We follow the Jailbreak/Unlock scene very closely here at CTA… not because our iPhones are necessarily running on T-Mobile (we want 3G not EDGE) but because we don’t want to be restricted in the Applications we install on our Apple mobile devices. Unfortunately for us and for you, there hasn’t been any new iPhone unlocking news for nearly three months. This is partially due to the fact that Apple hasn’t released new firmware in that amount of time… one of the longest periods we’ve seen so far. In the remainder of this post, we’ll cover the Cydia Store, the Rock Your Phone app store, the Dev-Team, Geohot, the redsn0w 0.9.2 released just hours ago, and how Jailbreaking could affect the iPad. Check back soon for The Ultimate 2010 Jailbreak Guide brought to you by Cocoa Touch Apps.

Saurik (Jay Freeman) has been doing everything possible to make time for his Cydia Store in order to keep it attractive to the Jailbreakers out there. We’re seeing things from Cydia that we never expected and have to give him a tremendous amount of thanks. He’s also devoting some of his efforts to the WebOS (Palm) and Android (Google). For those who don’t know, Cydia is an installer app — predating the App Store — that allows you to put “unauthorized” software onto your Apple mobile devices. While Jailbreak software was once a wide range of applications, most of the current software focuses on the features that Apple has “left out” of the iPhone OS. For instance, you can purchase apps that will let you instantly share your iPhone’s data connection with your laptop… at least for those of us who still don’t have tethering on our service providers.

Rock Your Phone is gradually gaining market share as an “independent” app store with applications like Intelliscreen. Intelliscreen gives you quick access to email, SMS, missed calls and even weather directly from the lock screen. iPhone users have been begging for a similar functionality for years now, and this seems to be a good solution. We can’t comment much on the actual RYP experience as we have yet to purchase anything from them. Unfortunately for Jailbreak developers, we’re still concerned about the fact that Apple could kill our ability to use Jailbreak apps at any time with a firmware update on our devices. The Dev-Team and Geohot have been extremely responsive with Jailbreak updates, but it can still take quite some time for Jailbreak and Unlock software to appear after an update.

Geohot (George Hotz) has been hacking the iPhone to pieces since day one, literally. He was the first person to release a hardware unlock for the iPhone and has been very influential in the development of software unlocks as a whole. Back in November 2009, he released both Blackra1n and Blacksn0w that allow users to Jailbreak and Unlock their devices with very little time and know-how. Since then, it’s been considered the standard for Jailbreak/Unlock but it’s not without faults. We’ll cover those in the upcoming walkthrough.

Let’s move on to the Dev-Team… they’ve been very quiet for months now. We’ve actually been following MuscleNerd on Twitter (he’s the most vocal member of the Dev-Team). They just pulled redsn0w 0.9 out of beta, and it’s available for download. This definitely isn’t the typical Dev-Team style as things are usually announced via their blog. Instead they announced it on their wiki… well sort of. There actually hasn’t been an official announcement except for the Tweet from MuscleNerd. We’ll also take a look at the new version of redsn0w in our upcoming guide: it’ll give you the best (and safest) ways to Jailbreak/Unlock your device.

For quite some time now, other blogs have been referencing the relevance of the Dev-Team’s efforts as an old technology that will some day be unnecessary. We definitely disagree. While unlocking iPhones may not be necessary forever (exclusivity contracts will come to an end at some point), Apple will most likely retain the app approval process for iPod touch, iPhone and the new iPad… forever. Hopefully as this operating system grows, we’ll see more and more capabilities arise that will allow us to do even more with the software than we’re currently allowed. Until then, there’s a tremendous advantage to the Jailbreak community of software — it’s as innovative as it gets.

What about Jailbreak and the iPad? We’d seriously get in line to buy something that ported Mac OS Snow Leopard to the iPad. Give me Multi-Touch, desktop software and a tablet and I’m sold. We’re sure that there will be great software in the App Store, but there’s really something about having the full experience versus the Apple-approved software. Is this possible with Jailbreak? Probably not, but there’s a whole crew of hackers out there who would see the benefit of it… here’s looking at you, hackers.

As time progresses and OS 3.2 gets closer to release, we’ll definitely have more information about the State of the Jailbreak at that point. For now, we hope you enjoyed the update. Remember to come back for The Ultimate 2010 Jailbreak Guide in the very near future.