Taking a tethered phone away for the weekend - risky?

[blizeH]

I've been running the same jailbreak ever since iOS 5 comes out, it's mostly fine (a few problems here and there) but mostly annoyingly, since it's tethered, should my phone crash for whatever reason, I am absolutely screwed until I get it home and boot it via redsn0w.

I'm going away next weekend, and would be quite dependent on my phone (as a camera, navigation device, and all of the other usual things) and I'm worried that if it crashes I'll need to spend the weekend without it.

In this situation am I better off just installing iOS 5.0.1 and just leaving it without jailbreak until they release untethered? (not preferable since I find things like BiteSMS, SBSettings invaluable) or is there a way to put the semi-tethered install onto my phone at the moment? I've looked in Cydia and couldn't figure out how to do it.

Thanks

 

[engelke2010]

I am using the tethered jailbreak on my phone and I have semitether installed. I know if I have to reboot for any reason, I still will be able to use my phone, just not the jb parts of it until I get home.

 

[blizeH]

Many thanks, that sounds perfect, how do I install semitether? There's one on Cydia but it looks really dodgy, all of the writing is foreign and I thought BigBoss was English for some reason? Or rather everything else I've had of his is English!

Do I just install it 'SemiTether' (with a weird book icon, and GSM underneath?!?!) and then plug it into my computer at home to reboot via redsn0w, and done?

 

[blizeH]

Oh great. I just installed it, it said to reload Springboard, which I did, now my phone has frozen and has a padlock at the top of the status bar?! Argh.

(edit) Okay, I guess that was my phones way of telling me don't touch anything, because despite the phone appearing to have loaded okay, it was still processing something. We're back! \o/ Thank you very much. I think/hope it's okay now, and it's so good to have a fallback option and peace of mind for the weekend.

 

[complexcommunic]

Just bring a laptop, genius. It's like an untethered tether. Just borrow someone's netbook for the reason, or better yet go to best buy and return it when you get home.

 

[blizeH]

I'm going to have to assume that's a joke post.

 

[NanoNyrd]

Semitether works fine. It is not in the standard repositories, I got it from http://thebigboss.org/semitether but it may have been moved to one of the std repositories by now (I would hope so!). There should not be anything in foreign languages, it installs with an icon that looks like a cable plugging into itunes, and when you press the icon you get this:

 

[blizeH]

Ah! I never knew it was on a custom source sorry, I assumed it'd be with the other BigBoss stuff so thank you. I now have it working fine, as per your screenshot - was tempted to patch Safari but I'm not sure the risks are worth it for how (hopefully!) little I'll need to rely on this fall back.

But yeah, very happy - thank you

 

[Dwalls90]

I think you'll be fine. The tethered JB seems very stable. As others have said install the semi-tether as a precaution.

 

[TC25]

OP - Just to clarify - The stability of anyone's tethered jb phone is is a function of which hacks the person has installed. While this stating the obvious, it's not insignificant. Some people install a few hacks, and then, except when these few hacks are updated, they leave their phone alone. Others are always trying new things, new hacks, new themes, etc. IMO, that's asking for trouble and not something that should be done when away from a PC with redsn0w installed.

 

[blizeH]

Yeah you're not wrong, I've had 3G problems with my iPhone 4 since jailbreaking iOS 5, it was fine for ages (months) but installing semitether seems to have bought those problems back. Damn.

 

[mlts22]

I rarely reboot my phone, so taking it semitethered for a weekend is a workable idea. The only times I really reboot it are when I install a Cydia app that requires it.

I do notice that Mail will not work in semi-tethered mode, so make sure you have a third party Web browser (Atomic browser works well for me) ready to go for Webmail access if you do have to restart. Ironically iBooks will not work on a JB device, but will in semitethered mode.