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Pro's and Con's of Jailbreaking

N

NickMyers

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 24, 2008
2
0
I'm getting pretty bored with Apple's stock iPhone theme and have been thinking about jailbreaking...

What are some of the positives and negatives of jailbreaking?

Can it be completely undone if I decide I don't like it?

Can I back up my pictures I currently have on my phone?

Thanks in advance!

Nick
 
Wirelessly posted (iPhone: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.1 Mobile/5F136 Safari/525.20)

pros and cons
 
Pros:
- Ability to customize every aspect of your iPhone.
- There are no restrictions for apps.

Cons:
- "Technically" voids warranty. (However you can restore and wipe away all traces of a jailbreak)
- Buggy apps. (Be smart about what you download. Do some research)

That's all I got. Hope it helps.
 
As a con, I'd like to add that with Winterboard installed, there does seem to be a bit of slowdown compared with 'vanilla' 2.1 ...
 
pros: customize literally every single little thing about your iphone.
free apps. that are better than the ones in the appstore most of the time


cons: You will waste tons of time switching up your theme and such.
Its addicting.
Will check for updates regularly.
 
pros

tethering (pdanet just released ! :) )
ability to hide sms pop ups
able to show battery in percent
able to change rogers provider icon to something else :)
iblacklist :)
 
Pros: Opens the device. There is so much that can be done with it. Theming, video recorder, unix tools, etc.

Cons: None. Seriously, I can't think of a single negative.
 
Thanks a lot for all the replies.

Is there anything I can do to get my pictures off of my phone other than emailing each one individually?

Will I still be able to download and install apps through the App Store?

Thanks again!
 
Pros:

Too much to name but here are a few:
1. Winterboard
2. Cycorder and Snapture
3. iBlacklist
4. Change and customize every detail of your phone so it doesnt look like a putz.
5. PDA tether software
6. VNC but you can do this via non jailbreak as well.
7. Custom Themes

Cons:
1. gets wayy to addiciting to customize im still customizing it and ive only jailbreaked for 3 days.
2. yes it does void your warranty but your a total dumba$$ if you actually went to the apple or att store with a JB iphone or itouch. I returned my iphone just 1 day ago due to a screen problem and i already jailbreaked it before that and they didnt say anything to me. I restored of course.
 
dukebound85 said:
i am not hesitant to jailbreak my ipod touch but am am for my iphone.


is there any risk of bricking your iphone at this point?
Click to expand...


ITS EXTREMEMLY HARD TO BRICK YOUR IPHONE.

If you did then you did something extremely wrong. and even up until then you can just enter DFU mode and do a restore that way.
 
NickMyers said:
Will I still be able to download and install apps through the App Store?
Click to expand...

Does anyone know the answer to that question? I want to JB my iPhone, but I also want to connect to the official App Store and purchase some apps too.

Thanks,
CrisK
 
Pros: ability to tether, record video, and play NES

Cons: the damn thing becomes laggy and crashes
 
I have to agree with the above posters about it being addicting. Especially when you start mixing and matching themes, adding different icons for your apps, changing sms colors and keyboards... there is just too much you can do.

I ended up restoring to factory 2.1 because my battery was draining a lot faster than usual. Some users have this particular problem and some don't.

In the end, I kind of miss being jailbroken. I will probably just do it every other weekend or so since it's so simple to do now. ;)
 
NickMyers said:
Thanks a lot for all the replies.

Is there anything I can do to get my pictures off of my phone other than emailing each one individually?
Thanks again!
Click to expand...

If your on a Mac you can use iphoto.....

and i don't see any reason not to JB. I have gone 2 1/2 days without charging and im constant texting and talking to ppl. its quick easy and like other ppl said you gotta be a real DA to mess up.

for all the ppl that say that it voids your warranty they are correct but just restore and your good to go. I can confirm this as i had dead pixels on my screen and i had Jb'd with ziphone and then pwnage and they gave me a new phone.
 
I've been JB for nearly every day since the technology existed. I've had some scary moments, but the process is very safe now if you just follow directions. The benefits FAR outweigh the cons.

The biggest con is the fact that you get addicted to the freedom and it takes some work to get back all that functionality after a firmware update.

Though the process is easy, don't oversimplify what your'e doing to your phone. Too many people jump into this without doing their homework. They tweak their themes, install a bunch of hacks, then as soon as new firmware shows up, they jump in and do an update and get stuck somewhere in the middle of the process. They then start crying BRICK (which appears to be extremely rare, if it really even happens at all) and whining about how much they regret ever jailbreaking their phone.

If you decide to JB, do yourself a favor and understand the nature of what you're doing so you can undo the right things before you upgrade your firmware. That's part of the cost you pay for freedom. Don't be lazy or you're asking for some troubles... but as has been stated, you can probably overcome them with some research, because you won't be the only one.

Oh yeah... and don't be the first one to upgrade your firmware when an update comes out. Wait for the pros to go before you and identify problems and solutions first.

Just words to the wise...
 
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