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With no Cydia Substrate support, a jailbreak for A12X-A12X Bionic devices like the iPhone XS is kind of in a fix. Saurik has openly expressed his frustration with the jailbreaking community and it is unclear if he still intends on adding support for A12(X) Bionic devices to Cydia Substrate.

While the @pwn20wnd team has done their side of the job in jailbreaking A12(X) Bionic devices, they still require Cydia Substrate support and without it, a jailbroken device is of not much use.

With there being no clarity on whether Saurik will update Cydia Substrate for A12(X) Bionic devices, the Pwn20wnd team has taken things in their own hand. They are working on “putting together a future-proof and stable replacement for the Substrate environment” for A12 devices. However, such things take time and there’s no clear word on when the results of this project will see the light of the day.

Do note that Pwn20wnd is not looking to replace Cydia. Instead, Substitute will work alongside Cydia. Given that Cydia Substrate already supports A7-A11 Bionic devices, it is unlikely that we are going to see the Pwn20wnd team bring Substitute to older iPhones and iPads.

For now, if you are an iPhone XS, iPhone XR owner or use any other A12-A12X Bionic device, your only option is to wait patiently until the Pwn20wnd team gets around to building their Substrate replacement. There’s a lot of activity going on behind the scenes, it is just that it will take some time to bear fruit.

As an iPhone XS/iPhone XR owner, are you still looking forward to a possible iOS 12 – iOS 12.1.2 jailbreak? Or have you given up all hopes and updated to the latest iOS 12.2 release?