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Downsides of Jailbreaking What are they?

RemarkabLee said:
If you don't know what you are doing and you do something careless, you could brick your iPhone/iTouch and void your warranty.
Click to expand...

Yes, it is possible to brick a 3GS iPhone. I did that last Friday. I restored my iPhone using a previous backup. Something in that backup made my iPhone brick. The backup jailbroken and so was my restored iPhone. I think it was the aptbackup app. I used it to recover all the Cydia apps I had installed. I woke up a few hours later with a message on the phone telling me that a restore was needed that the iPhone could not make or receive calls. I restored an just got the dreaded error 23. I tried restoring it in XCode and it told me there was a radio failure. Sure, enough, there was no 3G, no edge, no WiFi and no bluetooth. All these options were greyed out in settings.

I got the phone replaced on Sunday. The Genius said he never had a phone with my problem "yet" but I've seen many on all the different message boards suddenly over the last few weeks.
 
To get a total brick(where even a restore doesn't work), is very rare indeed.
The only downsides I can think of(If you're not using the 3GS), is slight sluggishness of the UI, when running the WinterBoard app.
I deleted it on my 3G, and have all manner of other jailbroken apps installed, and I regularly have 45-40MB free, with no lag at all.
 
problems

Some jailbroken apps are not compatible with the 3GS, I presume it is the software, this has caused me to have to restore my iphone many times, but i think i have it sussed now. Thats the only downside i encountered....other than people wanting to play with the UI updates and ask about my ringtones
 
SpaceKitty said:
Yes, it is possible to brick a 3GS iPhone. I did that last Friday. I restored my iPhone using a previous backup. Something in that backup made my iPhone brick. The backup jailbroken and so was my restored iPhone. I think it was the aptbackup app. I used it to recover all the Cydia apps I had installed. I woke up a few hours later with a message on the phone telling me that a restore was needed that the iPhone could not make or receive calls. I restored an just got the dreaded error 23. I tried restoring it in XCode and it told me there was a radio failure. Sure, enough, there was no 3G, no edge, no WiFi and no bluetooth. All these options were greyed out in settings.

I got the phone replaced on Sunday. The Genius said he never had a phone with my problem "yet" but I've seen many on all the different message boards suddenly over the last few weeks.
Click to expand...

I had problems with AptBackup too. Fortunately I was able to recover my phone, although it took 3 hours of my life to get it back. That program is the devil! Everyone stay away from it.
 
STEVESKI07 said:
I had problems with AptBackup too. Fortunately I was able to recover my phone, although it took 3 hours of my life to get it back. That program is the devil! Everyone stay away from it.
Click to expand...
Agreed. I've restored a few times now, and found AptBackup to be utterly useless. Every time I used it, it just froze, with the words 'Restoring' displayed.
Instead, I just made a Note, with all the essential jailbroken apps, files & sources, and I just install them one-by-one each time I jailbreak.
 
BergerFan said:
Agreed. I've restored a few times now, and found AptBackup to be utterly useless. Every time I used it, it just froze, with the words 'Restoring' displayed.
Instead, I just made a Note, with all the essential jailbroken apps, files & sources, and I just install them one-by-one each time I jailbreak.
Click to expand...

Disagreed, I have restored a few times now and found AptBackup essential to give me back my jailbroken apps. :) I have a quite a few jailbroken apps/packages so it did take a while but the phone eventually rebooted and I had everything I had before. :)
 
You must have discipline and not install Winterboard. Once you start with themes, status notifiers and such...performance goes bye bye!
 
One downside you may purchase software such as disk aid.
the upside is you will learn a lot about the file structure, how to recover from bad software or software issues. There again you may end up deleting more than you should and brick and recover.
I have found it a lot of fun screwing up the phone and learning how to recover it.
I have yet to totally kill the phone but my 3Gs is on its 7th jailbreak, my 3G phone, no idea but its a lot.
The 3Gs is a better jailbreak platform as the lag is nearly non-existant
 
Gix1k said:
If you are running all the things i mentioned as well as homescreen and such. It's gotta be slower than stock. No way you can tell me otherwise.
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I have Winterboard and themes, no status notifiers tho and my 3GS works just the same as it did when it was unjailbroken. :)
 
It depends on what your reasons are for jailbreaking as to what the downsides can be...

If you are a heavy themer then you might experience some lag with Winterboard...

If you are in it for the special cydia apps then you are going to have to spend some money, (possibly more than you would if you weren't jailbroken) and the possibility of lag is still there with mobile substrate plug-ins.

Take it for whats it worth, I'm still on the ole 3G. :eek:
 
Battery

I have a 3gs and I have jailbroke it 3 times each time installing less things to TRY to avoid the fast battery drain. This last time all I have is

SBSETTIING
Iblanks
UserWallPaper
Categories
Installous
AppSync
5 Icon Dock Stack
Backgrounder
IrealQuickSMS
Notifier
Reflective Dock
Stacks
Winterboard

I got away from installing themes because it slows your phone down a lot but I CANNOT get away from the fast battery drain. I can't even go 12 hours without my phone dying from 100%
 
garciarios said:
I have a 3gs and I have jailbroke it 3 times each time installing less things to TRY to avoid the fast battery drain. This last time all I have is

SBSETTIING
Iblanks
UserWallPaper
Categories
Installous
AppSync
5 Icon Dock Stack
Backgrounder
IrealQuickSMS
Notifier
Reflective Dock
Stacks
Winterboard

I got away from installing themes because it slows your phone down a lot but I CANNOT get away from the fast battery drain. I can't even go 12 hours without my phone dying from 100%
Click to expand...

i can say for a fact that themes DO NOT slow down my phone or drain the battery. many themes are literally just replacing background images, icons, and colors... how could that possibly drain the battery?

i have dozens of jailbroken apps, no battery drain. my 3GS works as beautifully as the day i bought it. moreso, in fact, because now it's not crippled and limited by apple's features(R).

there is something wrong with your phone if your battery drains for no reason. don't restore from backup after jailbreaking... in fact, don't ever restore from backup.

if you know what you're doing there is no downside to jailbreaking.
 
garciarios said:
I got away from installing themes because it slows your phone down a lot but I CANNOT get away from the fast battery drain. I can't even go 12 hours without my phone dying from 100%
Click to expand...

If your battery is draining with your current setup and you don't think your phone is culprit then buy a small external battery.
 
vm7118 said:
i can say for a fact that themes DO NOT slow down my phone or drain the battery. many themes are literally just replacing background images, icons, and colors... how could that possibly drain the battery?

i have dozens of jailbroken apps, no battery drain. my 3GS works as beautifully as the day i bought it. moreso, in fact, because now it's not crippled and limited by apple's features(R).

there is something wrong with your phone if your battery drains for no reason. don't restore from backup after jailbreaking... in fact, don't ever restore from backup.

if you know what you're doing there is no downside to jailbreaking.
Click to expand...

I always install as new and I actually put my brightness below average. 1 thing I notice is I never use or open my iPod but it's always running in processes. I will test my usage and post my results for you guys to be the judge.
 
Every single time that I've jailbroken my iPhone the battery life has tanked horribly. That's really the only downside if you ask me.

At this point, though, have a reason to do it. The App Store killed much of the reasoning to jailbreak.
 
Worse battery life and in the two days before i decided to un-jb, something kept crashing and the phone kept going into safe mode...really annoying. also, twice on a drive while using navigon the phone just spontaneously rebooted itself. I've had none of these problems with a stock iPhone.

So I guess worse battery life (even with only SBSettings and Backgrounder, while nothing was being used in the background) and instability.
 
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