Do you Jailbreak your iphone or keep it original.

I would certainly consider myself a 'power' user (had smartphones from way back in the Series 60 days), but certainly at the moment wouldn't be looking to install alternative ROMs. Just don't see a significant enough advantage for me to 'risk' screwing up my phone (I realise the risk seems to be pretty small).

will watch this thread with interest. I will point out though, that people who read forums on mobiles, even on something relatively less techy like DS are not representative - a friend of mine has got a Galaxy SII and she couldn't figure out how to check her voicemail on it!

edit:stats from 2009....
http://isource.com/2009/08/05/percen...ises-a-little/

I mainly use tech forums and have done for over ten years maybe i'm not the best representative on this topic.

I was just curious as most people i know do but as i said maybe its more to do with finding a niche that suits me.

I don't have a need to Jailbreak my iPhone, I'm happy with what Apple give us.

I'd be interested to hear what advantages have convinced people to jailbreak....

When I had my iPhone, and this may sound daft, the only reason I jailbroke it was to allow me to run the full ZX Spectrum emulator on it.

Every other piece of software i bought legally from iTunes - never downloaded anything illegally at all.

I like to have my iphone looking the way i want winterboard and a host of other apps allow that.

I just think for me personally it makes the phone so much more its a great phone and apple only seems to allow us to use so much of its potential.

Personal choice i guess.

I think put simply some people love mucking about with phones, pc media players, to see what they can do,

Maybe I am mis-reading your post but jailbreaking is not about intalling custom ROMs - it's just rooting the device giving the user full control.

I must admit I choose a phone based on the community support it has and the number of custom ROMs available. As for a significant adavantage well I have had my wee Orange San Francisco happily upgraded to Android 2.2 and 2.3 and it runs MUCH better than the stock 2.1 it came with.. I also had a SE Xperia X10 and this phone was terrible with the stock ROM. A decent custom 2.1 ROM made it zippy but when 2.2 was put on it became a good device with full flash support etc. I really cant imagine getting a new Android phone and keeping it on stock.

I did jailbreak when iOS 4.0 came out. When I updated to 4.1 I found the whole jailbreaking process so difficult and troublesome I decided not to bother. And you knwo what, I don't miss it at all.

I'm a bit OCD about having my lockscreens, springboards etc nice and tidy so even though I did try out different backgrounds etc and lockscreens, and settings etc I am now more than happy with a standard Apple setup and don't miss being jailbroken at all.

I always jailbreak. There are some very useful little utilities and apps that I'm very familiar with which Apple do not allow in the AppStore. Mind you even if Apple were less restrictive I probably would still JB as I love to tinker.

The 2 people i know that still have iphone jailbreak them as they cant stand them stock.

I Jailbreak mine for...

SBSettings (swipe the status bar to get a process manager, plus on/off toggles for WiFi etc.)

IntelliScreen (Lockscreen info and better notifications)

MyWi4 (tethering)


I probably won't bother once iOS5 is out.

I recently jailbroke my 3GS. My assumption was there'd a simple little 'tweak' that would bypass the carrier's ability to block the already built in facility to tether. Imagine my disappointment when I find it's not quite that simple. Tethering is via a 'special' app that costs $20. Call me tight, but no thanks!

So basically, the only non-Apple-allowed app I got that I found any use for is SBSettings.

Come iOS 5, I don't think I'll bother re-jailbreaking it. Too much hassle for so little gain.

I jailbroke mine just to bypass paying o2 £7.50 a month to tether 2gb amonth when I alread have an unlimited data plan. The one off £13 it costs will quickly be recouped by not having to pay for a limited service through o2.

Have you tried other cydia apps like Bite SMS, which really improves upon the native sms app (although this will soon be less impressive once ios 5 comes out it still has features that ios 5 wont have).

Barrell is good for customising the way you scroll between screens and has loads of different animations.

Graviboard is good fun but completely pointless.

xBackup is an easy way of backing up and reinstalling all of your jailbreak apps once you have updated to a new ios and then jailbroken again (not theat I have used it yet, but it will be good when I come to upgrade and jailbreak ios 5).

If you keep it simple with not too many jailbreak apps you should be able to keep it quite stable. I had a few crashes after installing an app, but once this was removed i'm back to it being quite stable with no crashes for a few days (I didn't have any prior to the bad app).

