Why Jailbreak your iPhone 3g

By default there are several things missing on the iPhone 3g such as video recording, tethering, skype, voice alerts, the ability to sync over wifi and more.
Apple runs a tight ship, and only allows installing third party apps and syncing music via iTunes. Unfortunately iTunes is only available on Windows and OSX 4 or higher (for iTunes8). Apple has also received a lot of critisism for not being very open regarding their approval process and only approved Apple approved apps make it to the App store.

Personally I think iTunes is a pretty nice app and do use it to sync on Windows XP. The fact that I have to upgrade my OSX from 3.4 to 4 to run iTunes8 is rediculous. Windows users enjoy more freedom and less restrictions using the iPhone than Apple customers. Figures.

The iPhone is a very capable peice of hardware but with all of these restrictions you are better off getting an unlocked linux phone running Android.
It is a real shame that the sexy iPhone can't live up to it's full hardware capabilities due to Apple's lame restrictions.

Enter the JailBroken iPhone.
A Jailbroken iPhone can do anything the sexy hardware is capable of, and with a fast processer, 3g, Wifi, GPS, Accelerometer and more this adds up to quite a lot.
Personally, my primary reason for Jailbreaking my iPhone was so that I could synch wirelessly via linux. By default Linux doesn't read the filesystem on the iPhone when you plug it in via USB like it does with every other device including my old ipod, and why be tethered via USB when the iPhone has wifi buit in? If you are a Linux user, then you understand the benefits of being able to run open source apps like
OpenSSH, OpenSSL, Curl, Python, etc. You also probably already know how to set up an Ad-Hoc network to allow tethering. For Windows and Mac users the good news is that there are applications to make things like tethering and filesharing as easy as installing any other application.

Here are just a few of the things you can do with a JailBroken iPhone.

  • Log in root and change the root and mobile account passwords
  • Generate RSA keys so you can ssh securely into remote machines
  • Record Video (up to 15 frames a second)
  • Use your iPhone as a tethered modem
  • Turn off the annoying word checker that tries to fix every acronym you enter and requires you to tap on it to not over-ride what you actually typed.
  • Wirelessly sync photos and other files via scp, rsync or tar | ssh
  • 2 New installeres gain you access to 3rd party app repositories which include things like
    • Winterboard - A theme manager that allows you to completely change the look and feel of your iPhone
    • AppBackup - Backup and restore appstore apps
    • Aptitude - Command line app installer
    • Backgrounder - Run applications in the background
    • iPhoneModem - Use your iPhone as a tethered modem
    • Lynx - Console web browser popular on Linux
    • rsync - sync files between computers
    • myFox - Firefox web browser
    • Nmap - network scanner
    • rdesktop - Login remotely to Windows and Linux computers
    • WeeChat - IRC client
    • And much more, this is a very short list.


Here are some screen grabs of the extra installers you get after jailbreaking the iPhone.

 

New installer icons

Cydia Screenshots

Installer Screenshots

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  Note: Cydia includes How-to tutorials and F.A.Q.s from the start page  

Click on any of the above images to view fullscreen.
The Cydia and Installer images link to galleries with many more images.

 

For an easy to follow tutorial on how to JailBreak your iPhone click here