We have waited nearly three months in total, and A5 owners have had to
sit in envy for nearly four weeks as they watch their A4 device friends
enjoy an untethered iOS 5.0.1 jailbreak, but the wait is nearly over.
The release of the Corona A5 jailbreak is close and I can almost taste
its liberating goodness.
Chronic Dev Team member,
P0sixninja
put out a typical teasing tweet announcing ‘not much longer now’ to the
community, which had us wondering whether the release would possibly be
this Sunday, or maybe even sooner. The tweet has since been followed up
by legendary iPhone Dev Team member, MuscleNerd, with a link to the
official
blog post with quite an informative A5 Corona update.
He is right in what he says, the eyes of the community have been
firmly fixed upon the development teams and although they produced the
A4 jailbreak, it probably only attracted more attention towards them
from iPhone 4S and iPad 2 owners who felt a little aggrieved about their
lack of device freedom. The combined efforts of French security
researcher, Pod2g, and the individual members of both major development
teams, the A5 version of the Corona jailbreak is tantalizingly close to a
public release.
One of the most encouraging parts of the update, is the confirmation
that all of the major technical hurdles have been overcome. You may
remember that the production of the jailbreak led to caching issues, as
well as finding a usable way to inject the untether files without the
need for an official developer account, and also the Apple
sandbox issues
which were overcome by PlanetBeing and Cydia founder Saurik. The only
real issue that they face now is packaging all of the jailbreak files
into software which is as bug free as possible which I’m sure we would
all agree is one of the most crucial parts.
So what can we expect in terms of release tools? Well, to achieve
maximum flexibility, the teams have decided to offer multiple tools
which should appease all:
- The Chronic Dev Team have added all jailbreak files into a GUI
package that is both PC and Mac compatible. They hope that this tool
will prove enough for the majority of users.
- The iPhone Dev team will produce a command line interface which will
offer the sae functionality. The CLI will allow a user to perform the
entire jailbreak if necessary, the ultimate hope is that this tool will
help with individual debugging cases. With over 20 options, the CLI will
be extremely flexible.
- The inevitable update to Redsn0w will come when all bugs have been
worked out, but the command line interface tool will still be available.
Redsn0w will also use native Apple libraries, offering a different
approach to that of the Chronic Dev Team, again affording maximum
flexibility for users.
They have also provided information pertaining to the supported firmware versions of the A5 jailbreak:
- iPhone4S: 5.0 (9A334), 5.0.1 (9A405) and the “other” 5.0.1 (9A406)
- iPad2: 5.0.1 (9A405)
If you are an iPhone 4S owner who is ultimately looking to achieve a
software based unlock, then the advise given is to remain on iOS 5.0
(9A334), with all other users updating to 5.0.1. If you are an iPhone 4S
owner who has already updated to iOS 5.0.1, unfortunately it is too
late to go back to 5.0, however, if you are on build number 9A406 it is
possible to downgrade the baseband to that of 9A405 while the window
remains open. Because the overall flow for this release has never been
attempted before, MuscleNerd is warning of potential bugs or problems
that cannot be predicted. The comments section on the official blog will
be monitored and assistance provided when required.
It looks as though the ‘Dream Team’ combination has worked
flawlessly, with the individual skill set of each member providing the
key to a very prompt release. Because it was a combined effort, a group
donation account has been set up for anyone who does wish to support
their efforts. This will be fairly split amongst all members.
For those of you who are sporting A4 devices, you can follow our complete
step by step guide posted here to jailbreak iOS 5.0.1 untethered on iPhone 4, 3GS, iPad 1, and iPod touch 3G/4G using Redsn0w or
Sn0wbreeze.
/ HB