Four Island

Guess what, peeps? It's finally happened! I said peeps! No, but seriously, the iOS 5 untethered jailbreak is finally out! We've been waiting for this for months! For those not in the know, this means you can finally restart your phone and it'll actually, well, turn on again! This is better than the semi-tether I covered a few months ago, because the untether is a full, every boot jailbreak: Safari still works, Mail still works, and all of your jailbreak applications still work. Excited? You betcha. Let's start.

WARNING: This does NOT work for A5 devices. So, if you have an iPhone 4S or an iPad 2, you're out of luck at the moment.

Okay, first of all, you have to be running iOS 5.0.1 to get this jailbreak. In the past, it looked like it might take longer for an iOS 5.0.1 untethered jailbreak to come out, so I recommended people stay on iOS 5. Turns out that things have changed and you actually need to upgrade now. Quick, before iOS 5.0.2/5.1 comes out and ruins things! Quick, go to Settings > Software Update and click Install! You should see something beautiful like the picture to the right. Aww, how adorable. However, if you're me, you may receive an error message telling you that you misspelled "receive" too many times (or more likely, that the upgrade failed). If this happens, simply upgrade using iTunes: plug your iPhone in, click on your device in the sidebar, and click Update. Simple as that. Horray.

Now, if you've gotten this far, you'll have an iDevice running iOS 5.0.1. That's great. Here's when things split. If your iDevice is unjailbroken, because you just upgraded from iOS 5, follow these instructions. If you're currently running a tethered jailbreak on iOS 5.0.1, skip to the next paragraph. Now, head over to the iPhone Dev Team's blog and pick up a copy of redsn0w. There's a Mac version and a Windows version---please ensure that you download the correct one. Things are pretty simple now: simply launch redsn0w, click Jailbreak, and follow the instructions to put your device in DFU mode. It'll handle things from that point on. It's magic! And suddenly, your iDevice is jailbroken. Let's all hug, eh?

Now, if you were already running a tethered jailbreak on iOS 5.0.1 when you started reading this post, you have something slightly different to do. Open Cydia on your tethered device, and search for a package called "Corona." Without the period, of course. English. What an odd language---getting away from the point! Now, install the package. It should be called "Corona 5.0.1 Untether." It's that simple. Horray, we're all jailbroken!

So, now that the untethered jailbreak is out, what does this mean? Well, it means that I can stop getting stuck at testing centers because I was forced to turn off my phone before entering and then subsequently ended up not being able to phone for a ride afterwords! It also means I can listen to music after accidental contact with lightning without bashing my face in and rescrobbling every song afterward! It's all good for the environment, you know. I hope everyone enjoys this fabulous untether, courtesy of @pod2g, and, well, hopefully you A5 folks get something soon, eh?