As some of you know, I’m a longtime iPhone user.  I’d used just about every other ‘smartphone’ before becoming one of Steve’s groupies.  As I’d said from the start, “it’s a pretty darn good phone, but perfect?  That’s just not the case.”  Well, I’m hesitating to say these words, but a ‘jailbroken’ iphone might just be perfect.  For those of you who aren’t familiar with ‘jailbreaking’, it’s a fairly simple concept.  A jailbroken iPhone is a phone that has had it’s software ‘tweaked’ to remove any of Apples security restrictions that keep you (me) from doing whatever we want with the phone.   It allows rouge developers to write programs that are not restricted from doing whatever they’re trying to accomplish even if it doesn’t fit in with Apple’s plans.  Google for ‘iPhone and Flash’ for a good example!

Recently, Apple lost some of it’s power to restrict jailbreaking when they lost a federal case the result of which makes it perfectly legal for an iphone owner to jailbreak their phone.  Info on this issue is all over the internet and makes for a fascinating read.  While jailbreaking is no longer ‘illegal’, it still carries the risk of making your phone inoperable or flaky if you don’t do things just right.  It can be tricky.

Finding out how to break my particular phone (a 3gs) was not for the faint of heart.  My particular phone was harder to jailbreak than some, so there were dozens of Google hits with instructions that were incomplete and/or claims that this couldn’t be done.  I must have spent 3 hours on and off looking.  I finally came across the golden info and it was easy.  On my particular setup (iPhone 3gs IOS4.0),  I simply had to go to a website (www.jailbreakme.com) and push a button.  Viola, jailbroken!

This was the moment that my journey down the rabbit hole began.  When you jailbreak a phone, you automatically install an App onto your phone called Cydia.  Before jailbreaking, you could only install Apps via the iStore, but now a whole other world is at your fingertips.  Cydia is the portal to that world.  Cydia is a near copy of the iStore, but is operating under the laws of freakanomics.  You now have a wealth of programs you can load, most of them free that have been written by individuals who were not happy to live by Apples rules.  I could not believe how many apps were available.  Most of the contributors of these Apps are open source and open systems supporters.  They strongly believe that anyone should be able to participate in their ‘open’ marketplace. 

Most of these apps were technically illegal before the copyright ruling in July.  This too makes this level of organization amazing.  Some Apps are free and some are not. When you choose an App that is not free you can use either Amazon or Paypal to purchase.  I installed many apps (over 20), and not a one of them screwed up my iPhone.     I’ve encountered some quirks, but nothing that approaches pain.

What kind of stuff did I install?  Let me see.  Post jailbreak I installed a program called iPhoneBrowser on my PC.  That allows me to save my voicemail files on my PC for later playback and amusement.

I installed an App called SBsettings.  Wonderful utility that pops up a screen upon a swipe of the screen that allows you to turn on and off all your important iPhone thingies.  WiFi, 3G, Bluetooth, etc. these are all much easier to control with SBsettings.  This makes it more likely that you’ll make your battery last longer.

As soon as I saw an App call RemindYou I installed it.  RemindYou puts today’s calendar on my initial iPhone screen allowing me to easily see today’s agenda.  Later, I found that there are lots of variations of these type of Apps to display all kinds of ‘widgety’ stuff. 

Another winner is MyWi.  This program makes my iPhone into a mobile hotspot.   This allows me to leave my iPhone in my pocket and use it to connect my notebook to the internet.  Very handy while in the car and on the road.  Very handy when you want to do some email at a restaurant.

Finally, I installed ‘Frash’ which allow the iPhone browser to display Flash files.  My single biggest disappointment has been (nearly) solved!!!  Without a Flash player, many web pages simply don’t work or will be missing their snazzy animations.  Someone actually wrote a Flash player clone you can download via Cydia.  The player isn’t perfect, but I’ve used in on around 20 websites and only a few didn’t work.  For me, this add-on would be enough of a reason to Jailbreak by itself.

My phone is now more controllable, a mobile hotspot for my PC, run Flash animations, and allows me to easily save any files I might want for savekeeping.  I could talk about the 10 other Cydia apps I installed, but I’ll save that for a later entry.  I hate to gush, but I’m now in the camp that believes my  iPhone is Insanely Great!   A final bit of advice – be sure to do your research before you jailbreak to determine the correct technique for your iPhone and IOS version.  If you don’t fully understand what you’re reading, try to find someone that’s done it.  If you do it wrong, you won’t break your iPhone forever, but you may have to reload from scratch which is a painful experience at best.