So many rumors, complaints, confused people. I want to help clarify a few things about the jailbreak community and upcoming releases.

First, I want to speak about the time it has taken for 3.1.3 to be jailbroken. Many think this indicates that Apple has won or that the jailbreak is just too hard. This is far from the truth. The fact is that 3.1.2 and 3.1.3 are really basically the same firmware. 3.1.3 was not “worth” doing a jailbreak for. Jailbreaks are done by finding a bug in Apple’s software and then exploiting it in some way that allows for the device to be compromised. At that point, the jailbreak software bundle is uploaded to the device and executed. When this completes, root access is achieved on the device.

Every time a jailbreak is released, Apple analyzes how it was accomplished and fixes the bug that was used to jailbreak the device. Quite simply, 3.1.3 was not worth giving this bug to Apple to fix it.  However, Apple has since released the iPad. This has become worth using up an exploit to jailbreak the iPad. As of today, the main iPad world wide release has not yet occurred. Spirit should be close to ready when it does.

At this point, there are *at least* two known exploits that have been used to provide jailbreaks. The first one we will see is from Comex and is called Spirit.  The next one is either from Geohot and is called LimeRa1n or Chronic dev called Greenpois0n.  Here are some infos on these jailbreaks:

Spirit - There is no current release date (no, it will not be Friday as rumors say). This will work on all device to date and will not be tethered. This will jailbreak 3.1.3 and 3.2 (iPad) devices.  This jailbreak will require that your device is activated. That means, if your device says only “slide for emergency” you cannot use this jailbreak until you insert a valid sim card and activate the device. After that, you can jailbreak. Therefore, there will be no unlocking on Spirit. For those running 3.1.2 that wish to update to 3.1.3 and use Spirit, you cannot do so if you require an unlock. It is also unclear if a 3.1.2 version will be released to simply untether those of you that are on 3.1.2 (spirit currently requires a stock unjailbroken device to work). Spirit is real and it works very well. The current version is command line and a GUI is being written for it for both Windows and OSX.

Spirit, while originally found and done by Comex alone, is being made into a product using the cooperation of many teams (iphone dev team, chronic dev team, as well as Comex).  As we should all understand, getting a jailbreak from exploit to usable tool is quite a bit of work. Especially on a new device like iPad where many tools have to be rewritten or updated (like Cydia).

LimeRa1n - This is what Geohot is calling his jailbreak. Originally it was going to be released for iPad first, but instead Geohot got busy and is holding it for 4.0 (possibly to be completed by Chronic dev team). There may be an unlock planned by Geohot after 4.0 is released but its not clear yet. This jailbreak will not require an activated device and works differently than Spirit in that sense. In addition, there is a tethered and non-tethered version of this. It is not totally clear yet, but it may be possible to stretch this into two jailbreaks, one tethered and one not.

Greenpois0n - This uses the same exploit that Geohot found and was being worked on by posixninja of the Chronic Dev Team. Greenpois0n is more of a toolset that can be used to find other jailbreaks, firmware decryption keys, and may be useful in the future. When it will be released is also unclear.

How does this affect you?

Here will be your options when Spirit is released shortly:

1) You are on iPhone 3gs and are a subscriber to a contract carrier like AT&T. You will be able to update to 3.1.3 and jailbreak your device non-tethered.

2) You are on iPhone pre-3gs – you can update to 3.1.3 and jailbreak today with redsn0w.

3) You have a device that is not an iPhone (its an ipod touch any generation or an ipad) – you can update to 3.1.3 and use Spirit to jailbreak.

4) You have an iPhone unlocked and on 3.1.2 tethered. You will have to wait. Spirit will probably not work for you. If you update to 3.1.3, your baseband will be updated and you will not be able to unlock again.

5) You are on 3.1.2 and happy. Just install “3.1.3 firmware app”, click “3.1.3″ then “reboot” and you are as good as anyone that restored to 3.1.3 and jailbroke. Everything in appstore that requires 3.1.3 will work now.

In any case, you guys will want to keep your shsh stored in Cydia. 3.1.3 shsh’s will become valuable soon.

A new app from the developer of AddExchange – iStrings. iStrings gives you the ability to change the system strings of your iDevice. It has support for either WinterBoard or just using the app itself to change them – no dependency on WinterBoard. This is great for people that do not want/need to install extra [...]

SwirlyMMS 2.3 & SwirlyNet, the first and most complete MMS app for the iPhone. It is packed with new features like text-to-speech, 3gp video encoding, SMS and free-of-charge messaging over SwirlyNet.

Firewall iP, the first and only Firewall for the iPhone, got an update to 1.40 A lot of stuff has been improved. Changelog 1.40: port blocking: now you can extend rules to only block for a specific port. Simply by adding “:portnumber” to the hostname or by using the selector in the popup (example: facebook.com:80). [...]

We can only say that we are sorry it has taken so long. This release fixes most if not all the bugs found in previous versions. Make sure to check out our hilarious video collection of prank calls in the app. As before, the app is free to download, and the service is free to [...]

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Thunderst0rm is “supposed” to be an untethered jailbreak for 3.1.3. It was released today and is available for download. Thunderst0rm is fake. Do not download or run it. We aren’t sure what all it does, but it does not jailbreak your device. Furthermore, it may install some spyware or something. It should be avoided. Rumors say it deletes several files from iTunes meaning you would possibly have to reinstall iTunes after running it.

Another one called TurboSn0w2 is also fake.

