Userland Jailbreak For iPhone 4 Accomplished

We mentioned previously how Comex discovered a userland jailbreak (much like Spirit Jailbreak) for the iPhone 4 and how PlanetBeing is working on getting a root shell (and SSH) on the iPhone 4. Today we have some update on the news as to why it hasn't already been ready and also with a sneak peek of what is to come. When one refers to "jailbreaking" the iPhone, they are referring to opening the underlying file systen of the phone and opening it up for full read/write access. The term is derived from a Unix jargon known as "chroot jail," which is the limited section of the file system that an underprivileged app can access. Jailbreaking allows third parties to install and run any software they want rather than the subset of iPhone apps approved by Apple and distributed through the App Store.

In the past few years, the jailbreak software community is the center of innovation and creativity behind the device. Many of the iPhone technologies debuted first in the hobbyist jailbreak community before ever appearing in official Apple firmware. Examples of jailbreak-first features that later appeared on the official iPhone OS feature list include copy and paste, spell checking, application folders, rotation inhibition, multitasking, find-my-iPhone, and that is just naming a few. The jailbreak community has led the way when it comes to iPhone possibility and expression.

The reason the jailbreak cannot be currently released is because it uses proprietary Apple code. The proof-of-concept jailbreak showed that the new iPhone model could be opened for general file access. There is currently no word yet as to when a more intellectual-property-friendly version will be finished. Everyone hopes "soon" but there is no rush from the development team which all work on it on a volunteer basis.

Stay tuned for more news as we will keep you posted as soon as any update on the iPhone 4 jailbreak comes out. You can do so by following us on Twitter and/or subscribing to our RSS feeds.

As promised, some screenshots of the new jailbreak to show you a sneak peek of what is to come:

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