I loved jailbreaking. It made my life fun and interesting and always new. It gave my phone more life and meaning. The fact that I could do what I wanted to my iPhone meant that I was free. I loved my freedom, until jailbreaking turned on me. What once was a snappy-fast and easy-to-use phone became a sluggishly slow and frustrating-to-use phone. I blamed the jailbreaking—after all, my friends’ virgin iPhones were very quick and responsive whereas mine was always inches away from being smashed against a tabletop.
Therefore, I un-jailbroke my phone. After only a few minutes, I began to miss the advantages of a phone without limits. Apple kept me from customizing. Steve Jobs’ arms reached into my phone and strangled the very soul from it. How could I possibly live like this? A virginized iPhone might as well not be an iPhone at all. Why am I subjecting myself to such torture and conformity?
Then I remembered the frustration of a jailbroken phone and created a compromise for myself—I would find ways to make my phone feel jailbroken without actually jailbreaking it. I’d do this by finding applications and tips that would help me replicate some of the features I got out of jailbreaking without inducing sluggishness and unpredictability. I decided to make it into a new AppAdvice column that would take the place of my weekly “Why Jailbreak” column. I called it “Jailbreaking Without the Jailbreaking” (clever, I know). I wrote and published the introduction to this new column, as you may know. But then I had a problem. There was nothing for me to publish after that. I had considered discussing how the 3.0 update and the 3GS model had added some new features taken from the jailbroken universe: video recording, copy and paste, MMS, among other new and nice features including internet tethering (which we are still waiting for in the United States). That would’ve made a decent post, but then what? There was nowhere to go. There are no App Store applications that truly replicate anything from the jailbroken world. There are no tips I could find that would free my phone from Steve Jobs’ cold-hearted clutches. This would be harder than I thought.
Needless to say, I gave jailbreaking another shot and am glad that I did. I jailbroke Caravaggio (my iPhone’s newest name) with BlackRa1n (which was insanely easy), and was up and running with Cydia in a matter of minutes. Sure, my phone is a little bit slower than it was a week ago, but it is also free from restraint. I have settled on sluggish independence instead of efficient bondage. And I am happy with my decision. Those of you who read my introduction to the new column which is dead now must thing that I am a crazy person. First I love jailbreaking then I hate it and now I love it again. Yes, I have changed my mind several times, but the hacker’s life is one of ups and downs and lots of decisions. The ultimate question that I have been pondering endlessly until today is which is more important for me in my iPhone: Efficiency or Freedom? I have settled on freedom. Steve Jobs won’t be happy about it, but I hope I won’t regret it.
BlackRa1n is insane. It is the method through which I re-jailbroke my phone (for version 3.1.2), and is so easy that I thought it was a trap. I downloaded the program onto my PC (which took about 10 seconds), opened it, plugged in my phone, hit the “Make it Ra1n” button, waited for a minute, and then was up and running. Jailbroken and all. I didn’t even need to re-sync. All of my music, contacts, applications (and their data), everything remained untouched. It was mind-boggling. I always had to re-shuffle and organize and sync and juggle all kinds of data and things after a jailbreaking, but with BlackRa1n, all I had to do was hit a button. This jailbreaking thing is already going smoother than I remember. Best of all, I was pleasantly surprised to find native internet tethering was already enabled!
Here’s a more in-depth, step-by-step guide for those of you who would like to jailbreak with such ease that it’s almost poetic:
Step 1: Download BlackRa1n. You can get it from the website here. They have downloads for both PC and Mac.
Step 2: Open BlackRa1n and plug in your iPhone. Back it up once more, just in case (there shouldn’t be any problems, but it is always good to have a fresh back up before doing this type of thing).
Step 3: Hit the “Make it Ra1n” button and wait. Walk away for a few minutes. Do not disconnect your phone, and make sure your computer won’t shut off or go to sleep.
Step 4: After a minute or two, you’ll have yourself a jailbroken iPhone. If you loved how easy that was, I suggest tossing a few bucks to BlackRa1n for offering such a great method of jailbreaking for free. Now, before you do anything else, marvel at just how wonderful it is to not need to re-sync or deal with any new syncs or anything. This is still your iPhone, just jailbroken.
Step 5: Find the new BlackRa1n icon on your home screen. Open it up and install Cydia by selecting Cydia and clicking “Install” in the upper right corner. Install Rock or sn0w if you’d like, and then I recommend uninstalling the BlackRa1n application by selecting, obviously, “Uninstall BlackRa1n.”
Your Home Screen will look like this:
Then, if you’re like me, it will look like this 10 minutes later:
That was it. Wasn’t that easy? Now your iPhone is jailbroken. You are free. Steve’s got nothing on you. You can customize and install things that Apple doesn’t fully appreciate.
Can’t decide what to do with your newfound freedom? Why not start off with some past Why Jailbreak columns, and then wait a week for a new one? Don’t worry, I’ll keep ‘em coming. Sorry about my recent stint with legitimacy, everybody. But now I’m making a promise to all of you hackers out there: I’m back for good. Long live jailbreaking.
I have not noticed ANY performance sacrifice when jailbreaking my 3GS. I think that’s the biggest win of the new phone, you can now jailbreak and still have a blazing fast device!
