Update: For accurate jailbreak instructions, see my iPhone Jailbreak guide.
A video I once created about ZiPhone now has nearly half a million views on YouTube because it cleverly showcased a Jailbreak solution that could be installed in under a minute. Although ZiPhone was once a fast and useful iPhone Jailbreak software, this utility has since become obsolete, and its creator is profiting off of confusion over the old software.
What is ZiPhone? ZiPhone was the first (free) iPhone jailbreak software I discovered, and it was in fact one of the first truly easy jailbreak solutions. I saw that a lot of people were demoing ZiPhone on YouTube, so I added a video to YouTube to show how easy it was to jailbreak with ZiPhone — so easy a caveman could do it, and in under a minute at that!
Jailbreak is Tough Business
The video went viral and Zibri from ZiPhone enjoyed some much-deserved recognition for his iPhone jailbreak software. But as it turns out, jailbreak is not an easy business to be in when you are constantly playing cat and mouse games with Apple.
Every time Apple issues an iPhone update, you have to update your jailbreak software to get around some new restrictions. I can imagine how time consuming it must be to develop jailbreak software and I commend Zibri for his work as well as the Dev-Team for their tireless efforts to distribute free jailbreak software for every iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad.
ZiPhone Creator Quits
The ZiPhone creator, however, seems to have given up on jailbreak. Now, ZiPhone.org is a butchered, ad-infested version of what it used to be. While Zibri used to constantly post updates to his blog about Jailbreak software improvements, his posts are now absent from the site and it seems others have been hired to post general blog updates.
The link to “Download ZiPhone” is still in the navigation, though, and clicking it takes you to a page where a couple of download links (Windows and Mac) are hard to point out in the flood of advertising banners (six!) tempting you with the “Easiest Way to Unlock.”
If you are able to get around the ads and download the ZiPhone jailbreak software, you’ll come to an application that was last updated March 2008. Something tells me this software is severely out of date.
No Support
If you plug in your iPhone, click “Jailbreak” and then end up screwed, you’ve got nowhere to get help. ZiPhone.org offers no support, and clicking the Contact link in the navigation does nothing.
A thread at modmyi reveals that ZiPhone is in fact “extinct.” Yet Google still ranks the site well for jailbreak-related terms, therefore many visitors are likely deceived by ZiPhone each day.
Conclusion
Now, I’m not saying a guy can’t make a living, but it seems ZiPhone.org is turning a profit at the expense of iPhone users. ZiPhone is unsupported, outdated software, and the deceptively placed ads on ZiPhone.org point to jailbreak software that you can get for free in plenty of places. For these reasons, I withdraw my support for ZiPhone and I don’t recommend you download it.
My YouTube video got a laugh out of a lot of people, but after it became outdated, ZiPhone confused the hell out of iPhone owners looking to jailbreak. It’s time I set the record straight about this iPhone jailbreak software. Sorry for any confusion it might have caused.
Once-Great ZiPhone Jailbreak Software Now Sadly a Scam is a post from Apple iPhone Review.
