Untethered Jailbreak For (Most) iOS 5 Devices Now Available | Hacker News Reader

Untethered Jailbreak For (Most) iOS 5 Devices Now Available

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I jailbreak all of my devices. Not only does jailbreaking allow you to customize your device in many awesome ways which Apple does not allow, but there are also some things jailbreaking provides you with the option to do, which make you more productive while on your device. It is also just plain fun having all the options jailbreaking gives you.

For me, the must have things you can get from jailbreaking, are SBSettings, Winterboard, Five Icon Springboard/dock, Mobile Terminal, and Lock Info. These are all things I think are needed on every Apple device, jailbroken, and nonjailbroken.

As a developer, jailbreaking is very important. My only device for a long time was a 3GS and I always wanted to keep it up-to-date when new versions of iOS were released. However, upgrading the iOS is a one-way street -- Apple do not let you downgrade your software.

By jailbreaking the device, Cydia automatically stores the device's unique SHSH blobs that allow you to downgrade.

Being able to downgrade made it easier to test my apps on iOS 3 and iOS 4 without needing two devices.

You can save your SHSH blobs without jailbreaking by using desktop-side tools like TinyUmbrella.

This is huge. I don't use an iOS product, but I can say that having this ability on my rooted Android over the last year has gotten me (and various other parties) out of several pinches.

Recently while traveling, we ended up at a hotel with almost useless wi-fi, no jailbroken iPhones and thus almost no connectivity. Break out the Android, turn on the hotspot, hand out passwords, and now my entire team is back up and running at decentish speeds. Probably helped us land a contract in the meeting the next day.

It wasn't perfect, the phone would drop connection every so often (hey, it's not really supposed to be doing this), and would run rather hot. But it worked and got us out of a bind.

I'm letting the rest of my team know about this so that they might jailbreak their phones and be able to use this when they are running around without an Android user. Awesome!

Just to be clear, tethering your data connection has been available on the iPhone since version 3 without jailbreaking. Wireless hotspots have been available since iOS 4.3 without jailbreaking.

Only for $20/month. There are things you can install on your Android (even non-rooted AFAIK), or on your jailbroken iPhone, that let you tether to your normal non-tether dataplan.

(At this point you can happily complain about morale or market issues relating to stealing that bandwidth; for the record: I pay the $20/month and am quite happy to do so.)

True, but there's a big difference between "jailbreaking makes these things possible, where otherwise I would be screwed," and "jailbreaking lets me get things for free that I would otherwise have had to pay for." The GP appeared to be about the former.

However, a data plan that does not allow tethering is a carrier issue, not a phone issue. Here, tethering is included with virtually all data plans, across all of the major carriers.

Were you running old versions of iOS? Personal Hotspot has been in it since March, seems odd that iPhone users would not be running at least 4.3 by now.

If you're in the US, that feature will cost you another $240/yr unless you're already on the 4gb data plan.

You can add and remove it on a month to month basis, though, if you only need it intermittently. In any case it's well worth the cost if you do need it, and is much cheaper than other ways of obtaining cellular Internet access.

As far as I understand, you didn't need jailbreaking for this, just unlocking. There is unlocking without jailbreaking, isn't there?

Jailbreaking is useful of course, just your example is not very good.

I could be wrong, but I thought unlocking referred to unlocking the device to all carriers, and jailbreaking to loading on non-Apple sanctioned software (from Cydia primarily).

Right, that's the correct terminology in iPhone land.

Either one will do. If you unlock, you can activate tethering without the carrier's permission. If you jailbreak, you can install a third-party tethering app like MyWi.

Wifi hotspot is a native feature in recent Android versions, which has been disabled by some carriers, but is present in the Google-branded stock Android phones. It works great.

So saying it's not really supposed to be doing this is not really accurate. Your phone IS supposed to be doing that. Only your wireless carrier thinks otherwise.

I think it's sad that you have to root/jailbreak to get this feature OR you have to pay the carriers extra.

My Nokia N9 for instance comes with a wi-fi hotspot preinstalled and I can use it to share internet with other devices without having to pay anything extra. Better yet, I've had feature phones that you could connect with USB to share their internet connection.

This is simply Apple and Google bending over for the carriers. Nokia will do it with WP7 also, I'm sure.

