Jailbreaking the original iPhone was seen as one of the greatest hacks of all time, and the geniuses behind the hacks continue to find ways to get around Apple’s boot loader and security measures. With each version of iOS comes new, harder security measures to break, and those found in the iPhone 4S have proven to be incredibly hard to beat. Thanks to the guys at the jailbreaking group ‘Greenpois0n’ we now have a way to jailbreak and unleash the potential of our Apple devices running iOS version 5.1.1. If you are wanting to have a untethered, jailbroken iPhone or iPad 2 (the new iPad is not supported yet), just follow this guide.
Jailbreaking made easy
To start you will need to download Absinthe 2.0 from the Greenpois0n website. Absinthe is the jailbreaking software you need to have on your PC or Mac. Download the right version for your computer from this link.
Once you have Absinthe 2.0 downloaded, connect your device to your computer then open iTunes. Right click on the device you want to jailbreak, select backup from the menu and then wait for the backup to finish. This process will vary in length of time from device to device. It all depends how much data you need to backup. When the backup has finished close iTunes.
The next step involves you erasing all of the data from your device. On your iOS device go to Settings>General>Reset>Erase All Content and Settings. This is a new step when compared to old jailbreak methods. The reason given by Greenpois0n is that it speeds up the jailbreaking process.
With your device still connected to your computer, open Absinthe 2.0 on your computer and verify that your iOS device has been recognized correctly. Once you have verified that your device has been recognized, click on the jailbreak button. The actual jailbreak will only take a couple of minutes to complete.
The final step
Once Absinthe 2.0 has finished jailbreaking your device there is one final step to unleashing the full potential of your iPhone or iPad.
Close Absinthe 2.0 and then re-launch iTunes on your computer. Right click on your device and then select “Restore From Backup.” Select the backup that you made in the previous steps and then let your device restore all of the data. You iPhone or iPad will go back to being the way it was before you started this process with the added bonus of it being jailbroken.
Be sure to explore the Cydia store for thousands of excellent applications that can really enhance your iDevice. If you ever want to revert your device back so that it is not jailbroken just connect it to iTunes. Right click your device and perform a backup, then select “Restore.” Once you do this your device will no longer be jailbroken.