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So I wanted to jailbreak my iPhone and I was interested in it before but I never really took the time to. Research properly. Forgetting that I might jailbreak in the future, I updated my phone to iOS 9. I didn't really like iOS 9 and the fact that you can run a jailbreak on it.

I researched a little and found out that I can restore with an IPSW file and I was stoked. However, it seems that Apple only “signs” down to ios 8.4.1, an UN-jailbreak able version of iOS.

What does it mean if an IPSW file is not signed? And what would happen if I were to put an unsigned version of iOS on my phone?

I got the IPSW file from this website. I have tried researching pretty much everywhere but I cannot find an answer.

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up vote 1 down vote accepted

Easily spoken, you could say ispw files are not complete. They're missing that so-called signature. It's like a contract; it has no value without the signature. Every time you install new firmware on the iPhone, iTunes calls to the Apple servers and ask for that approval signature. For numerous reasons, Apple doesn't give out those signatures for older firmware versions.

There's not much you can do. The only thing you can do is downgrading to 8.4.1 and hope one day somebody releases the jailbreak for it. But for now, you're stucked.

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up vote 0 down vote

iOS won't run unless Apple signs the IPSW.

So, unless you get Apple to sign the software in and save a copy of that signed certificate, you can't use that IPSW now that the window to get Apple to sign it has passed.

Sort of a sad trombone, game over situation.

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That sucks, if I buy a product, I would like some sort of control over the software. It's not like I am asking to see the entire source code for IOS, I just want to revert back to an older stable version which I can also jailbreak. – Vishvak Seenichamy Sep 27 '15 at 16:43
    
“That sucks, if I buy a product, I would like some sort of control over the software.” You don’t if you buy an iOS device which is not a new concept. And Apple does not support Jailbreaking. – JakeGould Sep 27 '15 at 17:06
    
@VishvakSeenichamy you have control, but you do need to research how things work and educate yourself. This isn't something new for iOS 9 - see the questions here on rolling back an update. You have hours to do so typically and not days or weeks. – bmike♦ Sep 27 '15 at 22:17
    
@VishvakSeenichamy You should have read EULA before buying the iDevice. – Pratika Rana Sep 28 '15 at 1:42

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