Jailbroken today — the iPhone 4S and iPad 2 running iOS 5.0.1

The iPhone 4S has been jailbroken. The video below is proof of concept, clearly showing an iPhone 4S booting untethered into a jailbroken state. The user, a friend of famed iPhone hacker Pod2g loads Cydia and plays around in the app which is designed to work on jailbroken phones only. The phone also displays a clear network signal as a sign that its carrier is still operational.

This means two things. One, not only is the iPhone 4S capable of being jailbroken, but the iPad 2 as well. Both share the A5 CPU which threw up a brick wall in the face of potential iPhone hackers. Two, it will now be infinitely easier to run an untethered jailbreak on Apple devices running iOS 5.0.1.

In the past, users had to develop a series of workarounds in conjunction with Cydia in order to turn their semi-tethered jailbreaks into fully untethered phones. A semi-tethered jailbreak means that users have to plug their iDevices into a computer in order to reboot their hardware. Rebooting without a tethered USB connection means that the device will remain in a permanently frozen state. An untethered jailbreak means that the user can reboot the device at any time. This is obviously the preferable choice.

Pod2g, the user responsible for the iOS 5 hack began his research into the untethered jailbreak late last year. Initially, his hack worked on third generation iPod Touch’s running iOS 5.0.1. Next up, Apple TV. It was at this point during his research into untethered jailbreaks that he came across a “caching issue” which caused the jailbreak to fail on the iPhone 4S.

While iDevices running an A4 CPU are now enjoying an untethered jailbreak option, iPhone 4S and iPad 2 owners were left in the dark. Thankfully, Pod2g has broken through Apple’s defences, and soon the details for how to hack the iPhone 4S and iPad 2 running iOS 5.0.1 will trickle out.