The latest beta of Firmware2.0 will allow us to safely remove all settings and personal data. Apple has listened to it’s users and especially to Jonathan Zdziarski who created a special iPhone Forensics Toolkit that allowed for retrieval of personal data on the iPhone.

The new iPhone firmware secure wipe will take about 1 hour and the reason for this is that it will probably use the same erasing measures as we have known for some time in Max OS X (overwriting the files multiple times). The only question i have with this procedure is if this is not going to decrease the lifetime of our iPhone flash memory? We all know that the iPhone and iPod Touch memory has a limited number of possible writes and reads, so will this shorten your iPhone lifespan? If you can’t wait to sell your iPhone and you need all data removed, then please see my secure wipe your iPhone post for more detailed information.