iPhone 4
iPhone 4 REUTERS

Progress on the iOS 5.1 untethered jailbreak seems to be gaining momentum with every piece of the puzzle unlocked by pod2g and his Dream Team of hackers. The latest news is that the veteran has reached another critical juncture. This is good news for the community of users waiting for an untethered solution for iOS devices running the latest Apple software (iOS 5.1).

"Heya! My iPhone 4 running iOS 5.1 is now untethered J", pod2g tweeted Friday.

Earlier this week, pod2g revealed he had discovered two big vulnerabilities in the iOS 5.1, besides five other vulnerabilities his team of hackers had unearthed earlier. At the time, however, he was unsure if these exploits could be used for untethered jailbreaks. This would mean you won't need to connect your jailbroken device to the computer on every reboot, which is one less hitch in the long run.

Pod2g recently updated his official blog with a public poll asking: "Shall we hold off the jailbreak for iOS 6?"

The poll closed on Thursday, with 106,473 (64 percent) out of 165,993 voters suggesting hackers continue working on the iOS 5.1 jailbreak and release it as soon as possible. Only 55,785 (33 percent) of the voters opined the hackers should hold off until iOS 6 is released.

Pod2g also seems to agree with the poll result.

"People say: 'don't release now coz iOS 5.1 tethered is good enough'. Don't forget there are AppleTV3, 4S, iPad2 and iPad3 users out there!" the hacker tweeted.

While pod2g has successfully managed an untethered jailbreak on his iPhone 4 running iOS 5.1, it is still a mystery if the exploits would really work on iPhone 4S and the new iPad. Pod2g's successful untethered jailbreak on iPhone 4 signifies the initial phase of iOS 5.1 untethered testing. In other words, it means the public release of the untethered jailbreak might take time.

According to Cydiahelp, the same testing phase took several weeks before an untethered jailbreak for iOS 5.0.1 was released in December-January for all iOS devices. It must be noted that testing can last much longer, particularly with A5 and A5X devices, as they have completely changed internal components and the veteran hackers don't have a BootROM level exploit for A5 and A5X chips yet.

Meanwhile, Posixninja of Chronic Dev team has clarified this jailbreak would be a one-of-its-kind and utilise more exploits than any other jailbreaks released in history. Despite rapid progress made by the iOS security researcher - pod2g - there is still no official word on the public release of the jailbreak but we can confidently say that it is not too far now.