Apple  currently has 4 iOS devices available. These are the iPhone, the iPod Touch, the iPad and the Apple TV.  All of these devices can be hacked by a method known as jailbreaking.

There are two types of jailbreaking, tethered jailbreaking and untethered jailbreaking. Tethered jailbreaking and untethered jailbreaking. Essentially, tethered jailbreaking means that you have to connect your iOS device to your computer and jailbreak it every time you want to reboot your iOS device. On the other hand, untethered jailbreaking means that you can freely reboot without the need to connect to a computer.

But what is jailbreaking?  Essentially, jailbreaking is a hack which gives the user full access to the filesystem.  It also allows users to access applications, tweaks and customisations that you would never find on Apple’s official app store. Instead they are available in another app store known as Cydia.  For example, you can turn on Wi-Fi, 3G and Location services without even leaving your current app.  You can also unlock your iPhone, meaning that you can use it on almost any mobile phone network you want.

Now of course, there are some pros and cons to this. So just to scare off those who are not so sure about doing this, let me state the cons of jailbreaking your iOS devices.

Now yes, Jailbreaking is now legal as specified in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act(DMCA). However, if you do jailbreak then you may void your warranty. From what I know, if you restore your iOS device to the clean firmware, then you may be out of luck. This is because Apple’s people at their stores have many tests which can help them determine if you have jailbroken your device before hand.

The second of the many disadvantages there are of jailbreaking is that it can be used for piracy.  There are people out there who have been able to crack the copy protection on the applications for all iOS devices. This way, applications that you have to pay for from Apple’s app store for iOS can be illegally obtained for free. You are also hurting the developers. They have spend a lot of time and money just to create applications that you can enjoy using. I encourage/highly recommend that you support the developers by always using Apple’s app store to get your applications.

You may also risk rendering you device unusable. If you perform the process incorrectly, you will have to plug your device in to your computer. You will then have to run iTunes in order to wipe the device clean and set up your phone from scratch.

By jailbreaking your iPhone, you can gain full access to the phone and delete files, which are important to the functionality of the phone.  So remember, that with great power comes great responsibility.

Let’s move on to the good things that can come out of jailbreaking an iOS device. There are many different customisations that you can get. For example, you can customise the look and feel of your phone. You are able to change the colour of the keyboard, the icons on your home screen and change the slider on the lock screen.

You can also get features on your phone that allow you to do things that the iPhone should have had since iOS 1.0. Before iOS 4.0 came out, Cydia had applications that allowed the phone to be used as a Wi-Fi access point.

it provides Apple with ideas as to what to implement into a major release of iOS.  For example, the idea of folders in iOS 4 came from categories which was available in Cydia since iOS 3.1.

All-in-all, jailbreaking your iOS device has an equal amount of pros and cons. If you are going to jailbreak, then please proceed with caution.

Until next time, this is adiman423 on behalf of iPhone Tutorial Videos signing out.

Disclaimer: iPhone Tutorial Videos cannot be held responsible for any damage caused to your iOS device from jailbreaking it. iPhone Tutorial Videos cannot also be held responsible for any voided warranties that may occur from jailbreaking your device. iPhone Tutorial Videos does not condone, promote, glorify, endorse or recommend piracy