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About the security content of iOS 15.8.5 and iPadOS 15.8.5

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328 points jerlam | 2 comments | 17 Sep 25 00:34 UTC | HN request time: 0.42s | source
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bigyabai ◴[17 Sep 25 00:52 UTC] No.45270236[source]▶
Well, good. The moment they stop, it's declared E-waste and Apple suggests you give it to them for free.

Fucked-up world we live in where a disposable vape can be reused for more purposes than an iPhone with expired software support.

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1. rgovostes ◴[17 Sep 25 02:33 UTC] No.45270934[source]▶
I am out of date on the latest from the jailbreak scene, but checkra1n supports the device up to iOS 14. If you updated to iOS 15, there may not be a full jailbreak, but not all is lost.

The latest release of Xcode, Xcode 26, still allows you to build apps for iOS 15. At some point you will have the secondary problem of needing an older Xcode which only runs on an older macOS, though Apple has been doing the minimum to make it possible to acquire both of these.

With a free Apple Developer account, you can sign and side load your apps, but they expire every 7 days, and you wouldn't be able to add any restricted entitlements. But the TrollStore exploit (https://github.com/opa334/TrollStore), which I cannot vouch for, seems to work around these limits.

So: It seems like if you are the kind of person who keeps disposable vapes to reprogram the microcontrollers, the iPhone 6S should actually be an attractive device worth keeping:

- Runs an operating system released in September 2021 and received regular bug fixes and security updates through July 2024. Still receives occasional security updates as of September 2025. Not completely end-of-life.

- Supported by the latest developer tools, probably through June 2026, with older downloads available (https://xcodereleases.com/).

- Known jailbreaks and exploits to maximize utility.

It's not surprising that the trade-in value for a 10-year-old device is nil, but on the secondary market they fetch about $60 (https://swappa.com/prices/apple-iphone-6s) which is not bad if you consider the device capabilities compared to most hobbyist devkits.

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2. cookiengineer ◴[17 Sep 25 04:39 UTC] No.45271733[source]▶
I think if we're comparing the easiness of repurposing an EOL phone, it is much better to just check the postmarketOS wiki for supported devices and pick one of those instead. They got great instructions for reflashing/jailbreaking the bootloaders etc.

And yes, you get a full blown Linux with it. So you can, like me, repurpose your smartphones into pretty much everything. I have removed their batteries and have them solar powered as Freifunk routers and even offline-ready kiwix media servers among other things.

[1] https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Devices