The jailbreaking community has been on fire since the release of the iOS 5 last month, delivering in a big hurry a jailbreak for it, using the beta version. And if you want to follow the path of “safe” jailbreaking, there’s only one way to do it – it’s called tethered jailbreak. But is it really worth it, since it is known that jailbreaking always comes with a nasty number of caveats?
Tethered jailbreaks can be frustrating because they require a computer connection to boot a jailbroken iOS device. The idea of tethered jailbreak is not new, but not so many people actually know how it works. Well it basically means that every time your iPhone or iPad – iDevice in one word, reboots or the battery dies, you have to connect (tether) your iOS device back to your computer so that the hardware can be booted using a jailbreak application.
What would be the advantages of performing tethered jailbreak on your device? Well, for starters, you get a gear that’s jailbroken. After that you can go on to use the semi-tethered boot, which means that provided the device doesn’t freeze or need rebooting you can still enjoy some functionality. This way you’re sure not to lose your jailbreak hacks. Also booting in tethered mode is not something that happens very often and only takes a little amount of your time.
Well, how about the caveats? The biggest disadvantage of tethered jailbreak is that you need a computer to actually boot the devices. This might be annoying if you’re travelling somewhere you don’t have computer access and would make the device quite useless. Also, a lot of new tweaks and apps are not yet compatible with iOS 5 so jailbreaking your device might actually take you nowhere in the end. And lastly, the iOS 5 jailbreak is known to have some bugs and might not run properly, so think it through if you really want to do it.
Whatever you decide, the choice is yours, nevertheless.