I was initially scared to jailbreak, but once I had made my mind up and done it I have not looked back. The first time you see al the lines of code scrolling down your screen is terrifying as you may not be aware that is what happens (and happens everytime you install a jailbreak app thereafter) but once it all boots back up again and all your apps, settings, photos and contacts are all still in place it is quite a relief and you knwo you'll do it again when the nexc update occurs.

Used mine stock for 3 months, jailbroken for 3, then went back to stock. I found cydia apps were really bad at cleaning up after themselves, and had huge amount of data taking over my phone. The only things I miss are sbsettings and having a custom message tone.
I am keeping my appletv with xbmc jailbroken though.

I jailbroke my iphone the day I got it.
Better / less annoying nofications, Sbsettings so I can easily toggle things on and off, BiteSMS so I can quickly reply to a text without quiting the app I am in and a few tweaks here and there (speed up the animations, add a brightness slider to the multitasking bar, add "pull to refresh" to mail and safari, 5 icon dock, allow me to use the phone when it is syncing, allow me to take photos with the volume button etc).

Some of those uses will be removed with iOS5, but not enough to stop me from wanting to jailbrake my phone.


Have a look for tetherme.
Otherwise, you can manually patch some of the files by SSHing in to the phone.
MyWi isn't needed for tethering, only for wifi hotspot use on older iPhones.

This poll isn't going to give a representation of the general public, because the majority of ordinary people don't hang around on forums that are specific to their phone.

Of the 37 people I know who have an iPhone (yes, I did count), 2 have jailbroken.

The majority of people I know who have one are friends and family, not techies, just ordinary joes. Most of those type of people just use what the phone gives them, and often won't even use the phone to its full potential.

Does iPad count ??? I just done mine last week, and to be honest I really don't see the big deal, I wanted to tether it with my laptop to use iPad 3G, and possibly open up the Bluetooth, but the fact you need to pay for the apps kinda puts me off, I thought it was all free once jail broken (and no I don't mean iTunes apps for free)

Quake3 on the iPad looks ace though, if a bit bloomin impossible to play

Apart from that no point really, frash would have been good if it worked but hey ho ... Just need to figure out what to do once ios5 come trotting along, can I just upgrade through I tunes and lose any jailbreak features or do I need to undo the jailbreak first ....???

i have no interest in jailbreaking i know 15 people with iphones and only 1 is jailbroken

If Apple would allow delivery reports and quick access to wifi/bluetooth/brightness (SBSettings) I might not bother jailbreaking, but as it is I have jailbroken every iPhone I have had.

Even 4.3.3 is a nice simple procedure.

Sorry what? They don't allow delivery reports? At all?

Any time I've jailbroken I've been back at stock firmware in a matter of hours. The last time I jailbroke was only for the purpose of getting my SHSH blobs saved in case I needed them to downgrade from iOS5 back to 4.3.3

Yes. To save money.

Jailbroken and have it looking exactly how I want with a custom font, better keyboard and much more quick and user friendly methods of texting and finding information from the lockscreen. Oh, and my own ringtones that Apple wont let users select themselves when the majority of other phones do as standard.

I won't be upgrading to iOS5 until someone has jailbroken it as there is no way I cold go back to the standard non-jailbroken iOS4 now.

i jailbroke my first iphone the day i got it to hacktivate it to avoid signing up to a new contract. it then allowed me to install from a huge amount of extra apps and make far much more use of the phone than stock. this was long before the app store

you don't need to run custom roms, most jailbreakers don't, and it's not illegal to do so and most jailbreakers don't use pirated apps

jailbreaking let's you do everything stock does, plus a lot more. apple are slowly taking some of the cydia app ideas and copying them, such as the new lockscreen on ios5 that's been available for years with lockinfo

apple has to much control over the official app store and keep knocking back great apps, so to have an alternate and legal method of getting these apps is great

btw you can tether officially for free. i just asked o2 to unlock my iphone4 and changed my plan so i got free tethering and pay less too. of course there were a bunch of tethering options for a while that were cheaper than some officlal methods

tethering is great, you can do so via cable, wifi or bluetooth. i used it the other week whilst my main internet was down