Do any developers maintain statistics for their apps on jailbroken vs. non-jailbroken devices? Do any developers take jailbreaking into account when building their apps, or is it just an ignored segment?

It would be interesting to note trends in jailbreaking activity against iOS versions and any potential changes to functionality for App Store apps.

I work on social games for iOS, and it comes up in few places.

(1) Users ask "why am I getting this sandbox error message?" and we say "That happens sometimes on jailbroken phones. We can't fix it."

(2) We have to step up our game re: preventing cheaters, keeping in mind that jailbroken users can change their UDID, fake IAP transactions (but not the receipts!) and modify files on the device.

In a single-player game we wouldn't care about (2) so much, but in a multiplayer game we don't want them breaking someone else's game or polluting our statistics. I don't have numbers, sorry; we don't count the number of jailbreakers, just the number of cheaters.

I'm not sure that I see the need for the jailbreak anymore. I used to jailbreak all of my devices, but Apple has removed most of the reason for it now. They have legitimate tethering, its available on multiple carriers, improved notifications, and pretty decent multitasking.

One word: unlock. Until the phone is on Tmo, the unlock is mandatory.

As far as software, for me, SBSettings is vital. Apple still doesn't have a quick way to access Wifi, brightness, airplane mode and other settings, and until they do, I wouldn't think about running without a jailbreak. I also still prefer Lock Info to Apple's Notification Center.

You can buy an unlocked phone directly from Apple now. It still won't do 3G on T-Mobile though due to the different frequencies used.

Do their unlocked phones really work on non-approved carriers? I never really looked in to it, it's pretty cost-prohibitive. Also, that doesn't help people that want to buy used last-gen and save a few hundred bucks, or the people who are now off-contract and are still happy with their phone but looking to move.

> Do their unlocked phones really work on non-approved carriers?

yes, obviously. 'unlocked' = 'works on any carrier with which the technology (ie GSM/UMTS, works on the right bands) is compatible'. note that since tmobile almost exclusively uses an unsupported-by-Apple band for 3G (1700MHz), you're getting EDGE at best.

To enable "legitimate tethering" on AT&T, I have to give up my grandfathered unlimited data plan, be charged $45 per month and be limited to max 4gb or $10 for every GB I go over. Sounds like the jailbreak will still come in handy.

How about the annoying 20mb download limit in app store?

http://cydia.saurik.com/package/com.crashx.unrestrictor3g

I hear this sentiment every single update, and I always have to shake my head. The amount of time I've had to wait for Apple to put in features that are widely available on Cydia (like LockInfo, or Facetime over 3g, or letting me take photos with the volume button, or wireless syncing) makes me worry I'll always be behind on the cutting edge. Then there are all the things they still won't let me do, like wirelessly sshfs into my phone so I can drag and drop mp3s/videos from linux (i.e. completely evading iTunes), or being able to use banned apps like the amazing Grooveshark app, or having to pay extra money for tethering even though my data is capped at 2gb either way. I can't imagine Apple ever adding enough features for me to be satisfied with a vanilla phone.

I guess not everybody wants all that stuff, but I do. :)

Actually, this means that there should be an untethered iOS 5 jailbreak for Apple TV in the near future. This is really needed.

for an iPad at least, http://stereopsis.com/flux/ios.html is essential

Wow. Thank you so much for the link.

I remember a few months ago, there was a flux thread. A couple of people were lamenting over the fact that it wasn't available on iOS. I even e-mailed Marco over at Instapaper to see if he could implement the feature.

Now that it's available, I'll finally be able to use my iOS devices at night!

Honestly the only reason that I still jailbreak is BiteSMS. It lets you reply to an SMS directly in it's overlay so that you don't have to exit out of your current app.

http://bitesms.com/

Agree with this 100%. I was really worried about this when first switching from Android to iOS, but after months of using an iPhone & iPad, I don't miss anything.

That being said, even if I did want untethered jailbreaking right now, I'd be left in the dark, as I am one of (many) people who have both an iPad 2 and iPhone 4S.

I've had my 4S since launch. I agree it's overall functionality is more than satisfactory without a jailbreak, but there's a few annoying but not dealbreaking issues that jailbreaking would solve - fast text replies, quick access to wifi and airport settings, etc. I'm not hurting to jailbreak for these reasons, but it is annoying that this functionality has been available to jailbroken phones for a good deal of time.

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