You have to hand it to the Hacker community. They are indeed persistant. Not even 24 hours after Apple updates iOS to version 5.1, there’s already a tethered tool available to jailbreak it.
Now, we don’t necessarily condone that kind of behavior around here (at least publicly) and we are just providing this as a public service and not endorsing it one way or the other. However, according to the website Redmond Pie, the iPhone Dev Team has updated its Redsn0w too which will enable users to jailbreak their iOS 5.1 devices.
The jailbreak is tethered, however, so you’ll have to connect your IOS device to a computer each time you power it on. However, expect that limitation to be lifted shortly, a it usually is.
This exploit works for all devices running iOS 5.1, except for the Phone 4S and iPad 2. Those are going to take a bit longer too.
Enjoy your “new” iDevice.
(thanks to Redmond Pie for the image)