There are a lot of opinions, both pro and con, about whether or not you should jailbreak your iPhone, and it can be difficult to separate the options. If you have ever thought about jailbreaking your iPhone, you should read on.

First, let’s take a look at what it means to jailbreak a phone. Jailbreaking allows iPhone and iPod Touch users to run unofficial code on their devices, thus bypassing Apple’s official app distribution mechanism, the Apple App Store. Once their phones are jailbroken, an iPhone user is able to download many applications previously unavailable by using installers such as Cydia or The Rip Dev Installer. Newer installers include Icy and Kryptes. Jailbreaking is different than unlocking, which is the process by which a mobile device is made compatible with telephone networks for which it is not specifically licensed.

So, with a jailbroken iPhone, you can run apps in the background with one illegal app, you can cut and paste via another, although those two issues will basically be solved with iPhone OS 3.0. Another illegal app allows you to better manage your power usage, while yet another gets you a turn-by-turn GPS, two things not available for a standard iPhone from the App Store. You can tether your iPhone, or use 3G to make calls via Voip. There are a lot of interesting apps for a jailbroken iPhone.

And, oddly enough, it is not even illegal to jailbreak your phone. While it does invalidate the software license, it does not invalidate the hardware warranty. So what do your do if your phone develops problems? Just like an iPhone can be jailbroken, it can be unjailbroken. Use iTunes to restore your phone back to its original configuration and take or send it back to Apple for service. When you get it back, you can always re-jailbreak it.

There is also more to jailbreaking than wanting to show off, or to change the Apple defaults to the iPhone operating system. It is true that you can change much about how the iPhone looks and works when it is jailbroken, but jailbreaking is about more than being flashy. It is much more about being able to do things with your iPhone that you want to do, instead of what Apple wants you to be able to do.

Nor is the jailbreaking process difficult. There are a number of programs for both Windows and OS X that do all the heavy lifting. All you need to do is download and install them on your computer. Then run the program with your iPhone connected, following the instructions. It take a half hour or less and can be done by almost anyone. A few people have had trouble with the process. If that happens, it is very easy to use iTunes to restore the phone to its original configuration. Even being stuck halfway through the jailbreak does not seem to make the restore option more difficult.

You are therefore extremely unlikely to lose the apps and information that are already on the phone. This is especially true with the newer jailbreaking applications. Failures are very rare, and being unable to recover from those jailbreaking failures are even more rare. Do your homework, get a current jalilbreaking app, and success is almost assured. Can problems occur, and could you be left high and dry? Yes, of course. Nothing is ever 100 percent foolproof.

There is one question you should be asking. That is, “Have you jailbroken your iPhone, Mr. Technical Blogger?” and that answer is “No, I have not.” I don’t have a crying need for any of the applications that are available only for jailbroken phones. I have come pretty close, though, over the matter of the turn-by-turn GPS.

Supposedly, such things will be both possible and allowed once iPhone OS 3.0 is announced and app developers have the chance to write such an application. I miss the navigation system on my old Acura, and I would really like to have that functionality back. If Apple does not make a turn-by-turn possible with 3.0, or if they refuse to allow such an app in the app store, my answer will change. I will, in that event, become the owner of a jailbroken phone.

Related:

Application offers one-click Jailbreak of 1.1.3 iPhones

Updated: iJailbreak: easy 1.1.3 jailbreak for iPhone and iPod Touch on Mac

Teenager releases iPhone 3GS jailbreak solution

Jailbreak iPhone and iPod Touch 1.1.3 without a computer: iJailbreak Mobile

iPhone OS 3.1.2 patches network issue, kills current jailbreak

Entry was posted on Wednesday, May 27th, 2009 at 6:57 pm under Hacks, iPhone, iPod Touch.  Print This Post

Read more entries by Michael W. Jones.
Stumble It!