Jail-broke my iPhone 5S running iOS 8.1 using Pangu

 

It's been only a couple of months since iOS 8 has been released to the public and we already have a fully functional jail-break! At first, there were a lot of steps that needed to get it to work but Pangu, the tool that's used to jail-break, has been getting updated frequently and now it is as simply as clicking a button. That meant my wait was over; it was time for me to try it out on my iPhone 5S.

 

Note: At the time of jail-breaking my phone, the version of Pangu out for the public was 1.1 but as of this moment, the tool has been updated to version 1.2.1. You should get the most recent version which would have most bugs ironed out.

 

I followed the steps mentioned in this YouTube tutorial posted by EverythingApplePro and it came out fine.

 

Video courtesy EverythingApplePro

 

iOS 6.1.2 released and can be jailbroken using evasi0n 1.4

Apple released iOS 6.1.1 just a week or do ago to fix 3G connectivity related issues specifically on the iPhone 4S, but it did fix the Exchange bug nor the battery drain issue that iOS 6.1 introduced. Instead, 6.1.1 brought back a serious flaw that was present in the old days that allowed anyone to bypass the password lock screen without entering the password. 

The trick is a bit hard to do, and I haven't tried it. But here's how you do it.

Today Apple released iOS 6.1.2 which fixes all these 3 issues. That's all good and all, but what about the state of jail breaking? Does 6.1.2 patch the vulnerability that allowed evasi0n jailbreak to pwn iOS 6.1?

Not so. The evasi0n jailbreak tool has been already upgraded to version 1.4 which allows you to jailbreak 6.1.2. Head to this link if you already don't know the procedure.

Jailbreak iOS 6.1.2 Untethered On iPhone 5, 4S, iPod touch And All Other Devices Using Evasi0n [Tutorial]

Edit:

Some say the password bypass bug is fixed, some say it is not. I hope it is fixed because I don't want Apple to release updates every week which might eventually block evasi0n tool. :/

Upgraded to iOS 6.1.1 which fixed 3G connectivity issues (and already jail-broken)

We all knew that iOS 6.1.1 was just around the corner as Apple released a beta version to the developers few days ago. Yesterday, all of a sudden, the final version of iOS 6.1.1 came out - just for the iPhone 4S. I didn't expect it to come out this soon but it seems like there was a major problem with the iPhone 4S. Even Vodafone in the UK told people not to upgrade to 6.1.

Looks like the problem was with 3G connectivity. I too had problems where the webpages would take forever to load and calls taking a long time to connect. But I never suspected the problem was with the OS. I blamed SoftBank for their ever-so-worsening quality of connectivity.

OK, so this sounds like a critical update, but what about jailbreaking? Will it break the evasi0n jailbreak? Will I not be able to jailbreak again? Haha! Apparently there was nothing to worry about. Evasi0n jailbreak tool had been upgraded to version 1.3 which can be used with iOS 6.1.1. How awesome is that?

Best Jailbreak Tweaks for iOS 6.1

Now that Cydia has become almost fully functional after the issues it faced thanks to overloaded servers caused by surge of usage after the evasi0n jailbreak was released, I have managed to get my phone back to where it was. (That was along sentence to start with!) I guess you all are waiting for me to keep my promise. I should reveal my list of best jailbreak tweaks.

1. Zephyr (Repo: BigBoss)

This nifty tool adds gesture based multitasking to your iPhone. You hardly need to use the home button on your iPhone anymore. I wrote about Zephyr few months back. The only caveat is that this is not free.

 

Zephyr in action

 

2. Accelerate (Repo: BigBoss)

Bored of how slow and womanly the animations of stock iOS is? Wanna give it some adrenaline boost? This is the tool for the job. Compared to the apps such as fakeclockup, you can enable speed boost part wise. For example, if you don't want to speed up the busy animation (because it looks stupid), you can keep it at its regular speed.

