jailbreak worth it or not

[Rottie]

i read so many messages about people use jailbreak on their iphone but i never tried it. I wonder if using jailbreak will void warranty?

 

[pm]

So the biggest reasons to jailbreak is if you want to unlock it (for international travel, for example), or you want access to Apps which Apple doesn't approve of (backgrounder, tethering on AT&T), or you want to modify the GUI to make your iPhone more unique (using Winterboard), or you just want to geek around with it and bring up a Unix prompt on your phone.

Winterboard is nice - being able to replace icons and change the background, adding 5 rows and columns and make your iPhone look uniquely yours is a nice benefit.

SBSettings is slick - you swipe across the top row and you can access features that are normally several menus down in the Settings icon.

Backgrounder is still relevant with the new 3.0 release. If you want to play Pandora and still use your phone to do other things, it's a useful addition.


I don't know if it really voids the warranty or not... For what it's worth though, it's easy to undo a jailbreak. Just upgrade or restore to any Apple firmware release and the jailbreak disappears.

I will say that every new major release from Apple seems to take more and more of the reasons to jailbreak away. Before the 2.0 release, Jailbreaking was the only way to get apps onto the phone. Then before 3.0, it was the only way to background stuff, the only way to MMS. Now with push notifications and integrated MMS, there's not that many good reasons to jailbreak.

If you decide to try it, google the iPhone dev blog and then click on one of the links for "redsn0w" which is the new jailbreaking app for the 3.0 release.

 

[gorcorps]

IMO it's still very worth jailbreaking. I love a custom UI as it just seems more like MY phone now, rather than apple's phone I'm just using if that makes sense. As pm mentioned, SBSettings and Backgrounder are great apps to warrant a jailbreak. I use both quite a bit.

It 'technically' voids the warranty in that the apple guys won't fix it if it's jailbroken. However... restoring to default firmware as said will make sure they don't know you did it. Also, the Apple tech support guy I talked to said most employees don't really care if you do it as long as you restore first when you need it fixed.

 

[Rottie]

yeah i have google search about jailbreak the only thing is missing about warranty. I dunno if I plan to jailbreak my iphone 3gs but i need to find someone who has jailbroken iphone to look at it.
also i wonder why apple does not approve some of great apps....Apple should have thank jailbreak to make iphone the best phone. i guess apple is bit selfish for not allowing OSX installed on PC.

 

[Porter21]

I jailbroke my Iphone right when I got it. (last year). It seemed buggy at the time, but it was great having free apps. I ended up going back to the original and am now just using the standard 3.0 OS. As far as warranty, you should be able to revert back to it's original easily and be ok, without them even knowing. I did that and everything seemed OK.

Try and find someone else that has a jailbroken one, then you can see what you really like and don't like.

I enjoy mine how it is.

 

[akugami]

One of the most overlooked apps is the jailbroken flashlight app you get from Cydia which is tons brighter than the official ones from Apple. I believe Apple does not allow you to crank up the backlight to its' maximum brightness but since Cydia doesn't go through any scrutiny or approval by Apple it can do whatever it wants.

 

[Wonderful Pork]

I can understand why some people jailbreak their phones. I tried it several times on my 2G, way back when it first came out, and a couple times after that.

For me, it wasn't worth it to keep it jailbroken. Running background processes absolutely murdered my battery life. The phone was incredibly laggy after installing a couple apps. It crashed every so often as well. Of course this is my experience, yours may be different.

Do I wish some of the jailbreak features were available natively? Yes, especially something like SBSettings. However, for something as important as a phone (and only line for me) I need something with good reliability, and appreciate Apple checking each and every program in the App Store for gross errors.

To be honest, I mainly use Facebook, Twitterfon, and Kindle as native apps. Google Reader and a couple other web apps, but they are sandboxed in Safari.

 

[akugami]

To be honest, for most users who bought their phones via AT&T, there really isn't a compelling reason to jailbreak the phone. You do open up a lot of customization features but most users won't even miss it. I use T-Mobile so there is a reason for me to jailbreak and unlock my phone. Below are some of the apps I use on my iPhone and overwhelmingly they are free or very cheap apps.

Stanza is the app I use 80% of the time on my iPhone.

I use Notes for jotting down info that pops into my head.

Calendar to set events I need to do.

I used to use a few separate news apps but have since switched to a single news app in Fluent News which also downloads and retains news articles for offline reading.

Flashlight (jailbroken app) sometimes at night or in dark spots.

VNC for logging in and controlling my computer at home.

Quickoffice for viewing MS Office files though I wish they'd hurry up and include Office 2007 file support soon and support for passworded and encrypted files. Quickoffice does allow you to password protect the app itself but it's relatively weak since it's a four number code.

There are some other apps such as games I use but these are by far the most used apps and the single most used app is Stanza since I'm an avid reader and there is a ton of free ebooks out there.

 

[Viper0329]

I jailbreak for 3 main reasons:

1) VOIPover3g: Skype over 3g. Being an American who lives overseas, the ability to make phone calls over 3g/Edge with Skype to the US on my Skype unlimited calling plan (which is only $3/month) makes jailbreak essential for me. And using Slingbox over 3g is nice too!

2) SBSettings: Easy access to common things I switch on and off to conserve battery life (Wifi, bluetooth, etc.)

3) Flashlight: The Cydia version of the flashlight is amazing. I use it all the time.