As promised, the Pangu team in China has released an updated version of their untethered jailbreak solution for iDevice owners adding fixes, the latest Cydia bundle for iOS 8, and English support, among other things.

Featuring an “optimized jailbreak process,” an updated version of Cydia (the jailbreak app store alternative), an integrated IPSW restore function, English support and a bunch of fixes, Pangu 1.1.0 is now officially available for download. Sadly it’s still a Windows-only affair, but the team’s members promised on Twitter that a Mac version is on the way.

“We will definitely release a Mac version. But pls give us some time. If there is no major problem for v1.1 we will then focus on Mac version,” says the Chinese hacking group.

Restore Function Integrated

One of the best things Pangu 1.1.0 has to offer is the bundled restore tool which fetches the appropriate IPSW for your device automatically and restores it in a tethered manner. The tool is actually a bit of a requirement in case you’ve updated your device to iOS 8 over the air.

The team explains that, “The firmware upgraded via OTA affects Pangu 8 a lot and usually causes Pangu 8 to fail. If you have failed many times, please try to download the latest firmware and restore your iOS devices. In addition, Pangu itself now provides a functionality to easily restore iOS devices and automatically complete the activation and jailbreak, through a simple one-click.”

Prequisites and warnings

Needles to mention, jailbreaking poses a few risks. And by the looks of things, Pangu is hardly as reliable as other jailbreak tools before it (i.e. Evasi0n). The instruction set is somewhat confusing as well, likely because of the team’s struggles with English. That being said, the group makes an admirable effort to make a comprehensive breakdown of the risks involved, followed by the instructions to use the software.

Users should, by no means, proceed to using Pangu without ensuring that they’ve backed up first. Also very important, according to the team, one should not delete the file "com.apple.mobile.softwareupdated.plist" or disable the service, whatever that means. Basically, if you see it, don’t touch it. Otherwise you won’t be able to reboot, the team warns.

If you do decide to jailbreak, the team recommends that you should disable Passcode Lock, turn off Find My iPhone, and switch on Airplane Mode. Don’t begin with AirPlane mode as turning off Find My iPhone needs to send a signal to Apple’s servers in order to work.

If you encounter a warning of “Disk is almost full,” don’t sweat it. The team says the jailbreak process triggers this because of the way it writes files to the system.

“If Cydia is installed, it will re-adjust the system files on its first launch and then the warning would disappear,” it adds.

Finally, if the jailbreak fails the team recommends to toggle Airplane mode on and off again, reboot both the iOS device and the computer and try again, and / or “use the restore functionality in Pangu to restore your device, and try again.”

As you might have already guessed, it’s not recommended to proceed with these steps unless you’re fully aware of the consequences involving a looping DFU mode, or a bricked device. To put it in simpler terms, we don’t exactly recommend it.