 

Cydia is finally alive…sort of…

If you are interested about Jailbreaking, you should already know that evasi0n Jailbreak Tool was released less than 24 hours ago which could Jailbreak every handset running iOS 6 up to 6.1. There was a massive surge in accesses to Cydia servers soon after the Jailbreak was released which caused Cydia and its repositories to go down.

I tried to access Cydia for many hours but failed. Well, it is somewhat accessible now. Some repositories still don’t work at all. they give errors when you try to install apps from them. But most of the problems will be automatically fixed it you give them some time. Either way, you cannot buy any new stuff. You can still download the free stuff, but they are telling you to wait another day till you make payments.

Right now, I am unable to install Zephyr, the best Jailbreak tweak that I have ever used, which I have actually bought as well. I’ll try it tomorrow. I have been able to download almost everything else, but I will write a proper blog post when everything is running smoothly.

Oh btw, WS Wallpaper made the Springboard to crash so I had to remove it. Perhaps a working tweak will come out soon. It’s not big deal anyways – just some fancy eye candy.

Evasi0n Jailbreak is now available and Cydia is heavily loaded

When I woke up in the morning, the first thing I did was to turn on the PC and see if the evasi0n jailbreak was out. It was, and I straight away downloaded (you can download it from here.) the tool and started the jailbreak process. But right at the beginning, it gave me an error. I was supposed to turn off the password lock just for now and I had done so. But I also had to disable encryption in iTunes backups. I used a password to see what it does. It seems to just encrypt the backup and also include the passwords to accounts in the backup because it is now safe to include them. (I didn't know that the passwords weren't included in the unencrypted backup.)

 

Anyways, once I disabled the password, I relaunched the evasi0n tool and started the jailbreak process. It was almost automatic. Once you press the button to start the jailbreak, it restarted the phone once or twice (I don't know because, like always, I went away and did some morning chores.) and when I came back, it was halted at one point. I was supposed to hit the new icon that was freshly installed to the iPhone, named Jailbreak, to proceed. I did so, and the process continued and it was done. It did one final reboot to put things in order.

 

 

Jailbreak for iOS 6.1 is almost here

Edit:

OK, it’s now available for iOS 6.1 as well as iOS 6.1.1 (version 1.3 onwards). Grab it soon. =)

To the original story…

I’ve been monitoring evasi0n’s website since yesterday and as I write this post, 96% of work is finished. Today’s (in the USA) release is imminent. Unfortunately I might not be able to get it before going to bed. Hopefully it will be available by the time I wake up tomorrow. Oh well, I can live without the Jailbreaks one more day.

I am wondering, should I get the iPhone 5 now? I mean, the chances are that the iPhone 5S or the next model will take ages to see a working Jailbreak. I will be hesitant to buy the new phone without a working Jailbreak. The devs took more than 5 months to bring this upcoming Jailbreak. But it could be that they waited till Apple released 6.1. Remember how some guy posted a photo of a Jailbroken iPhone5 in Twitter just days after it was released?

Anyways, here’s the status on evasi0n’s website as of now.

Anyways, just cannot wait to make my phone personal once again. Not personal to Steve Jobs. :/

I’ll post back about how things go with the Jailbreak and about the tweaks that I am gonna use.

Finally upgraded to iOS 6 (iOS 6.1 in fact)

It's completely unnatural of me to hold on to an old version of any OS, but no thanks to Softbank's arrogance, Apple's stupidity and added security, I was stuck in iOS 5.1.1.

Softbank's arrogance was that the phone is SIM locked. You could unlock the iPhone 4S using GeveySIM Ultra S up to iOS 5.1.1 (that was then, now it supports up to 6.0.1 even without a jailbreak) Remember, I went back to SL last December and I wanted to use this phone with my Mobitel SIM. (But I ended up not unlocking the phone in the end. I could do fine with my dad's iPhone 3GS.) Either way, by the time I visit Sri Lanka again, I would have a new phone - or a proper unlock will be available for the iPhone 4S...hopefully.

