MemeStreams | iOS 5 Beta 3 Jailbreak And Secrets Revealed

Apple’s released the third beta version of iOS 5 – the forthcoming major OS update that will likely launch with the iPhone 5. No sooner had it been released, it emerged that it had been cracked by those ever-industrious hackers. Read on to find out more about this jailbreak, as well as some of iOS 5 beta 3′s new features.

A couple of hacks

So far there are two jailbreak solutions for the new developer pre-release version of iOS 5. The first comes from MuscleNerd, although the surprising news is that this solution isn’t really new.

Last month we reported on the hacker’s work breaking into the first release of iOS 5, and what do you know? That very same Redsn0w tool (well, version 0.9.8b2 anyway) can be used to crack the new beta 3 version of the OS too. Presumably Apple doesn’t care a whole lot about this unofficial version being hacked, and it would be a waste of time and resources patching it up.

The second jailbreak method is from hacker ih8sn0w (gotta love these names). It’s an update to the Sn0wbreeze tool, which comes with the added benefit of being able to preserve your baseband. We’re not particularly up on all this hacker speak, but this seems to mean you can always roll back to a working version if everything goes pear-shaped.

Check out Redmondpie for more information on these jailbreak methods, as well as guides on how to execute them. Be warned, though – you need to know what you’re doing.

Beta than all the rest

That’s quite enough hacker talk. To be honest, most of the excitement to be had with iOS beta 3 (for the average Apple enthusiast, anyway) relates to its new features.

As well as general improvements to speed and the tidying up of a number of bugs, a couple of all-new additions stand out. One is the ability to set custom tones for your text messages. Yes yes, we’ve been doing that for years, even on cheap old Symbian phones, but it’s nice to finally see it on an Apple device.

Another addition is a touch-based control panel that mimics the functions of gestures and the physical Home and volume controls. Tapping the virtual button (which can be placed anywhere on the home screen) will bring up a menu filled with all the commands that usually require a physical action of some kind to execute. This seems to be aimed at improving one handed operation, and could even point to a completely button-free future for the iPhone and iPad ranges.

Facing up to a launch

Another exciting feature that’s been uncovered, as reported by Electric Pig, is the ability to output your FaceTime calls to your TV – provided you have an AirPlay-compatible device hooked up, like Apple TV.

Less exciting but probably more useful, iOS beta 3 has added a stack of new toggles aimed at giving you finer control over which services can make use of your location. There’s also an additional option to help you avoid incurring massive costs when roaming across networks.

There are plenty more little tweaks and additions, but these seem to be the most interesting. If previous iOS versions are anything to go by, we’re nearing the end of Apple’s test period. The company should really be nailing down the feature list around about now, so much of what we see in this latest beta version should make it through to iOS 5 proper come autumn.

iOS 5 Beta 3 Jailbreak And Secrets Revealed