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Geting cold feet about jailbreaking...some questions.

D

DroidConvert

macrumors regular
Original poster
May 15, 2012
107
0
I was all ready to jailbreak for the first time and was reading an iPhone tech site that walks you through it. It seemed easy enough until I started reading the responses and there were many who claimed that they had trouble and it wouldn't wotk, etc. Then I started reading posts about making sure you keep Blobs or something like that and then someone mentioned keeping the baseband and I began to get cold feet about doing it.

How is it that people with an iPhone 4s all running 5.1.1 can get different results. I can understand this with Android since there are many makes, models and variations but it seems that it shouldn't happen with the iPhone.

The other thing that was mentioned was that if you updated to 5.1.1. OTA that jailbreaking might not always work right and that you should update the OS via iTines.

Any help on these issues would be appreciated.

Also, does anyone have a preference of redsnow or absinthe?
 
Best route for success.
Back your phone up in iTunes or on iCloud. Make sure you have a sim to activate it.
Do a clean restore to 5.1.1, choose set up as new. Jailbreak your 4S with Absinthe 2.0.4 before putting anything back on the phone. Open Cydia, let it re-organize and it will close itself. You can then open it again and use it,

Saving hashes is simple and done with TinyUmbrella. They are not used for jailbreaking, just to restore to older firmware versions.

OTA updates do not work on jailbroken phones, just use iTunes.
 
I used Absinthe and had no issues what so ever. I too had cold feet because a few years ago I think it was possible to "brink" your phone, especially when rooting droids. Now there's really no reason not too. Make sure you go to itunes and make a back up of your phone first, but then once absinthe is downloaded the process is a joke. You plug in your phone and make sure it shows up and hit "jailbreak", it runs its course and voila, that's it. I think for absinthe you have to update to 5.1.1 now. I'm using an iPhone 4 with 5.1.1.

Worst case scenario you restore from your back up..
 
DroidConvert said:
How is it that people with an iPhone 4s all running 5.1.1 can get different results. I can understand this with Android since there are many makes, models and variations but it seems that it shouldn't happen with the iPhone.
Click to expand...

They screw up and don't follow instructions well in most cases. Just follow the instructions (unless they mention navigating through settings and clicking "delete all contacts and settings" - never do that! Just skip it)

DroidConvert said:
The other thing that was mentioned was that if you updated to 5.1.1. OTA that jailbreaking might not always work right and that you should update the OS via iTines.
Click to expand...

Did you do an OTA update? If so, I'd recommend restoring via iTunes before jailbreaking just in case.

DroidConvert said:
Also, does anyone have a preference of redsnow or absinthe?
Click to expand...

Absinthe is the only untethered jailbreak tool out there for 5.1.1 right now - go with that.

Remember, worst case scenario, you can always restore through iTunes if something goes terribly wrong. Since it sounds like you've never been jailbroken before, I'd say you're even less likely to encounter problems since there are no leftover files from a Jailbroken backup restore.
 
dhlizard said:
Best route for success.
Back your phone up in iTunes or on iCloud. Make sure you have a sim to activate it.
Do a clean restore to 5.1.1, choose set up as new. Jailbreak your 4S with Absinthe 2.0.4 before putting anything back on the phone. Open Cydia, let it re-organize and it will close itself. You can then open it again and use it,

Saving hashes is simple and done with TinyUmbrella. They are not used for jailbreaking, just to restore to older firmware versions.

OTA updates do not work on jailbroken phones, just use iTunes.
Click to expand...

I thank all of you but have some questions for dhlizard.

I'm on Verizon and don't have a sim card, is that a problem?

Do I need to worry about hashes, TinyUmbrella or any of that stuff? I don't care about putting on older firmware and just want to jailbreak my 4s to get some toggles, widgets, themes, etc.
 
Well I'm not him but I have Verizon and did exactly what you want to do last week. Just update to 5.1.1, back up on iTunes and use absinthe! That's all I did.

Are hashes not saved already from doing a backup on iTunes? I didnt know you need other software for that.
 
ccapman670 said:
Well I'm not him but I have Verizon and did exactly what you want to do last week. Just update to 5.1.1, back up on iTunes and use absinthe! That's all I did.

Are hashes not saved already from doing a backup on iTunes? I didnt know you need other software for that.
Click to expand...

Cool. Thanks!

Another question though. You backed up to iTunes and then after you jailbreak do you restore from iTunes? Won't that wipe out the jailbreak? Do I need to restore?

Sorry for the silly questions but after reading the instructions and some of the responses, I keep coming up with more questions.
 
Nope my phone was just how it was. I'm not sure if the program absinthe automatically restored from my iTunes backup or if my phone was never wiped in the first place but all I did was run the program and my phone was identical to how it was just before. Texts, background and all. Just make sure to disable your pass code before running absinthe!!
 
DroidConvert said:
Cool. Thanks!

Another question though. You backed up to iTunes and then after you jailbreak do you restore from iTunes? Won't that wipe out the jailbreak? Do I need to restore?

Sorry for the silly questions but after reading the instructions and some of the responses, I keep coming up with more questions.
Click to expand...

Not a restore. Just sync.
 
DroidConvert said:
I was all ready to jailbreak for the first time and was reading an iPhone tech site that walks you through it. It seemed easy enough until I started reading the responses and there were many who claimed that they had trouble and it wouldn't wotk, etc.
Click to expand...

First, congratulations on reading forum information.

Second, there are absolutely 0 reasons for getting cold feet IF you backup your phone in iTunes. Even if your attempt at jailbreaking crashes and burns (it won't), you simply restore your phone and all you've 'lost' is some time. There is 0 risk in jailbreaking.

Third, the people who post problems here are a tiny, tiny minority of the people who jailbreak.
 
Thanks everyone. I'm gonna give it a go and hopefully I'll be posting with a success story.
 
OK, I'm in. The process was totally painless. I did the restore as the instructions said to do and things are almost the same as (visually) as when I started.

Now it's time to tackle Cydia!
 
DroidConvert said:
OK, I'm in. The process was totally painless. I did the restore as the instructions said to do and things are almost the same as (visually) as when I started.

Now it's time to tackle Cydia!
Click to expand...

Don't freak out and restore if something starts to go wacky, just come back and ask.
 
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