Apple's stupidity was that their Apple Maps debacle. You know, they removed Google maps from OS and they added their own freshly designed maps app to iOS 6.0. It came with added functionality such as turn by turn navigation and flyover view, but their rendering was not accurate - not by a few meters, but a few 10's of kilometers and even farther. Most of us, the iPhone users, depend on the Google Maps to travel around Japan. Google Maps are very precise and detailed for Japan. So, NO, I could not possibly make up my mind to upgrade to iOS 6.0 with the maps app being in that disastrous state. (Few months after iOS 6.0 was released, Google released their all new maps app to the AppStore, so now this problem is no more.)

iOS 6.1 released and untethered jailbreak coming!

Jailbreaking is still legal on the iPhone even though it is not so on the iPad, for some weird reason. Unlocking is also gonna become illegal from 26th of January in the US.

Doesn't matter because I have an iPhone and I don't wanna unlock it - at least not right now.

So, Apple has apparently released iOS 6.1 to the public. There hasn't been a proper jailbreak for the iOS6 and all the hackers had been waiting till 6.1 was released. This is because, finding an exploit in iOS is becoming harder and harder so the hacker community don't wanna release a jailbreak just to find it being patched in 6.1. Apple even employs past Jailbreak hackers to make their software and hardware more secure. We all know how hard it has been to Jailbreak the devices with post A4 chips, right? People with iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4 are getting Jailbreaks and Unlocks almost the next day but people with post-A4 chips like iPhone 4S and iPhone 5 have to wait, wait and wait – forever. So securing the hardware has caused a lot of pain in the Jailbreak community.

Zephyr – the ultimate gesture based multitasking for your jailbroken iPhone

I had known about this Jailbreak tweak for a while but the price of it held me back. It is US$4.99 in the Cydia store (BigBoss repository). But I finally gave in and bought it.

Double clicking the Home Button to activate the app switcher is sometimes a pain. By default, you have to press the Home Button twice to activate the app switcher but the OS does not always register it as two button presses. More often than not, it would regard it as a single press and you are taken back to the Home Screen. 

Further, the phone responds to the double presses slowly. At least, it is too slow for me. Maybe not for the average Joe though. I am very sensitive to the slightest delays BTW. Zephyr fixes both these problems.

Here’s a small video showing it in action.

Nitrous JavaScript engine for all apps–Jailbreak tweak

None of the 3rd party browsers on the iPhone are as snappy as Mobile Safari, because Apple is keeping the 3rd party browsers from using their in-house built vastly superior Nitro JavaScript Engine. Google recently released Chrome for iOS but it wasn’t as snappy as the desktop counterpart due to this reason. Mobile Safari was miles ahead of Chrome browser when it came to JavaScript performance.

But now there is a tweak to get Nitro JavaScript Engine working on 3rd party apps as well. Of course, you have to Jailbreak your iDevice first. It is called Nitrous and is available in Cydia’s BigBoss repo at $0.99

The first builds let us choose the apps you want to enable the tweak for individually. There were problems with that implementation. Now the developer simply enables it for all or disables it for all (excluding Safari I hope).

.

The difference is very noticeable. I checked the performance in SunSpider JavaScript Benchmark 0.91.

Jail breaking the iPhone 4S (and others) on firmware ver. 5.1.1 using Absinthe 2.0

Few weeks ago, I saw this cool video.

100 Reasons to JailBreak your iPhone [2012]

After watching the video, I felt I was missing a lot by not JailBreaking my iPhone 4S . Absinthe 2.0 was released few days later, which made JailBreaking 5.1.1 possible. (I never intended to JailBreak iPhone 4S, but I wanted to unlock it. I found out that GeveyUltraS supported 5.1.1, so that was why I had mine updated to 5.1.1. I also have a GeveyUltraS on the way.)