Jailbreakers rejoice! Months of hard work from a developer known as ‘pod2g’ have resulted in the first ever untethered jailbreak of iOS 5.0.1 becoming available for iPhones, iPods and iPads.
It’s not all good news however, as the hack doesn’t work on Apple devices that use the newer A5 processor – namely the iPad 2 and the iPhone 4S.
If you’ve got an older Apple device running iOS 5.0.1 then you can jailbreak it using one of several methods, effectively freeing your device from Apple’s controlled grasp. Jailbreaking will install the Cydia app onto your iDevice – a sort of unofficial app store, for those unfamiliar with the process.
Cydia opens up a world of possibilities, usually involving adding tweaks and features that Apple doesn’t deem fit for the general public, but will work perfectly on your gadget, making it stand out from the rest. There’s also access to a world of apps that haven’t been approved for use on the official App Store, of which some are fantastic.
Pod2g has released the untethered jailbreak for use on the iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4 CDMA, iPad, iPod Touch 3rd Gen and iPod Touch 4th Gen. To install it you can use one of two simple software tools for Mac and PC; Redsn0w or PwnageTool. By far the easiest way to jailbreak (as we’ve found) is to use Redsn0w 0.9.10b3 for Windows or Mac OS X, which allows you to install Cydia and jailbreak your device with ease and in under 5 minutes.
Alternatively you can use PwnageTool to create a custom IPSW (Operating System Software) file and install that onto your iDevice via iTunes. This is a slightly more lengthy process, as you’ll probably have to download the large IPSW file first, which is normally over 500MB in size.
At Gadget Helpline HQ a couple of us have already used Redsn0w to jailbreak our iPhones, with first time success found using an iPhone 4 and several iPhone 3GS.
For more information on the jailbreak and links to download both Redsn0w and PwnageTool, check out the official dev-team blog here.
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