock since i should be at 880mhz or 800. I pretty sure overclocking your iphone is stupid because it uses a lot of battery anyways, but for an ipod touch id say go for it b/c all you have is gain.

  • Simz

    Would renaming the file to it's original name return the processor to normal?

    • http://jaxov.com/ Wolverine

      Yes! But do backup it first!

  • Gerald

    For a 1st gen ipod touch, the speed boost is incredible. But the battery takes a *huge* hit. Not recommended.

  • coolcrash

    i just did this overclock to my iphone 2GB 16GB , this is perfect it seams like i got a new iphone from the 3rd gen

  • tyler

    What is the clock speed after the overclock and how does this affect battery life?

    • Basel

      I am sure this will degrade your battery life, as well as your battery and hardware life-span. Not to mention the overheating issue. In my opinion though, it is well worth the risk.

      • http://jaxov.com/ Wolverine

        I agree! It will degrade your battery life, it is just for informational purpose only!

  • DeathByRadio

    That was such a bad speed test. Why not just do some command line stuff and test the speed for some math calculations?

    We have no way of knowing what else is on both of these phones and possibly running in the background.

  • wbiggy

    How many people have tried this, would it be possible to set the CPU speed,
    I would possible do this when the 3GS runs Android