As you know, Redsn0w and Sn0wbreeze allow iPhone, iPad and iPod touch users to jailbreak their iOS device on iOS 5, but they support only a tethered jailbreak, which means that you need to connect their iOS device to the computer on every reboot, otherwise your iOS device is stuck at the Apple logo.
Though the wait for the untethered jailbreak for iOS 5 continues, iPhone hacker BigBoss has just released a new jailbreak package called SemiTether, which allows you to reboot your jailbroken iOS 5 device without the need to connect it to the computer. However, BigBoss’s solution has some limitations.
Here are some of the caveats of using SemiTether:
- Phone will reboot to home screen
- You can use all the pre-installed apps except for some of the important apps like Mail and Safari
- You also can’t use Cydia or any other jailbreak app until boot tether
- Phone can take longer time to boot
However, it seems like a reasonable compromise than the need to tether the jailbroken iOS 5 device to the computer.You can install SemiTether jailbreak app on your iOS device by following these simple steps:
- Tether jailbreak your iOS device using Redsn0w using the appropriate step by step guide below (skip this step if you’ve already jailbroken your device running iOS 5):
- How to jailbreak iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS running iOS 5 using Redsn0w
- How to jailbreak iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS without updating baseband using Redsn0w [iOS 5]
- How to jailbreak iPod touch 4G, iPod touch 3G running iOS 5 using Redsn0w
- How to jailbreak iPad 1 running iOS 5 using Redsn0w
- Launch Cydia
- Tap on Manage
- Then tap on Sources
- Tap on the Edit button at the top right corner and then tap the Add button
- Enter the following URL – http://thebigboss.org/semitether and tap on Add Source
- After SemiTether source has been successfully added it, tap on Return to Cydia button
- Tap on Search and search for semitether
- Tap on SemiTether from the search results and tap on Install and then Confirm buttons to install it.
- After it is successfully installed, it will prompt you to reboot your iOS device.
You will notice that your jailbroken iOS 5 device will reboot without getting stuck at the Apple logo. It’s now in a semitethered mode with the restrictions mentioned above. To use your iOS device normally, you will need to boot tether your jailbroken iOS 5 device.
As always, tell us what you think of the Semitethered hack that allows you to reboot your jailbroken iOS device and let us know it goes if you install SemiTether.
Update:
BigBoss has updated SemiTether to fix some of the issues, but it is still in beta so please proceed with caution as number of readers have reported issues with it. It is expected to be more stable after Jay Freeman a.k.a saurik releases an updated version of Mobile Substrate, which should fix most of the issues. For more details check this post. Thanks everyone for the feedback.
[via BigBoss]
