The latest news from the world of jailbreaks is that the Greenpois0n Absinthe jailbreak for the iPhone 4S and the iPad 2, running iOS 5.0.1, has been released. However, most users are still a little confused regarding the differences between an "untethered" and a "tethered" jailbreak.
The truth is that while the terminology can be quite intimidating, they are easily understood once the right know-how is acquired. Another question users often ask is about Cydia - what it is and how it works.
In simplest terms, Cydia is an App Store access to which is available after an Apple device has been jailbroken. Cydia allows users to install third-party applications, tweaks and themes, developed and offered by numerous developers, hackers and programmers.
The content inside Cydia is as assorted as the user could possibly imagine and ranges from full standalone applications to small tweaks designed to hook into Apple's iOS via the "MobileSubstrate".
When Cydia is installed on the device, a small number of alterations are made to the existing design of the operating system and these mods become more prominent when discussing the notion of a tethered and untethered jailbreak.
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What is Tethered Jailbreak?
A tethered jailbreak means that if the user ever re-boots or restarts or loses power to the device after jailbreaking, he/she will have to re-connect to a computer to enable jailbreak functions to work as normal.
In other words, the device will boot normally, without this tether, and thereby disable all jailbreak features. Moreover, due to the previously mentioned changes, some native iOS services will also cease to function, the most prominent being the mobile Safari browser.
This, however, is not as big a problem as it looks because the jailbreak will generally have a "boot as tethered" option, which will patch the kernel again. Of course, the patch will only be temporary... until the next re-boot.
What is Untethered Jailbreak?
Quite simply, this is the reverse of a tethered jailbreak. An untethered jailbreak is the ideal solution for jailbreaking an iDevice. It means that once the kernel has been patched and the Jailbreak procedure is complete, the user can power down, hard reset or re-boot the device as frequently as needed, without any issues. Although the untethered jailbreak is considered ideal for numerous concrete reasons, the one which affects most Cydia users is that many of the tweaks available via Cydia require the device to be rebooted after installation. This could become very annoying if the user needs to perform a tethered boot each time.
List of Download Links:
For iPhone 4S -
Jailbreak iPhone 4S iOS 5.0.1 with Absinthe 5.0.1: For Mac and Windows