iOS 4.2.1 on iPhone 4: Jailbreak Tethered, no Unlock

In Hacking

iPhone 4, the good and the bad, really things have been so uncertain with this iDevice. Recently I bought an iPhone 4, running iOS 4.0 Jailbroken and Unlocked.
To hard reset the phone, complete reset option was used from the settings menu. Misery, on reboot, the phone got stuck on the Apple logo and wouldn’t go ahead. I connected to the PC, and kept it as is, since iTunes said you need to restore it. Someone pressed the restore button there while I was away. Voila! It got updated to the latest brand new iOS 4.2.1, how unfortunate. Then was the time for me to look up iPhone news about Jailbreak and Unlock for iOS 4.2.1 and BaseBand 3.10.01.

Tethered Jailbreak for iOS 4.2.1

The iPhone dev blog introduced me to the ‘Tethered’ Jailbreak, since my iPhone wasn’t even ‘hacktivated’, I had to go for any Jailbreak, and Tethered was fine for then. I downloaded the Jailbreak tool from iPhoneDownloadBlog Downloads section, and also the large iOS firmware files, really bulky, Windows Mobile OS fits in half the size.

I opened the redns0w tool, browsed for my iOS 4.2.1 (corresponding) firmware, after its identification, moved ahead, selected cydia to be installed, put the device into DFU mode, also nice guide in the tool to help you easily put it in. After it was in DFU mode, redsn0w tool started the exploit using limera1n. A series of codes on the phone scrolled, nextly the tool said all done, further work will be done on the phone itself.

The phone booted with a Pineapple (pwned) logo, and performed several tasks, like moving the files/apps and so, and finally rebooted after completion.

Here’s the catch, I was needed to connect the iPhone to PC to be able to boot, because after reboot it was stuck on the Apple boot logo. I went through the same procedure to run the redsn0w tool, selecting the firmware, now on the next screen, instead of selecting to install cydia like previously, I selected the option which said ‘Just boot tethered right now’, again here I was needed to put the phone in DFU mode and it was exploited again, and then, the pineapple logo booted up my iPhone.

Functionality

Finally I could see my springboard. But story not over yet, I find many apps crash, sometimes run, other times cause headache. A few other functionality doesn’t work as it should. I regret restoring my iPhone to the new firmware, but anyway, if it wouldn’t have, I wouldn’t have got the opportunity to learn more about these things, I would have simply used the unlocked iPhone without tweaking, this restore made me learn a lot of things, well also, I am officially unlocking others’ iPhones here.

The dev team has released the untethered Jailbreak as a christmas gift to all of those stuck on iOS 4.2.1, but wait, it’s still in beta, and is in undergoing progress, at time of my writing this article, 4 betas were released, considerable improvements with each release. We appreciate the hard work of the dev team.

Unlock BaseBand 3.10.01

I am also expecting unlock soon, according to latest news, @sherif_hashim has replied to a user confirming his query that it might be available by or around 16th of January. Hope it comes at least this soon.