Since launching, the new evasi0n jailbreak tool for iOS 6 and 6.1 devices has seen an incredible uptake, with over 7 million users downloading and using the software.
Speaking to Forbes, Cydia administrator Jay Freeman told the publication that evasi0n has been installed on a grand total of seven million iOS devices in the first four days of its release.
That tally includes 5.15 million iPhone installs (including the iPhone 5, which was heretofore not able to be jailbroken). In the case of the iPad, there’s been 1.35 million installs – that figure includes the iPad Mini, which was likely not able to be jailbroken, as well as earlier full size iPads that can be upgraded to iOS 6. Finally, the evasi0n jailbreak was also installed on 400,000 iPod Touch models.
The totals are impressive compared to earlier jailbreaks, e.g. Absinthe in 2012 or Jailbreakme in 2011. Freeman said that evasi0n had brought “insanely more traffic” than earlier jailbreak tools, although he didn’t have specific numbers to hand.
So why have there been so many more jailbreaking users this time around? One factor could be the wait time before the jailbreak was available – 136 days in the case of evasi0n, compared to 98 days for Absinthe. Of course, the amount of iOS users has also increased steadily in this time, with Apple continuing to break records with the release of every new device.
The evasi0n tool has recently been updated to version 1.3, fixing bugs to do with the crashing weather app, older versions of Mac OS X and support for iPhone 4S units running iOS 6.1.1.
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