iOS 5 Untethered Jailbreak Pod2g or MuscleNerd: Who will be Jailbreaker of the Year?

Hackers are working round the clock in their attempt to find an untethered jailbreak for A5- (iPad 2 and iPhone 4S) and A4 processor-powered devices and in the hack race, two names stand out bold - pod2g and MuscleNerd. Between these two, who do you think will win the unofficial title of 'jailbreaker of the year'?

Pod2G's Progress: The latest news from the jailbreak world is that the French Hacker pod2g is putting all his effort on the A5 jailbreak and has handed over the task of releasing A4 jailbreak to the Chronic Dev team.

I gave all the details to the chronic dev team so that they can finish, test, integrate and release the A4 jb ASAP, the hacker posted on his blog.

Pod2g overcame a major hurdle last week by resolving the A5 cache issue. However, he is still trying his best to find a bootrom-level exploit in A5 devices, which are built on Cortex-A9 dual core processor. The bootrom-level exploit is a low level exploit that can only be fixed by revising hardware and it is read-only. Apple's A4 was built upon ARM’s Cortex A8 CPU which was a single core CPU.

Meanwhile, pod2g's efforts to win the jailbreak of the year title is being threatened by MuscleNerd.

MuscleNerd's Progress: MuscleNerd is a big name among jailbreakers. His biggest success came when he found a semi-tethered jailbreak - redSn0w - for iOS 5 within a day of its release. However, Redsn0w could only jailbreak iOS 5-powered Apple devices that did not run on A5 processor i.e., he could not jailbreak the iPhone 4S and iPad 2.

Last week, MuscleNerd released the redsn0w 0.9.9b9, a semi-tethered jailbreak. But it is an untethered jailbreak for old bootrom 3GS users. Later, after iDevices owners pointed out a problem with the untethered jailbreak available for the old-bootrom 3GS, MuscleNerd released redsn0w 0.9.9b9d to fix the old bootrom 3GS issue.

iPhone3GS owners in our comments section below noticed a problem with the untethered jailbreak available for the old-bootrom 3GS. We've corrected that problem in 0.9.9b9d. If you have an old-bootrom 3GS and have already used last night's redsn0w on it, you can re-run it again without losing anything. Just use this new version, go to Extras->IPSW and manually select the 5.0.1 IPSW, then go back and Jailbreak it again (but you can uncheck Cydia because it's already installed), MuscleNerd wrote on iPhone Dev team's blog.

3GS old-bootrom users please apply latest redsn0w 0.9.9b9d before installing ultrasn0w compatibility update http://is.gd/6eek4Y, he tweeted last Wednesday. The latest ultrasn0w 1.2.5 is available on Cydia and it allows users to unlock their iPhone 4 or iPhone 3GS running iOS 5.0.1.

So, who will win the 'jailbreaker of the year' title? Pod2g, who is busy finding bootrom-level exploits in the A5 processor or MuscleNerd, who has come up with a semi-tethered jailbreak?

Till now, neither has come up with an iOS 5 untethered jailbreak for A5 devices and their work (and race against time) could only get harder as Apple will soon be releasing new OS updates to solve the battery issues dogging iPhone 4S and there is a high possibility that it could carry a patch for the new jailbreak.

MuscleNerd is a step ahead as he has released a semi-tethered jailbreak. Unlike a tethered jailbreak, where the user always has to connect his device to computer whenever he reboots it, a semi-tethered jailbreak is slightly better, but then again, it's not an untethered jailbreak.

And, with the possibility growing that Apple may introduce a new processor and OS for iPhone 5 and iPad 3 in 2012, it appears that the title of jailbreaker of the year will not go to anyone this time. Rather, both the hackers will have added responsibilities to jailbreak the new devices.

Hacking is a hard work but both pod2g and MuscleNerd are not over-stressed and Pod2g has even found time to wish his followers Merry Christmas.

And, why not? Both pod2g and MuscleNerd have loyal followers, who are rooting for them.

One 'D.Peysum' commented on Tech&Trend, which is closely following the development: I can't say if pod2g, musclenerd, or any other jailbreaker is profiting much from their work or not but if it was only about the money, they could charge for releases and make a hell of a lot more. Personally, I'd never release something like this for free if I had their abilities.

I, for one, am grateful to people like pod2g and musclenerd. They're a lot more generous than I would be.

Also Read: iOS 5 Untethered Jailbreak Released; Corona 5.0.1 Untethered is New Year Gift From Pod2g (Download)