So finally feel like I'm ready to dip my toes in the jailbreaking waters here. Have been reading up and noticed on the flowchart in the sticky at the top that they advise those with a 3GS + old bootrom + 3.0 f/w to go the redsn0w route to J/B and then upgrade to 4.0 custom firmware with Pwnage Tool.
Just wondering why this route is suggested for my model/firmware as opposed to the newer (and seemingly easier) jailbreakme method???
I feel like I'm missing something.
Thanks!
Redsn0w and PwnageTool use a bootrom exploit which allows "pwns" the firmware. This allows the a phone can be activated without an official SIM, to have custom boot logos, etc. More importantly, such a phone can always be upgraded to a custom firmware which will preserve this exploit, guaranteeing your ability to every future version of the iPhone OS. People with pwned phones already know that they will be able to jailbreak iOS 5.0, because they are preserving the 24kpwn exploit on their phones, and Apple can do
nothing about it.
JailbreakMe uses a userland exploit which does not pwn the bootrom. This exploit will certainly be patched in iOS 4.1, making it impossible to jailbreak 4.1 with JailbreakMe.com -- but those "on the jailbreak train" will be able to jailbreak 4.1 almost immediately. When 4.0 came out, for instance, people with pwned 3GS's were able to jailbreak the very next day; those not pwned were not able to until Sunday.
Finally, there is another very important reason to prefer pwnage to a userland jailbreak: custom firmwares can be created that do not upgrade the phone's baseband. This means that, when 4.1 (and 5.0, and 6.0...) are released with upgraded basebands that break the ultrasn0w unlock, those of us with pwned phones will be able to preserve our ability to unlock...and significantly increased residual values for our phones.
In sum, redsn0w/PwnageTool have the following benefits over JailbreakMe:
1) Ability to hacktivate the phone and create custom bootlogos.
2) Guaranteed almost immediate jailbreak for all future iOS versions.
3) Ability to unlock future versions by preserving baseband.
