News

If you're considering jailbreaking your iPhone for the first time, you should know there is an iPhone 4S jailbreak in the works, but it's not available to the general public yet, and it will be free. You should also know Apple is not a fan of jailbreaking, so it's never going to be available as an app in the iTunes App Store.

Apple recently pulled a $9.99 app by RiliSoft because it tricked people into believing it could jailbreak the iPhone 4S and iPad 2. The app cleverly named "Jailbreak" is actually a game, but Apple didn't like the way it tricked its users. You can see how the app's description mislead people from the screen shot taken by GottaBeMobile posted below.

Now you can set up shortcuts to your favorite iPhone Settings right on your iOS home screen without jailbreaking. One tap of the right icon will bring you directly to the Settings item you want to change without any more navigating through multiple menus. The solution shown here is not only free, but it does not require jailbreaking.

To begin, you must have iOS 5 installed on your device. These shortcuts are actually Web Clips delivered to your iPhone in a MobileConfig file. Some of the toggles will change the desired setting immediately, while others are not true toggles, but immediately open the correct Settings page. Jailbreakers familiar with the tweak SBSettings have enjoyed this functionality for some time.

Even after Apple released iOS 5.0.1 to address complaints about iPhone battery life issues, people are still experiencing unexpected battery drain. What originally seemed like a few isolated incidents on Friday, has grown into a pile of new complaints on the Apple support forums. Some iPhone 4S owners are claiming iOS 5.0.1 did nothing to fix their battery problems.

Apple responded to the new complaints by releasing a brief statement to AllThingsD.

“The recent iOS software update addressed many of the battery issues that some customers experienced on their iOS 5 devices. We continue to investigate a few remaining issues.”

Those always reliable "industry sources" must be feeling lonely since the Apple rumor mill was shutdown back in October. Good thing for them the iPhone 4S wasn't interesting enough to hold our attention for longer than a month. So grab your supply of salt, and prepare yourself, because I predict a very long winter of new Apple rumors.

The latest comes from the Business Insider, who refuses let a great rumor die. According to their unnamed source, the iPhone 5 was very real, but it was abandoned 3 months before the iPhone 4S was announced. Their tipster didn't say why the iPhone 5 was scrapped, but he did say Apple engineers thought "a new fully re-designed iPhone was going to be Apple's next big announcement." He also says he played with the prototype.

Those looking forward to an untethered jailbreak solution on the iPhone 4S should heed the words of developer pod2g, who warns that the iOS 5.0.1 update should be avoided for now. The reason is because security exploits found in iOS 5 have been closed by Apple in iOS 5.0.1. These security flaws, publicized by security expert Charlie Miller, will simplify the untethered jailbreak process on the iPhone 4S.

If you're concerned about the security flaws, there are no reports of any malicious software actually using these exploits to do harm. Regardless, after the iPhone 4S is fully jailbroken developers will patch iOS 5 on their own with updates available through the Cydia jailbreak app store. The point is that if you plan to jailbreak your iPhone 4S untethered in the near future, the iOS 5.0.1 update should be avoided until further information is available.