The Difference Between An Untethered Jailbreak, Tethered Jailbreak And SemiTethered Jailbreak

With the release of the iOS 5 firmware for iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch comes a whole new wave of jailbreakers in the jailbreaking community. And with a constant stream of new jailbreakers comes another constant stream of questions. Due to the fact that we are receiving a lot of questions (how to jailbreak, which jailbreak software tool do I use, untethered jailbreak, tethered, huh?), we cannot possibly answer each question individually. Thus, we are going to start doing posts to answer the most frequently asked questions we receive.

As the iOS 5 semitethered jailbreak was just released our first post will be dedicated to the difference between untethered, tethered and semitethered jailbreaks.

Untethered vs Tethered vs Semitethered Jailbreak

• Untethered Jailbreak: An untethered jailbreak means that your iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad will function as normal; except it will be jailbroken.
• Tethered Jailbreak: A tethered jailbreak means that each time you reboot your iDevice (iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch), the boot process will fail (you’ll get stuck on the Apple logo). To get around this you will need to plug your iDevice back into your computer and re-run the jailbreaking tool you originally used to jailbreak your iDevice.
• SemiTethered Jailbreak: A semitethered jailbreak means that you still have a tethered jailbreak but if you loose power or your iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad crashes it will re-boot into a semi-functioning state where you can use applications such as Phone/SMS. To put your iDevice back into a functioning and jailbroken state you will need to plug your iDevice back into your computer and re-run the jailbreaking tool you originally used to jailbreak your iDevice.

Currently the only jailbreak available for the iOS 5 firmware is a tethered iOS 5 jailbreak, as well as a recently released semitethered iOS 5 jailbreak. We will keep you updated on the status of the iOS 5 untethered jailbreak. Until that time please stay tuned and leave any further questions in the comments section below.