iPhone 4 Officially Jailbroken

We'll let our readers decide which feat is more admirable – selling 1.7 million iPhone 4 units in just three days since the phone's official public debut, or jailbreaking it. Either way, both milestones have been accomplished, the latter being confirmed in a twitter post today, alongside a couple of screenshots.

A report over at Redmond Pie reveals that Apple's iPhone 4 has been successfully jailbroken within just days of its launch, via the “userland” jailbreak vulnerability used by the Spirit jailbreak tool. Acknowledging that Apple failed to patch the hole, hackers @planetbeing and @chpwn managed to get root access on the device using code from @comex’s userland jailbreak method. Word on their accomplishment was reportedly spread by @Planetbeing, who posted the news on his Twitter account.

Two screenshots are offered as evidence of the iPhone 4 jailbreak, one showing Cydia running on the high resolution screen of Apple's iPhone 4, the other showing full root shell access on the smartphone (courtesy Musclenerd, a member of the infamous iPhone Dev Team). The jailbreak tool is yet to be made public.

Additionally, Redmond Pie includes some information from a post over at the ModMyi Forums, saying that an iPhone 4 unlock will require a complete rewrite of the Dev Team's ultrasn0w. The reason is the completely new baseband in iPhone 4.

“The DevTeam and others have been checking through the iPhone 4, and have noticed the baseband runs a completely different OS than on previous models”, a Modmyi forum user reportedly revealed. “The iPhone 3G and 3G[S] both ran Nucleus OS on the PMB8878 baseband CPU (aka XGold 608), where the iPhone 2G ran the PMB8876 (aka S-Gold 2). iPhone 4 uses the PMB9800, or X-Gold 618 – running a separate OS – ThreadX, an RTOS by ExpressLogic.”

Softpedia doesn't encourage jailbreaking / unlocking the iPhone / iPod touch / iPad, or any other device. This article has a purely informational purpose and doesn't, in any way, suggest that you should hack your Apple device. Using hacks may render your device unusable, or may reduce the quality of your experience employing the respective device. If you choose to download and install jailbreak tools, you will do so at your own risk. Unlocking / jailbreaking your iPhone / iPod touch / iPad may violate your warranty or the EULA with Apple and / or your cellular-service provider.