To Jailbreak or Not to Jailbreak?
There are tons of good reasons to jailbreak. And tons of reasons not. I’ll break it down for you here…
Pros:
No Longer Tied to AT&T
AT&T has exclusive rights over the iPhone until at least 2012, and with all of the network’s problems , a lot of people are wary. But the latest jailbreak gives users access to T-Mobile’s GSM network, which works better in many areas of the US.
3rd Party Unauthorized Apps
The App Store has a lot of really sweet apps in it, but jailbroken phones can utilize even cooler apps that tend to be more creative than the official ones. Cydia is like the apps store for unofficial apps, and using it is one of the main reasons that so many people want to jailbreak their phones.
Fully Reversible
If you’re scared of the consequences of jailbreaking your iPhone — or simply don’t like the experience – it’s easily reversible. All that’s required to “un-jailbreak” a phone is restore iTunes.
Reasons Not to Jailbreak:
Bricking
Anytime you tamper with an advanced electronic device such as the iPhone, you risk screwing up and “bricking” it. Bricking means that your phone is completely unusable and unfunctional. It can be fixed by simply wiping it and restoring it to factory defaults, but it’s still a little bit of a pain. Might be a deterrent for some people.
Warranty: Voided?
It is legal, as of 2010, to use jailbreak software on a phone (at least in the US). However, when you unlock it, your warranty is technically null and void. This means that if Apple finds out that you’ve jailbroken your phone, they are not obligated to fix it if it breaks or malfunctions unless you pay for it out of pocket. So if you drop your phone a lot, or your particular IOS seems buggy, you should consider carefully before you jailbreak.
Security Concerns
The website MacRumours has published a flaw that they’ve discovered in some recent jailbreaking processes that leaves a hole which hackers could exploit to plant malware onto phones. This exploit comes out of the IOS PDF app. They say “The remote website presents a PDF that has a specifically crafted font embedded, and it is the processing of the embedded font that has the security issue.” Something to think about, you know?