Jailbreaking iPhone 4 With LimeRa1n for iOS 4.1

Wow, never have I followed such controversy as I have this week. First the Chronic Dev Team announce a release date for GreenPois0n, something that I and many other iPhone 4 owners have been waiting for. Then Geohot appears from out of nowhere to release LimeRa1n an alternative jailbreak tool that uses a different exploit to GreenPois0n.

Well that’s great many of you will say, competition is good. Everyone complains of Apple’s walled garden so having choice in the jail breaking community is good right? Wrong. Without getting too technical, mainly because I can’t, the jailbreaking community is always attempting to be one step ahead of Apple. As soon as a new jailbreak comes out Apple will see the exploit, the hole being used to install the jailbreak, and close it.

Because LimeRa1n and GreenPois0n were using different exploits Apple would be able to close two exploits in a single update, therefore possible stopping any future updates.

Because of Geohot’s release of LimeRa1n a day before GreenPois0n forced the Chronic Dev Team to delay their release so that they could integrate the exploit used by LimeRa1n and not show Apple the original exploit they were going to use and keep it for a future jailbreak.

All this played out in public via Twitter with accusations and blame being thrown in all directions from those involved and those just wanting a jailbreak.

For the non-technical it was difficult to know who and what to believe, for me though the driving factor was that I had been without my jailbreak for much longer than I had wanted and so despite the warning of the beta status of the LimeRa1n jailbreak I decided to investigate further.

Looking through some of the major iPhone forums there was mixed reaction to the success rate of LimeRa1n. Delving in deeper though it appeared that the users with iPhone 4’s on iOS 4.1 were having relatively no issues.

The deciding factor for me was though was finding out that I had previously used one of Geohot’s jailbreaks in the form of BlackRa1n and found it to deliver everything I required.

Most people’s experience of jailbreaking their iPhone’s has been through jailbreakme.com, a simple untethered jailbreak that was initiated directly from the iPhones web browser.

LimeRa1n’s jailbreak wasn’t quite so easy but with the step by step guide integrated into it I was jailbroken within a couple of minutes.

After hooking up my iPhone to my PC, LimeRa1n is currently PC only, I downloaded the LimeRa1n executable and double-clicked it. From that point on LimeRa1n took me through all the steps, which buttons to press on the iPhone, when to release them and so on.

After the initial reboot the only change was the addition of a blank LimeRa1n icon. This was an initial worry for me but after reading up on the internet it appeared that a simple reboot would resolve this issue.

This was not the case for me but clicking on the blank icon enabled me to install Cydia, the app that allows all the jailbreak magic to happen. After installing Cydia and installing all the required updates a final reboot of my iPhone was all it took to get everything working flawlessly. This entire process took no longer than 5 minutes and I was able to start re-installing my Cydia apps right away.

They were a couple of apps that were incompatible with iOS 4.1, namely Action Menu and Display Recorder, but not only did the majority of the apps install successfully but all the settings from my previous install remained intact too.

When all the dust settles history should show that everyone got scrubbing they wanted. A jailbreak now and a future jailbreak for the next Apple release. It may not have happened in the best way but we should move on and thank all the jailbreakers out there for the great work that they do.

3 Comments on “Jailbreaking iPhone 4 With LimeRa1n for iOS 4.1”

  1. Divekevin

    I cannot download Display Recorder from Cydia. What can I do??? It’s one of most important app that I have.

  2. Theirishtide

    Well said. The jailbreak was everyone’s main concern and they got it. Going to use limera1n now!

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