- Yet Again, Some Necessary Background Terminology
- Selecting Your Jailbreaking Software
- Performing the Jailbreak
- If Something Goes Wrong
- Next Steps
Selecting Your Jailbreaking Software
The iOS jailbreaking community is considered "rogue" by Apple and is therefore wholly unsupported by them. Thus, we need to exercise caution and to undertake due diligence before we select a jailbreaking tool. Following are two general points of advice:
- Legitimate jailbreaking software is always free. If someone tries to sell you jailbreaking software, run the other wayquickly. You don't want to discover later that you paid money to infect your system with a Trojan horse application rather than a legitimate jailbreak tool that is free anyway.
- Generally speaking, it is safest to go with the most popular and commonly used jailbreaking tools. Make a regular habit of scanning popular iOS jailbreaking forums for guidance (we give you some of these sites a bit later in this article).
Let's now turn our attention to how we can find the best jailbreaking app to suit our needs. The key questions you need to ask yourself before choosing a jailbreaking utility are the following:
- Am I willing to use a tethered jailbreak?
- Which generation iOS device do I have?
- Which iOS version do I have?
- If I need to downgrade my iOS, do I have my SHSH blobs saved?
The aforementioned questions are of critical importance because jailbreaking software is highly specific to hardware and installed firmware. Table 1 summarizes jailbreaking options for iOS versions 5.0.1 and above.
Table 1: Jailbreaking Options for iOS 5.0.1 and iOS 5.1
Firmware Version |
Jailbreak Type |
Apple Hardware |
Suggested Jailbreaking App |
iOS 5.1 |
Tethered |
iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, iPad 1, iPod touch 3rd and 4th gen |
|
iOS 5.0.1 |
Untethered |
iPhone 4S; iPad 2 and 3 |
|
iOS 5.0.1 |
Untethered |
iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, iPad 1, iPod touch 3rd and 4th gen |
As I'm sure you understand by now, the current state of iOS jailbreaking is always in flux. To that end, please bookmark the following iOS jailbreaking news/release sites so you can remain abreast of the latest developments in the subject:
- iPhone Dev Team (blog)
- iPhone Dev Team (Twitter)
- Jailbreak News
- Modmyi.com
- Lifehacker
- iJailbreak
- BigBoss
- The Realm of the Avatar
Because I don't have my SHSH blob saved for iOS 5.0.1, in the following demo I will bite the bullet and perform a tethered jailbreak of my iOS 5.1[nd]based iPhone 4.