Unless their chipset has already been exploited and jailbroken on a previous device, it takes a lot of time for the iOS jailbreaking community to come with a jailbreak for a new iOS device. The iPhone 4S and iPad 2, both of which are based on a still (bootrom) unexploited dual-core A5 chip, haven’t received a jailbreak for iOS 5 yet, but it appears that they’ll be getting one soon as a certain eminent iPhone hacker has let us know that the iPhone 4S has already been jailbroken with a jailbreak for iPad 2 in the works.
The news comes directly from MuscleNerd – famous iPhone hacker and member of the iPhone Dev Team – in the form of a tweet in which he shares a screenshot of a jailbroken iPhone 4S on iOS 5.
From Twitter:
VERY preliminary 4S JB: twitpic.com/76vcp4 twitpic.com/76vct2 (Huge missing pieces prevent public release. LOTS of work left)
As you can see from MuscleNerd’s tweet, the jailbreak is “very preliminary” and is still some time away from a public release. There are no ETAs for this so we expect you all to show a little patience and let the Dev Team do their work.
Although we believe him completely, the two photos that MuscleNerd shared in his tweet verify his claim of the iPhone 4S jailbreak. The first screenshot shows root access on the iPhone 4S (codenamed N94) on iOS 5 whereas the second screenshot shows Cydia 1.1.1 running on iPhone 4,1 (which is another name for the 4S) with a Siri prompt at the bottom. You can see the two screenshots below:
As of writing, all jailbreaks currently available for iOS 5 (except for iPhone 3GS with old bootrom) are tethered i.e. users have to be connected to a PC to reboot their device into jailbroken state. While the community did come up with a SemiTether solution which allowed jailbreaking enthusiasts to reboot into their jailbroken iOS 5 device with limited functionality, it is the untethered jailbreak which we’re waiting for.
We’re hoping that the iPhone 4S on iOS 5 jailbreak will be untethered so we won’t have to be near a PC every time there is a need for a reboot. Although MuscleNerd has not clarified which exploit is being used for the jailbreak, it just might be like one of those five userland exploits which were announced by folks behind the GreenPois0n jailbreaking tool at MyGreatFest 2011.
As always, we’ll be sure to keep you updated on the latest news from the iPhone 4S jailbreak scene. Stay tuned!
UPDATE: Dev-Team has also demoed untethered iOS 5 jailbreak running on iPad 2. Details here.
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