The pros and cons to Jailbreaking your iPhone!
May 7, 2008
There are a few Pros and Cons to consider when Jailbreaking your Apple iPhone.
Lets start with the good stuff. Jailbreaking your iPhone can be extremely fun. There are many useful applications available for download that bring your iPhone to life! I have found several open and closed source app to be very usefull. Below is a list of the ones I like the most!
iFlickr - Simply take a photo, then send that photo directly to your flickr account!
colloQ - IRC brought to the iPhone with an amazing, easy to use, and intuitive interface!
MobileTwitter - SMS via Twitter is so lame! MobileTwitter give you a very nice graphical interface with all the trimmings of those Adobe Air Clients.
Mobile Chat - Instant Messaging on your iPhone. (AOL, .Mac, XMPP, MSN, and ICQ)
Feeds - Works seamlessly with Google Reader.
Fring - Fring allows iPhone users to truly harness the potential of this device. Users can use VOIP services over Skype, MSN, ICQ, SIP, and Google Talk. Text based messaging via Twitter, Yahoo and AIM are also supported.
The Cons..
I would like to commend every single one of the developers who are creating applications for this device. Many of them do this in their free time. For this I would like to say thank you!
Many of us have put our faith into the developers who create the catalog of outstanding software we are currently using. I am aware there is a process in which repositories are chosen for the installer.app. But a word of caution to anyone who installs these applications. Do so at your own risk!
Jailbreaking could potentially BRICK your iPhone!
If you have OPENSSH installed on your iPhone.
UNINSTALL OPENSSH - leaving OpenSSH installed on your iPhone will leave it vulnerable to exploit via WIFI hot spots. If you have sent any files to your iPhone via SFTP. Then you currently are aware of the devices root username and password! (Many other people know this as well!)
Hope you all found this somewhat enlightening. If anyone would like to add anything to this post. Please feel free to email us at ping@theleetgeeks.com.
Soooo, no real cons if the phone doesn’t brick and you don’t install OpenSSH?
“But a word of caution to anyone who installs these applications. Do so at your own risk!”
Basically some of these applications hosted within the repository work one day, then not the next! Fring “definitely has some issues with default applications such as SMS!”
We would like to trust every developer, also repositories who are hosting these applications! But how are we to be sure if there isn’t any code running that we are unaware of? Like I said, if you do plan on installing software. Do so at your own risk?
what should I do if my ipod touch is bricked?
If its bricked then ur screwed. The very definition of bricked is basically :completely and totally screwed beyond all return.
My iPhone has bricked to twice and i discovered an easy way to de-brick it; basically just run your jailbreaking software with out the device pluged in, hold down the power, then home, following these steps to the letter will de-brick your iPhone or iPod touch.
Bricked and you’re device is useless? I don’t think so. You can always restore in iTunes - never had a problem doing that. I was so eager to jailbreak my iphone that I finally managed to do so and was utterly disappointed.
For me, I found that the iphone ran slower, and it is a huge leap of faith trusting developers you don’t know. The filesystem sandbox that Apple creates is there for a reason. Once you jailbreak, you can develop apps that can essentially talk or use anything else on the phone without the restrictions that Apple has put in place. That jailbroken app could easily upload your data to some site without you knowing.
It seems the main reason for jailbreaking is for Winterboard, SBSettings, and some other apps that allow you to customize the appearance of the iphone. Do you guys really spend that much time looking at your phone rather than talking on it or playing a game? In the end, I reverted back to the Apple IPSW because
a). I don’t trust what apps I’ve installed might do without my permission
b). Customization of the iphone through re-springing the device took a long time - the 3G has a subpar processor (no wonder why Apple doesn’t want to support multitasking in OS4 for 3G devices).
c). There is no killer app for a jailbroken phone that just compels you to have to have the phone jailbroken. Show me that app and then I’ll reconsider.
If your ipod touch/iphone is bricked, Simply restore it or open up iphone browser, delete everything and then restore it.
There is no such thing as “permanent” Brick
I jailbroke my ipod touch and then restore to switch to another better jailbreak. I have jailbroken around 4 times to get it to work but the bricking thing is said by apple to scare people with ipod touches/iphones so they wont jailbreak it