Can you acknowledge the badge, start the update, cancel before it begins and see if the badge goes away? Just an idea... I have no clue if it will work or not.
Or don't accept the terms or whatever, and cancel out at that point.![]()
Short answer (to the original question): If you are jailbroken, yes. If not, no.
I am curious though, why do you not want to update to 5.1 if you aren't jailbroken?
My 4s works perfectly for me. I can go 3 days on the battery with my use so battery life is not an issue for me. I don't want to loose my "Jack Legged" toggles I've added. I don't like the addition of the swipe up camera icon on the lock screen. Tap, tap, tap and I'm in my camera, I don't want tap, swipe up. I just don't want any changes to my phone no matter what others have liked about the update.
tap tap tap in the long run will cause more issues with your home button