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Sure, jailbreak your iPhone. But be prepared…

Written on 13th January 2009 8 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief

ReadWriteWeb wants you to jailbreak your iPhone. Since “a non-jailbroken phone is only half the phone it could be”. You’re missing out on recording video, directly uploading to YouTube, live streaming, zooming in with your camera, and themes. Yes, you’ll break your warranty agreement, but you can always format the iPhone and start all over again.

I can understand that your willing to follow the advice of Sarah Perez, the temptation is too big. But please make sure you rule out of one the greatest risks.

Photo by the lovely iJustine

When you own a jailbroken iPhone, you can’t have anything to do with the iTunes ~~store~~ sync. Certainly not updating it via the infamous App Store. Unfortunately, after months of answering “yes” to every question Apple asks, you might click it without even noticing.

Start all over again

What you WILL notice, is that iTunes erases all your settings and files. There you go, an empty iPhone. What happens when you lose everything? You just start again, start all over again. There goes another hour of spare time.

Matias Tune Blocker - a better cable for your iPod or iPhone If you’re the kind of guy or gal who clicks yes too soon, buy the Tune Blocker. With the flip of a switch, the cable allows you to choose whether you want to simply charge your your iPod or iPhone, or sync it to your iTunes library as well.

Now you can safely hack that shiny iPhone of yours.

[Via: Bright]

8 Comments »

About the author: Ernst-Jan is blogger and co-organizer of BLOG08, who previously worked in New York to cover news at the United Nations. Next to writing, he's also a singer in the band Christina Five. Follow him on Twitter or read his personal blog Dutchproblogger.com .

8 comments/trackbacks to “Sure, jailbreak your iPhone. But be prepared…”

Jan 13, 2009: chrisbrandrick (Chris Brandrick)
Hey @CVD check this out:
http://tinyurl.com/9n4oqz

Reply

By mw on Jan 13, 2009

i can’t have anything to do with the iTunes store? wish you would’ve told me that before.. here i am using the itunes store all day long and now i can’t? :)

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By Namdnal Siroj on Jan 13, 2009

iTunes has a shortcut to use when starting up, to disable autosync on your iPhone:
http://forums.ilounge.com/showthread.php?t=61138

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By CasaMan on Jan 13, 2009

I’ve got a jailbroken iphone since firmware 1.1.2.. Never lost my data or had any problems syncing my iPhone through iTunes or App Store.. The only problem when updating the firmware is loosing the jailbroken apps (but there is an app that automagicly reinstalls all those apps)..

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By Cory O'Brien on Jan 13, 2009

I think this post may be confusing jailbreaking the iPhone with unlocking the iPhone. Jailbreaking just allows you to install apps that are not from the App Store, and typically doesn’t cause any problems besides a voided warranty when done correctly. Unlocking is where you allow the phone to be used with a different carrier (other than AT&T), and this is where most of the above problems come from.

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By Joop on Jan 14, 2009

Question: If I jailbreak, will I still be able to subscribe to podcasts via the store? Purchase apps?

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By Rick on Jan 14, 2009

Sorry, but this is nonsense.

The only thing you shouldn’t do (at least not without some preparation) is update the firmware of your jailbroken iPhone. Firmware updates are relatively rare, aren’t exactly trivial and don’t run automatically without major warnings.

Other than that, you can do whatever the hell you like via iTunes without any precautions. And even if you do ‘accidentally’ update the firmware, you’ll rarely lose data and settings of jailbroken apps, just the apps themselves, and reinstalling those is a piece of cake (there’s even a nice little tool to backup your list of installed apps and re-install them automatically).

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By tom on Feb 14, 2009

this post makes no sense. please do your homework before saying such things.

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