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Jailbreaking the iPhone

Posted August 20, 2009

Here's my experience with jailbreaking the iPhone.  This summarizes about six months of usage and includes many bits and pieces that I wish I had known or been able to find in one place when I was starting out.

First off, what is jailbreaking?

Jailbreaking an iPhone in it's simplest form means removing the restriction from allowing only applications to be installed from the AppStore.  There are many reasons to do this, some legitimate and some illicit.  There is also the moral/legal issue.  Apple doesn't want you to nor allow you to do this.  You be the judge and act accordingly.

Why should I do it?

I'll cover the legitimate (in my eyes) reasons here.  There are things that Apple just doesn't allow applications or users to do, for whatever reason.  My justifications include:

  • changing the SMS tone
  • checking mail more frequently
  • installing ringtones without iTunes
  • five icon dock
  • emailing SMS logs to yourself
  • hiding built-in app icons

All of these you cannot do without jailbreaking (unless/until Apple changes it's mind).  To me, this is insane and easily doable with other smartphones I've used.

Getting down to business...

To jailbreak a phone, you need two things.  A copy of the appropriate version firmware to patch and a program to patch it with.

If you're using a 3G with OS 3.0, google 'iPhone1,2_3.0_7A341_Restore.ipsw'.  That's your firmware.  If you're using something else, you'll have to do a bit of research.

There are several jailbreak program options, both for Windows and Mac.  I've used a couple, but the last one I used was redsn0w.  Again, google is your friend.

Using redsn0w and your firmware, the jailbreaking process is quick and painless - at least in my experience.  There is an inherent risk of destroying your iPhone, so please be careful and read all the directions and warnings.

Now what?

Once your device has rebooted, you'll notice a new icon for Cydia.  Cydia is the primary tool for installing non-AppStore applications (there are others, but I won't go into that here).  Fire it up and start looking around!

One of the (apparently) huge reasons for jailbreaking that I neglected to mention above is changing the appearance of your iPhone's SpringBoard interface (including sounds) via themes.  Cydia has a crapton of themes available, there's literally something for everyone.  To use themes, you have to install (if it's not already) WinterBoard.  Search within Cydia to find and install it.  [Note: I've recently removed WinterBoard from my phone, see why here.]

Other than using Cydia to get stuff on your phone, you can also use SSH/SFTP.  This absolutely rocks and is my primary method of getting stuff to and from my iPhone.  To enable this, search for and install 'OpenSSH', 'SBSettings' and 'KeepAwake'.

While you're in Cydia, you should really grab my faves while you're at it:

  • Cycorder (video capture)
  • Cyntact (pictures in your contact list)
  • Five Icon Dock
  • PushMod (more frequent mail checking)
  • SMS2Mail (email SMS logs to yourself)
  • SysInfoPlus (loads of details about your phone)
  • SBSettings (lots of neat stuff, including hiding the icons of built-in apps you either don't care about or have replaced with other apps)

Anyway, you can (and probably will) spend days playing around with Cydia and your newly discovered options and abilities.  Have fun!

That's jailbreaking in a nutshell.  If you have any questions, please let me know.  Feel free to share your experience and tips below.