New iPhone user

[RobCharb]

Hi all,

My wife surprised me with an iPhone last Friday and I've been having a blast playing around with it. I have a question or two though.

First, my phone's currently running 2.2.1. If I don't use MMS or any other such functions, is it really necessary for me to update? Will it do anything else to the phone that would be beneficial, like making the battery last longer or any such thing? I have an 8Gb 3G if it matters.

Second, I've lots of people talking about jailbreaking. Does jailbreaking lead to crashes on the iPhone? A friend of mine has a jailbroken iPhone and he's just completely stopped using it as it constantly crashes.

Thanks for any advice guys. I really love this phone and don't want to do anything to it that will screw it up!

 

[soberbrain]

Congrats on the new iPhone!

I would suggest upgrading so you can get other features, aside from MMS. Check out the new features in 3.1, (which includes new features from 3.0 of course).

http://www.apple.com/iphone/softwareupdate/

The battery life has been an issue for some people. But I think it's subjective depending on how much you use the phone during the day. For me, as long as it lasts during a work day and I can plug it in during my car ride home, I'm fine.

Regarding jailbreaking, it's benefits are to install apps or allow settings that are unavailable thru the App Store.

I thought about doing this to get video recording (since I don't have the latest iPhone 3Gs) and to customize my phones homescreen. However, for me I have all the features I need already, those are more "nice to have" features. It wasn't worth the hassle of jailbreaking for me.

It's a great phone and I don't need to worry about Apple making an update and waiting for someone to make a jailbreak version or worry about reinstalling the original software if I need to bring it to the Apple store.

It's up to you if there are features you need that only jailbreaking can provide.

If you have other questions, I suggest searching the forums using MRoogle.

http://mroogle.*************/

Most likely your question was already discussed previously and you may find an answer quicker.

 

[Doju]

3.0 isn't that big of an update. You don't *need* to, and there has been some reports of it slowing down pre-3GS devices. Maybe wait for 3.2 to see if Apple optimizes it for pre-3GS devices as well.

Jailbreaking is great. If you don't install a lot of themes and crap, there won't be any slow down whatsoever. You can get a lot of nice little utilities like SBSettings, Status Notifier, Backgrounder, etc.

And it's shady and immoral, but you can also get any app for free if you jailbreak.