For the full year that the first gen iPhone was out, the only way to put it to any real use was to jailbreak it. Then the app store came along and changed the game of using third party applications on iPhone OS. ‘Official’ apps were far more refined, polished, and as is evident by the current figures, far more in number. But if the App Store is famous for anything other than its sheer size, is the stringent rules by which Apple allows an application to be sold at the store. In most cases Apple doesn’t even have to reject the apps—the developers of the apps in question know they won’t make it. Yes, they are that cool.
With that in mind, here are 5 reasons to have your iPhone jailbroken.
Themes
To me this is the biggest reason to jailbreak the iPhone. Granted Apple has designed a beautiful interface, and the fact that it still looks fresh 3 years down the line, having hardly changed, is evidence of its excellence. However, looking at the same grid for all this while, kind of leaves a stale feeling. You may disagree with me on that, but you have to agree that the jailbreak platform has some of the most beautiful themes out there.
Just peruse through MacThemes2.net and you’ll be surprised to the number of beautiful themes that adorn Winterboard (the standard iPhone theming platform). Installing these themes is as simple as can be. Just make sure you have Winterboard installed, and then download as many themes as you can. There’s themes for just about everything including the dock, pop up messages, keyboards, as well as ‘complete’ ones which take care of everything.
Illumine is one of the most beautiful themes out there, and at 27MB, comes with icons for pretty much every ‘known’ app.
The one problem that isn’t evident from the screenshots, is the app icons. Each theme comes with a limited number of icons for the most popular apps. The rest of them sport their stock icons, which might look weird especially if the theme uses a lot of customisation. So far the Illumine theme has the largest selection of icons, leaving me with just four icons untended to which I promptly moved to an isolated home screen.
Background apps
Using the application Backgrounder, running an app in the background involves holding down your Home button for 4 seconds with the app running. Once you see the backgrounder pop up, you can safely quit the app and it will still continue running in the background. This functionality can come in handy for internet radio or streaming media, server based apps. Turning off the background app involves repeating the procedure while the app is running, or even terminating it from the Backgrounder app.
Lock screens a.k.a “Cydgets”
Lock screens make it very easy to have a quick glance at all those things that need your attention. Messages, emails, calendar tasks, weather, and other such stuff is placed right on your lock screen. I personally bought the $2 CyDialer by the main man Saurik, which places Coverflow thumbnails of your favourite contacts right on your lock screen. Tap, and swipe to call. Works brilliantly.
He’s not going to be pleased with me for displaying his personal number.
The status pull down thingy a.k.a SBSettings
This is possibly one of the most useful innovations of the jailbreak platforms. Just swipe down from your statusbar, and you’re presented with a little control box for vital iPhone functions. The window is nowhere near as pretty as it could be, but you can quickly toggle things like Wifi, Bluetooth, adjust brightness, and my favourite, turn off device rotation. You can even quit running processes if you have Backgrounder installed. I can finally relax on the bed, reading email without having to twist my arm in uncomfortable ways.
The Cydia Store
It doesn’t provide the best experience, but it comes with several apps that rest assured will never be available on the official App Store. In fact I’m surprised how well the Cydia Store is kept—only the best of apps. The Cydia Store ties in to Amazon, and the procedure for buying apps is fairly easy. There’s “QuickReply for SMS” which allows you to reply to messages without leaving the current app. Xpandr, which is a TextExpander clone, except it works in every application. Calender Pro to change your ringer profile according to how busy you are. I’m also happy to report that installing past purchases is as simple as can be. Just login with your email address (or facebook account), and whatever apps you’ve purchased will have an “officially purchased” stamp so you can install away.
The Cydia Store is concise with around 20 super cool apps. [right] Quick-Reply SMS in action.
There are I’m sure many more reasons to jailbreak—I could have rattled off a list of cool apps—but these are five that matter to me the most. If you think I’m missing out on a crucial one, do let me know in the comments.
Why not to jailbreak
Slow downs.
For a first gen iPhone, having these unofficial apps kind of bog down the system. It’s not immediately noticeable, but contacts take a second longer to load (with Cyntact installed), and the home screen has a little delay (CyDialer Cydget). It’s all bearable, but fact of the matter is your phone gets slower.
Vulnerabilities.
If you install OpenSSH and don’t immediately change your root password, you’re in for some worms that have recently started floating around. This is as of right now; who knows what holes are found as the platform becomes more popular. Some argue that the iPhone by itself might sport vulnerabilities, but having the phone jailbroken only adds to those issues.
Hassles while upgrading, possible bricking.
Jailbreaking is risky business. You always have to watch out for updates from Apple, and keep a ear out for notices from the dev team. There’s also a considerable wait involved after Apple releases an OS update to the time the hacker tools are ready. You might even brick your iPhone.
Do I keep the jailbreak?
I’ve had the iPhone jailbroken for around two weeks now. That is, after the last time I had a jailbroken device which was pre-3.0. So am I going to keep it? I think so. My 2G iPhone is noticeably slower, but seriously, how much slower can it get—it was already crawling. I’ve learnt to think about trees, birds, and the blue sky, as my messages app loads, and ponder over the human race as the camera shutter gets ready for another shot. I hope you’re reading past the exaggeration. Should you jailbreak your iPhone? I think so. What’s your take on the whole jailbreak situation?
