In pre-announcing the iPhone 3.0 OS and providing preview software builds, Apple intended to give developers a leg up in producing/updating apps. Fortunately, it also gave the unsanctioned “iPhone Dev Team” enough time to get some of their jailbreak and unlocking apps ready fairly close to the official launch. And early this past weekend, we saw the release of PwnageTool and redsn0w.
I went with redsn0w Saturday to jailbreak and unlock my first gen iPhone. There were early reports of issues with Cydia, the defacto illicit app “store”, but it may have been due to server load rather than the jailbreak process. I also had a scare that involved losing all cellular connectivity, which was due to bad bootloaders. Rerunning redsn0w with the proper files took care of it.
The process is fairly simple, assuming you’re OK with the the risk of an inoperable phone and voiding your warranty:
Why jailbreak? If you enjoy tinkering, want to shoot (crappy) video without an iPhone 3G[S], prefer organizing your apps in folders, enjoy streaming a Slingbox over a 3G connection, prefer customizing your phones appearance, etc you’re a perfect candidate. And, of course, you still receive all the features of the polished 3.0 OS update and official App Store. The benefits of unlocking should be obvious – as you can see in the pic above, my iPhone now operates on any GSM network. Which will work out well should I defect from AT&T. But we’ll save my current phone lineup and future handset machinations for another post.
Click to enlarge:
