My jailbroken phone
The Apple store is full of goodies, from the simplest games to the app made by the car rental companies to lock your car from anywhere, but does it have everything?
The answer for most people is a very big ‘No.’ There are many useful features which aren’t provided by Apple through the default iPhone firmware or as an add-on through the App Store.
So, if you’re asking yourself ‘Should I jailbreak my iPhone?’, or even if you’re interested in finding out about Jailbreaking, read on.
First off, what exactly is jailbreaking?
Jailbreaking essentially removes the limitations of your iPhone software. The iPhone comes pre-set so that you can’t put anything onto your phone that Apple doesn’t like… Basically, this would be like buying a laptop running Windows to find out you can’t install anything unless Microsoft looks at it first and evaluates if they want you to use it or not. Or like buying a burger and finding out you can’t put ketchup on or garnish it without asking the guy who grilled it, except burgers don’t have a warranty. Note that jailbreaking is not unlocking your phone to be able to use any carrier, although it is part of the process to do this.
So what are the pros and cons?
Changing the software on your iPhone can have its good sides and bad sides, I see a lot of advocates for jailbreaking say there are no cons, when of course, there are.
Pros
- New app store – In in addition to still being able to use Apple’s App Store, you’ll now have a new App Store full of hundreds of free apps. I’m using Cydia, but there are a few different ones.
- Themes – If you take a look at my screenshot, you can see that it now has a theme, no more boring springboard! There’s a huge amount of themes available for use and you can even use multiple themes at once, mixing and matching is easy. If you like the look of the theme from my screenshot, you can find it here. To change your themes you will have to use ‘WinterBoard’ from Cydia.
- Video recording – Although the iPhone is a very up to date and modern phone, it doesn’t support video recording by default. If you install ‘Cycorder’ from Cydia, you’ll now be able to record videos using your camera. I would expect to see this coming in an official release from Apple soon though.
- Minimise/Minimize apps - This is one of my favourite things about jailbreaking the iPhone. Using an app called ‘Backgrounder’, you’ll now be able to do things like minimizing Spotify and games without losing their data or sound. This means you don’t have to quit a game to read your text messages and you can listen to Spotify while you browse Safari or any other app.
- Full control - Using apps like ‘SBSettings’ from Cydia, you’ll have full control over your phone. What does this mean? With the flick of a switch you can choose to turn individual features off:, 3G, Bluetooth, Rotation, WiFi and SHH. You can also easily adjust the brightness of the screen and see which processes are running in the background of your phone (and kill them if you need to free up some memory).
- More icons on springboard/dock - The default iPhone has 4 spaces on the dock and 4 columns of apps on the springboard. Using ‘Five Icon Dock’ and ‘Five-Column Springboard’, you’ll have even more space for your apps and folders. Again, you can see this in the screenshot.
- Games – There are tons of free games on Cydia, but the most impressive thing is the NES emulator. Play classic roms on your iPhone!
- Direct access – Using SSH you can have direct access to your phone from your PC, upload ringtones and anything else into your phone.
- “Desktop like” lock screen – One thing a lot of people don’t like is having no desktop, just a list of apps. With certain apps you can edit your lock screen to show things like the time, weather, unread emails, texts and calendar appointments without even unlocking your phone.
- Easy to jailbreak – You don’t have to smash open your iPhone and add 7 different chips then sellotape it back together for it to work (hello modded Xbox). It’s as simple as plugging into iTunes and pressing a few buttons (because that’s what you have to do).
- Categorise/Categorize your springboard – If you don’t want a cluttered screen, you can create folders on your springboard to easily categorise your apps into. I’m not sure which app is best for this at the moment, but I know that you can do it.
- Unlock your carrier – Until very recently, all phones in the UK were tied down to o2, now that the iPhone is open to new companies you might want to unlock yourself from o2; jailbreaking is part of that process.
- Lots more – There are many apps that I haven’t even tried, or looked at. The possibilities are pretty endless when it comes to 3rd party apps.
Cons
- Warranty - Applying a jailbreak to your phone will void your software guarantee but not your hardware guarantee. Either way, you can use an app to back up your jailbreak and reset your phone to factory settings if you need to get your phone looked at.
- Bricking your iPhone – There is a very rare chance that jailbreaking might just turn your phone into a brick, meaning that it kicks the bucket. No fixing it. You should be able to get a replacement from Apple, but you’ll have lost all the data on your phone – so back it all up before you jailbreak.
- 3rd party apps – There’s always a chance that 3rd party software could be corrupt or contain a virus. Cydia signs apps that are free of this, so be careful when installing things on your phone. You shoud be fine, as long as you make sure it’s signed. Again, make sure to back up!
- Apple – Apple does not support jailbreaking. Like I said, make sure you reset your phone to factory settings if you’re asking them to fix it etc
- Updating Firmware – Apple are constantly battling jailbreakers and when they release new firmware, they will most likely have patched over the previous firmwares exploited point (the bit that allows us to over ride the software and do whatever we want). Jailbreakers take a while to find a new way in, so you will have to wait longer than every body else to use the new software.
Now that you’ve read this, only you can figure out if you should jailbreak. You might be wondering ‘Do you think that the pros outweigh the cons?’ Yes. I do. Jailbreaking the iPhone increases its usefulness 10 fold, but do remember that it isn’t essential to jail break your iPhone. As a mobile broadband user, and iPhone user, jailbreaking the iPhone is very refreshing.
If you read this and have something to add to the pros and cons sections, or if you want to ask questions about jailbreaking, feel free to comment. I can also take screenshots of any of the apps, if anyone wants to see them.
For those who want to know how to jailbreak 3.1.2 firmware, I followed this guide: Jailbreak iPhone 3.1.2 Firmware with blackra1n
