Decisions, decisions

For those of us with jailbroken iPad 2s running iOS 4.3.3, things are a bit precarious right now.

See, a jailbreak of iOS 5.0.1 was released for devices with A4 chips (iPad 1, iPhone 4, etc) last week. But it doesn't work for our A5 devices yet. We don't know exactly when the A5 jailbreak will be out. Why is this a problem?

Well, when it does come the jailbreak will almost certainly also be for 5.0.1. But now that this version has had one JB, Apple will be rushing to update to 5.0.2 (or possibly 5.1?) as soon as they can close whatever hole the JB uses. Once Apple moves on to the next version, 5.0.1 won't be available, so anyone still on 4.3.3 will have to either stay there and continue missing out on iOS 5 features or upgrade to a version that won't be jailbroken for quite a while, if ever. But upgrading to 5.0.1 before it's jailbroken means losing your current jailbreak, with no actual guarantee that anyone will definitely find one for A5 devices on iOS 5.

Just the other day, jailbreaker p0sixninja tweeted a somewhat cryptic warning - he says that everyone, including A5 users, should upgrade to 5.0.1 now. But he hasn't elaborated - does he know that a jailbreak is imminent? Or that 5.0.2 is imminent? Or is he simply guessing that 5.0.2 will be coming soon due to the A4 jailbreak, and that 5.0.1 will be jailbroken fairly soon (or at least before 5.0.2 is)?

For now, I have downloaded 5.0.1 but not installed it. I don't know exactly how these things work, but I've read that once Apple releases the next version, they'll keep signing the old version for a short time - maybe a day? not sure - so if you're quick you can still install it and back up your SHSH blobs with TinyUmbrella. So right now my plan is to install it as soon as either a JB or new version is announced - and I really, really hope this won't mean losing my current JB for more than a few days!

Update: The plot thickens

Now a second jailbreaker, pod2g, has taken to Twitter to announce that we could see a release within a week, and he, too, suggests upgrading to 5.0.1.