Apple released iOS 5.1.1 today. It fixes a number of bugs in iOS 5.1, but doesn’t add any major new features. Unless you’ve jailbroken your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad there’s no reason not to upgrade.
But if you do have a jailbroken device, upgrading to iOS 5.1.1 will remove your jailbreak. The good news is that you can already re-jailbreak Apple’s latest mobile operating system… as long as you’re not using one Apple’s latest devices.
If you have an iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad with an Apple A4 or earlier processor, the latest version of redsn0w is all you need to jailbreak. All you need to do is select the iOS 5.1 IPSW when applying the jailbreak.
If you’re not sure what processor your device has, here’s a cheat sheet:
- The iPad 1 has an A4 chip. All newer iPads have A5 processors.
- The iPhone 4 has an A4 chip. The iPhone 4S has an A5 chip.
- No iPod touch has an A5 chip yet.
So if you have the latest iPod touch, an iPhone 4 or earlier, or an iPad capable of running iOS 5.1.1 you can perform a tethered jailbreak with redsn0w.
You can download the latest version from the iPhone Dev Team blog. It’s available for Mac or Windows. Just keep in mind, this is a tethered jailbreak, which means any time you have to reboot your device you’ll need to connect it to a computer and run redsn0w again.
Work is underway on an untethered jailbreak, but the tools aren’t yet ready for public consumption.
Redmond Pie has a step by step walkthrough for jailbreaking iOS 5.1.1.
