Redsn0w Jailbreak Tool To Support Downgrading iOS

New tool will allow you to roll back upgrades to iOS 5.1 and 5.1.1.

When iOS 5.1 released last month, it didn’t really have a lot in terms of new features. Apart from a new (and, to be fair, much improved) camera shortcut and a few other little odds and ends, iOS 5.1 didn’t have a lot to offer those who weren’t rushing out to get the new iPad.

If you’re a member of the jailbreak community, though, the update to iOS 5.1 did bring with it two separate but related headaches. First, with iOS 5.1 Apple fixed all the exploits that allowed iOS 5.0.1 to be jailbroken. The Dev Team – and pod2g in particular – were forced to start over on the new update, just a few short months after finally cracking the previous version. Then, to add insult to injury, Apple made it extremely difficult to downgrade to an older version of iOS. That meant that those upgraded their device accidentally (or because they bought an April Fools gag) were stuck waiting for the iOS 5.1 jailbreak, rather than downgrading back to iOS 5.0.1 and getting their jailbreak back.

Well, if you’re one of those people, it looks like you may be in luck. According to iPhone hacker MuscleNerd, the next version of the redsn0w jailbreak tool will offer the ability to downgrade to older, jailbroken versions of iOS, provided you have access to the SHSH blobs. It even works for devices running on the newer A5 and A5X processors (the iPhone 4S, iPad 2, and new iPad), which are proving resistant to jailbreak efforts.

Unfortunately, MuscleNerd declines to say when the new version of redsn0w will be available, so if you’re one of the unlucky few who accidentally updated to a non-jailbroken version of iOS, you’ve still got a bit of a wait left before you can downgrade and re-jailbreak.

Meanwhile, the work on the iOS 5.1(.1) continues. Last week pod2g tweeted that he had gotten an untethered jailbreak working on his iPhone 4. Unfortunately that still leaves the more difficult A5 and A5X devices left to jailbreak, but hopefully it will be sooner rather than later. Just don’t bug him with questions.