If you’ve ever jailbroken your iPhone in the last months, you know how much of a necessity the freedom of an independent third-party alternative can be. The guys involved in cracking Apple’s continous efforts to fortify the box their customers agree to be locked in have been doing excessively great. Whenever Apple released a new firmware version in beta, they were on the case trying to get around the various protections to allow users the freedom to choose. They would do so impressively fast, too. Now, with iPhoneOS 3.1, Apple decided to up the ante.

Should you decide to update your pre-3.1 device to 3.1, Apple will make it so that not only does it wipe your jailbreak data, but make it nearly impossible for the user to manipulate the device in the future. As it is a highly technical subject, I’ll simply direct you to Jay “saurik” Freeman’s article which covers everything you need to know about this particular topic.

That being said, there’s a hard reality out there. 3.1 is out, and iPhone owners want their devices — may they be jailbroken or vanilla — to run the latest firmware. It’s absolutely normal, and even encouraged. Nowadays, you need to stay on top of software updates for security purposes, if anything. To that reality, you can add the current problem those people have: you can’t jailbreak 3.1. Today, I’m going to enumerate the possibilities that lay before you as a jailbroken iPhone owner who wants to update to 3.1. more…

I’ve been rocking a jailbroken iPhone for a few months now, and I must say I absolutely love it. It feels just like when I switched to Linux: power to the community, freedom of choice and usage, open source spirit… and you’re pretty much on your own if shit hits the fan. I’ve blogged about the best Cydia applications I found in the past (Top 10 Cydia Apps and Top 10 Cydia Apps Redux), but I feel it’s time to update that list and share it with you all. “Why?” might you ask. Simple. My needs and interests change regularly. The software source being Cydia, applications can be harder to find than with the centralized Apple App Store. New apps are added to Cydia on a daily basis, and new repositories are created daily, so new stuff is easy to find – good stuff is harder. There are a few tools on the interwebs to help you by attempting to centralize the Cydia apps information (appRater, ModMyi, hackint0sh, iPhoneFreakz, BigBoss, iSpazio), but it’s still more challenging than your search-and-tap routine.

Here goes a revamped list of my current essential Cydia apps for your jailbroken iPhone in no particular order. I’m gonna leave out the obvious like Cydia and OpenSSH.

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You’ve all been annoyed at the default iPhone sounds sooner or later. They’re pretty ordinary, I’ll agree with you. One of the extremely useful features of JailBreaking your device is that you have the power to change the default sounds for pretty much any event. Today, I’ll show you how to replace your default SMS tones with custom ones of your choosing. In order to do so, you’ll need a jailbroken iPhone (running 2.x), Cydia, OpenSSH and optionally WinterBoard. You’ll also need the audio file you want to use (obviously) an SSH client (ideally a graphical SFTP frontend like FireFTP) and an audio editing application like Audacity. Ready? Here goes! more…

About a month ago, I jailbroke my iPhone and made a list of my top 10 Cydia apps at the time. As everything else in life, that list has since evolved, and looking back at it today I felt like it needed to be revisited. The main reason why I need to write about that list is because some of the apps that I found cool at the time turned out to be inadequate in the long run. So I’ll give you my current top 10 Cydia apps, now with 100% more knowledge! more…

I’ve had an iPhone for about 7 months. I’ve been a regular App Store user, buying all my stuff legitimately. This weekend, I decided to JailBreak it (how?). What convinced me to jailbreak it? I wanted control over my SMS alert. I just wanted a simple beep, no fancy 5 seconds long tone, just a goddamn beep. Apple didn’t judge it important to give its users control over that. I actually didn’t know much about the pros – but I knew everything I had to know about the cons. So, I figured I’d give it a try, for the sake of having more control over my device and just trying something different. I was pleasantly surprised! The whole “breaking” process was ridiculously easy – it just implied installing an application on my MBP, connecting my iPhone and running it. Everything went smoothly, and when my iPhone rebooted, it was jailbroken. That introduced me to a whole new world I wasn’t aware of, honestly. First off, I had the option of installing yellowsn0w, which is an application that would allow my iPhone 3G to be carrier independant. I didn’t need that, so I just didn’t install it. It might be something interesting for other users though, and the possibility is there and equally easy.

Basically, jailbreaking your iPhone will give you more customization power and, if you’re a Linux enthusiast, will allow you to SSH to your device and explore they filesystem. The great thing about it is that it doesn’t affect everything you did before jailbreaking – you can still sync it with iTunes. Here are my favorite applications, the ones that made jailbreaking worth it for me. more…