Finally! Notable hacker pod2g and the Chronic Dev Team have released the first untethered jailbreak for Apple’s iPhone 4S and iPad 2.
Jailbreaking your iPhone opens the door to loading unapproved applications and using the phone on other carriers. Not surprisingly, Apple hates its devices being jailbroken and used in unintended ways, so the company regularly issues operating system updates that make it harder to jailbreak. The iPhone 4S, in particular, has taken months to find a full jailbreak.
The new jailbreak for the iPhone 4S and iPad 2 is called “Absinthe A5″ and it can be downloaded direct here. Unfortunately, the Absinthe jailbreak is only available now for Mac users right now, but versions for Windows and Linux are planned to be released soon.
What makes this release such a big deal is that this is an “untethered” jailbreak versus a “tethered” jailbreak. A tethered jailbreak means your phone can only be rebooted when it is plugged into the computer, while an untethered jailbreak means your phone can be rebooted anytime. As someone who’s had a tethered jailbreak on his iPhone 3GS before, I can tell you life is much easier with an untethered jailbreak.
It seems that 2012 is the year of ‘waterproofing’. I find this ironic, since in the movie “2012”, the world is destroyed by a variety of disasters, ending in massive flooding.

Maybe companies are thinking, “Hmm… just in case?” All jokes aside, we’ve seen some interesting pushes towards waterproofing technology such as P2i’s Aridion technology, and the new waterproof Pantech Element.
Now it seems that both Apple and Samsung might be making a move down this road as well, as both are actively looking into a hi-tech spray that make smartphones waterproof, and such technology could even arrive with the iPhone 5.