Pangu released two new jailbreaks for iPhones, iPads and even Apple TV but unfortunately, neither is the iOS 9.2.1 jailbreak everyone’s been hoping for.
Though it's been five months since Pangu’s iOS 9.0.2 jailbreak released for iPhones and iPads and literally years since the last Apple TV jailbreak, these new offerings won’t likely gather much enthusiasm from jailbreak enthusiasts because of the supported iOS versions.
While touted as faster and compatible with both Mac and Windows computers, Pangu’s new iPhone jailbreak is for a fairly old firmware – iOS 9.1. Most people who have lost their jailbreaks probably lost them much later than iOS 9.1 and so the jailbreak is virtually useless.
Meanwhile, the Apple TV jailbreak, which Pangu plans to release next week, only allows for SSH into the device. Pangu says this will mainly be useful to security researchers and jailbreak developers.
Pangu9 V1.3.0 used a kernel bug from Lokihardt to exploit iOS 9.1, and the bug is patched in iOS 9.2. Thanks Lokihardt for helping!
— PanguTeam (@PanguTeam) March 11, 2016
We will release jb for Apple TV4(9.0.x) next week which only has SSH access. It's mainly for security researchers and jailbreak developers.
— PanguTeam (@PanguTeam) March 11, 2016
While it’s frustrating to see jailbreaks release for such old firmware, it’s not exactly surprising. iOS 9 has proved particularly challenging to jailbreak and many of the old players have left the scene. The few researchers still creating jailbreaks are being more cautious than ever about releasing before vulnerabilities are patched.
While every iOS release brings different dynamics for jailbreaking, what we’ve seen with iOS 9, might be the going trend. I could easily imagine that with iOS 10 we could see a jailbreak release within 2-3 months of the firmware dropping, but any jailbreaks following that coming only after Apple has patched the vulnerabilities.
If that scenario proves to be true, it will be more important than ever for jailbreakers to stay put on the jailbreak they have, and if they happen to lose it, not to upgrade their devices until a new jailbreak is released. Of course, anyone who’s been in the community a while knows that’s pretty standard advice. The problem is, we got kinda spoiled for a couple years when jailbreaks were releasing so and so often rapidly.
But the fact that Pangu is still releasing jailbreaks, even if for old firmware, is encouraging. The team is made up of solid security researchers and, therefore, you can expect the jailbreaks they release will probably be of a higher quality, though it may take some time to get them.
How To Jailbreak iOS 9.1 On iPhone, iPad and iPod
For those who are lucky enough to be on iOS 9.1, you can download the iOS 9.1 Pangu jailbreak on your computer and use it to jailbreak you iPhone, iPad or iPod, by visiting Pangu’s official jailbreak page.