There are currently 2 known working exploits on 3.1.3/3.2 (ipad). One will be released from Comex called “Spirit” and the other by Geohot which will probably be one of his “Ra1n” apps. The two folks above are working together and will make sure that both are not released for the same device firmware. That means the next two major apple releases should be able to be jailbroken without looking for additional exploits.

If you don’t see news about it here, at the iphone-dev team blog, or at Geohot’s “on the iphone” blog, assume that it is not real and do not run it until you see confirmation at one of the above sites.

I usually don’t report on general news, but I found this interesting enough. But Planetbeing (iphone dev team) has managed to get a decent looking version of Android on a 2g iPhone dualbooting iPhone OS and android. Check out the details and a video of it working here.

BiteSMS v4.7 update is out today. Here are the changes: Quick List feature. From the biteSMS status bar icon, easily display and action your unread SMS messages. A license is no longer required to use biteSMS, if you don’t have a license or credits you will be shown ads instead. The intent is that those [...]

Edit (Apr 15): Thank you to your feedback, I have fixed 3 categories bugs you guys reported in email: 1) Blue arrow gone and cant edit folders (fixed), 2) Crash when selecting icon (fixed)  3) Crash when icon theme with no icons in it is present (fixed).   I have also removed all the debug output from libhide and updated that as well. Currently, Categories will still respring when adding a new folder, renaming a folder, or removing a folder. But hiding icons and adding icons into the folder can be done with no respring.

Libhide is the underlying library used to hide icons for many applications including SbSettings, Poof, Categories, and even Winterboard. (There are others). Many of you have this installed and may not know what it is.

I have updated libhide adding the following long awaited features:

1) Hiding apps no longer impacts their performance in other apps. For example, hiding mail will no longer remove the settings pane mail settings. Hiding youtube will no longer cause embedded youtube videos to stop showing up in safari. This was one of the main reported issues with Categories app when people would move mail or youtube into a folder. Special thanks to developer Dustin Howett for helping me with this.

2) Hiding apps and unhiding apps no longer require a respring. To this end, I have created a new sbsettings, poof, and categories that properly use libhide with these changes.

I have been testing this for a few days myself, but since libhide has so many installs, I would like to get some stronger testing in before releasing it. Therefore, I have added the new libhide v2.0.6, categories, poof, and sbsettings updates to my beta repository. The only changes in categories, poof, and sbsettings are to support the new libhide no respring mode when hiding icons. For categories, this includes adding and removing folder icons. For sbsettings this includes adding and removing icons to the dock.

Note to firmware 2.x users: Thanks to Apple’s lame practices when installing the 4.0 SDK and the 3.2 ipad SDK, I can no longer build for 2.x operating systems. Therefore, if you have 2.x, while these things should continue to work for you, none of the new features will be active for you. This hereby ends my updates for 2.x users. Time to move to 3.x if you haven’t already.

There are no other changes in these apps other than the libhide support, so please dont try to tell me that this update caused your sms to stop sending the last character, that your iphone won’t reboot now, that your wifi no longer works, etc. These things are not things that would be caused by this update. These things did not get changed.

To test these versions, please add my test repo to cydia: http://thebigboss.org/betarepo – please only add this if you are willing to test beta software. (This should never appear in anyone’s “all sources” package.) If you have any issues, I expect that you are able to send me a syslog with a bug report to my email address. Please do not leave bugs on comments of this post. I will not read them. My email address is readily available in Cydia. Please use that. Syslogs can be obtained via logmailer. Finally, this repository should not be added to your Cydia if you are comfortable testing beta and possibly unstable software.  To those of you that do test, thank you in advance.

Also, if you do test and things are working OK, I would appreciate an email saying that as well. I will release the update after I get sufficient amount of testing and no major issues.

As you all know, iPhone OS 4.0 beta 1 is released to developers.  I will not cover all the new features of iPhone OS 4. Those posts are all over the internet.

But I will give you the standard warnings:

1) This is beta. If you are not a developer using it to develop apps, do not install it.
2) Like all previous major betas, this will probably expire every few weeks requiring you to restore or update.
3) This beta does put a new baseband on your device. If you ever want to unlock, dont touch it.
4) This beta will be slow and buggy. Release is still 4 months off!
5) You may have problems downgrading if you want to do so if you don’t have an SHSH stored etc.

In the meantime, remember you got all the new features already in your jailbreak:

1) 4.0 Multitasking = Install Circuitous / Backgrounder from Cydia.
2) Folders = Install categories / categoriessb out of Cydia
3) Music controls on home screen to control pandora or other = install music controls from cydia. Install backgrounder to background pandora.
4) Background wallpaper changing = Install winterboard or bosspaper and change your wallpaper is many more configurable ways.
5) Spellchecking = Inspell in cydia.

New in v1.2.0: Full AVRCP controls (bluetooth headset controls, including the skip controls Apple doesn’t support yet) are now available to those running 3.1.x! Music Controls is an all-in-one music controller for your phone, giving you the ability to control many popular music applications from a myriad of controls, including Bluetooth Headset, Wired Headset, Lockscreen [...]

ILogManager Elite allows you to delete call records from your call history of IPhone. Either you can delete one or all call records from a contact or a number. This app has a wonderful feature and that is “SEARCH“. Using this feature you can search the entire call history by name or by number for [...]

Win as much as you can from pokerist all over the world. We give you free access to Pokerist poker club, where you can play with us, your friends, or choose free sit on any table in the club and play without any fee. Today we present you beta version of our Cydia client. Just [...]