It's no secret, one of the most inconvenient things about a tethered jailbreak is that you are prone to having a useless device when you are away from your computer. Whether you lose power, the phone spontaneously reboots or you accidentally install a Cydia package that requires reboot without knowing, the risk of getting stuck in a boot loop when you're away from your computer is enough to prevent many people from jailbreaking on iOS5.

Luckily there is a band-aid fix for this problem. It is a new Cydia package called SemiTether which will allow you to reboot your device without the need of a computer! Of course, this is not the same thing as an untethered jailbreak since you won't be able to use Safari or the Mail app or any Cydia apps for that matter. BUT, you WILL be able to use essential apps like phone, ipod and SMS! This is great news for those who want to jailbreak but the possibility of not being able to use their phone while they are away from their computer was preventing them from doing it.

Things you should know:

• You'll be able to use phone and sms (text messages)
• You'll be able to use any App store apps on your device
• You WON'T be able to use Safari
• You'll be able to use other appstore web browsers such as "atomic web browser"
• You WON'T be able to use the mail app. You could install the gmail app from appstore if you use gmail
• You WON'T be able to use any jailbreak tweaks, apps or cydia until you boot tethered
• While you're in the semitether booted state, you should not add a 3rd party ios5 notification system such as sbsettings or your device will be stuck in a respring loop until you get to a computer to “boot tethered”

So, without further adieu, this is how you install SemiTether on your device:

Step 1: Obviously for this to work you must be running iOS5 and have a tethered jailbreak.

Step 2: Open up Cydia and hit the "Manage" tab at the bottom. Then click "Sources" and hit "edit" in the top right corner and then click "Add" in the top left corner. In the URL field enter the following

http://thebigboss.org/semitether

Step 3: After you have added the source, go into the search tab and search for and install the "SemiTether" package.

Step 4: After the installation is finished go ahead and reboot your device. You will now notice that you can boot to your springboard even without booting tethered! Remember that you will still need to boot tethered if you want to use Safari or Mail or any of your Cydia apps, but this is a great fallback for those who don't want to have a completely useless phone without booting tethered.

This is a very new technique so of course there may be some glitches here or there, but it's much better than not having access to your phone if your device reboots. Please post in the comment section below if you run into any issues so we can help you out.

1. The device will take longer to boot up. When you reboot, it has to reload every service. It will respring a couple times also.
2. According to Saurik, there are some “problems” to reloading all daemons on the fly. This is why mobile substrate installation requires “reboot device” in cydia. I have not experienced any of these problems, but I am not promising they do not exist. This is why we will need testing to see which problems may occur.

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