Untethered jailbreak for iOS 5 and 5.0.1 is complete

Chronic Dev-Team member Pod2g has announced that the code is complete with his untethered jailbreak for iOS 5.0.1 on the iPad 1, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPod 3G, iPod 4G and the Apple TV (4.4.3).

According to his blog posts, he has now finished with his untethered jailbreak on all A4-powered devices, suggesting a public release of the new jailbreak will happen soon.

While this is good news for those who are awaiting the jailbreak with devices that have Apple’s A4 processor this does not seem to help those with the iPad 2 and iPhone 4S. Apple’s devices that contain the latest A5 chip have proven to be almost impossible to jailbreak. The only hacker to find an exploit on a device with the new chip was Comex using JailbreakMe 3.0.

The jailbreak released by Comex will jailbreak an iPad 2 with iOS 4.3.3 but Apple quickly released a quickly patch and there has been no other hacker to jailbreak the iPad 2 or iPhone 4S. Comex was hired by Apple as an intern shortly after releasing JailbreakMe 3.0.

It the past, it’s been common for it to take hackers months to find exploits in new software for iDevices but the A5 chip presents challenges that are proving to be almost impossible for hackers. With Apple hiring the only hacker to successfully jailbreak a device with the A5 chip it seems Apple may be slowly putting an end to jailbreaking.

The iPad 3 is expected to ship within the next 3 to 4 months and will be the first device to have Apple’s A6 chip, which will likely present new challenges. This raises the question wether or not there will continue to be jailbreaks for future iOS devices.