I’m a frequent visitor on this site (as in daily) and this is my first time submitting some sort of comment on your articles. But I was just so compelled to speak on this love/hate relationship with jailbreaking. I feel your perspective on this. I’m always so conflicted every time my iPhone goes into safe mode as to whether or not I should keep the jailbreaking firmware on my iPhone. But 3rd party apps like, Inspell, 3G Unrestrictor, iFile, BiteSMS,Winterboard,Cycorder, (I mean the list goes on) make it so hard to turn away from. Especially since the App store has nothing remotely close to these apps’ functionalities. I remember seeing your Jailbreaking witho
I have had no performance issues on my Jailbroken 3GS either. I Jailbreak mainly for Multitasking and Themes. It is well worth the couple minutes it took to Jailbreak it!
I’m a frequent visitor on this site (as in daily) and this is my first time submitting some sort of comment on your articles. But I was just so compelled to speak on this love/hate relationship with jailbreaking. I can relate to your perspective on this. I’m always so conflicted every time my iPhone goes into safe mode as to whether or not I should keep the jailbreaking firmware on my iPhone. But 3rd party apps like, Inspell, 3G Unrestrictor, iFile, BiteSMS,Winterboard,Cycorder, (I mean the list goes on) make it so hard to turn away from. Especially since the iTunes App Store has nothing remotely close to these apps’ functionalities. I remember seeing your “Jailbreaking Without jailbreaking” column and thinking, “This is not gonna last.” I’m glad you’re back to the basics, even though I think I’ve covered most of the apps in Cydia, I still enjoy your breakdowns and critiques, plus there’s many more goodies from Apple rejected developers brewing up that will soon surface. So long live the hacker nation and keep up the great work AppAdvice!
Well I guess others have had better luck than myself. I am an avid hacker/jailbreaker and to me even the 3GS seems to get sluggish after a while. I did my last jailbreak with Blackra1n RC3 but after a couple weeks the phone started slowing down again.
A reboot would bring it back to nearly full speed but never quit fully there. I went back to stock for now but great article Adam.
To improve performance, try not installing winterboard or using themes. Yeah they’re cool, but the more complicated the theme, the more of a toll it takes on the phone. In my experience anyhow.
I have never had any speed isies with my 3gs. And a quick google search for cydia repos will give you soooooo much more in cydia.
I’m nervous to jailbreak but I think this article may have pushed me over the edge. I have a brand new 3gs. If it gets messed up, I can always revert it right? Warranty would still be in tact?
Yes, you can always “Restore” your firmware and bring it back to a stock phone, leaving your warranty in tact.
Thanks for the info! I’m going to take the plunge!
Adam, this may be a dumb question, but will BlackRa1n fine with an already jailbroken phone? This sounds so much easier than Pwnage Tool…
If you are already jailbroken you do not need to run Blackra1n unless you are restoring to stock first. Pwnage and Blackra1n have the same end effect on your device.
Danny… Thanks! I have another question… I’m jailbroken at 3.1 currently on my 3G. If I run BlackRa1n on it as it is, will is update me to 3.1.2, or do I need to do a backup, restore it, upgrade to 3.1.2 through iTunes, and then run BlackRa1n? I don’t need to be unlocked, actually happy with AT&T believe it or not… I just want to make sure I do everything correctly… I’ve used Pwnage Tool before, but it’s so much more complicated compared to BlackRa1n, and I’d rather just use BlackRa1n…
I’ve looked around at jailbreaking again and have to say, this looks good. In fact, think I will do so. A question that I always have though and either my searching is bad or there is no answer, how can i tweet the videos with a jailbroke 3g not 3gs, none of the clients seem to support the jailbroken ones, hell skype use to tell me warnings that it was only for legit phones.
I unjailbroke my iPhone when 3.0 came out, but after reading this article I decided to give it another shot. So simple to do, thanks to you and of course blackrain!
I have a jailbroken iPod touch on 3.0 and used redsnow to jailbreak. I have a 3gs also which I got the day it was available in June. My question is having backed up my unjailbroken iPhone before jailbreaking, will restoring from backup effect the jailbreak, or just restore my previous data like I want?
I believe the recommendation is to start with a fresh, clean 3.1.2. If you restore from backup, it will make your device exactly like it currently is. You will then have to jailbreak.
On iPhone 3G, I’m definitely suffering a performance hit, and also severely terrible battery life… I’m having to reboot the phone almost as much as my old WinMo device now too… The weird thing is, it’s jailbroken, but I’m barely running anything. I’m not running any themes etc., so can’t understand why it would be so much slower. I press the home screen and it can take 7 seconds before it comes up, and I’m sick of the keyboard locking up too. When I open terminal and run “ps -eaf”, there doesn’t seem to be much running that shouldn’t be either… Am I missing something? Thanks.
hey Adam, do you know who I can contact with questions about jailbreaking? or if you can please email me using the email submitted for this comment. I have some questions about jailbreaking.
thanks
I’m going to jailbreak my 3gs and I’ve backed up all my data. My question is after jailbreak will restoring data from backup (clicking restore from backup) in tunes do anything to affect the jailbreak? I Just don’t want to loose my bookmarks and app data from before jailbreaking. thanx for tha info
Try to avoid the restore from backup if you can. It is not recommended, because it will slow down your Iphone (from what I’ve read). Just write down your bookmarks and re-set them up after JB. As for contacts, learn how to sync with gmail, and then restore them from there.
I’m confused (hence, the screen name!). Please clarify what a “clean 3.1.2″ means, and how you get to it? Does it mean going into iTunes and clicking Restore? Does that wipe out all apps and music from the iPhone? I am currently running OS 3.1.2 on an iPhone 3G, but have loads of music and apps installed as well. If “clean” means getting rid of everything and starting from scratch, how do you get everything back after jailbreaking? Or if I am currently running 3.1.2, can I just back up and go for it?
That brings up another question… after the phone is jailbroken, do you still sync via iTunes? I use iTunes to sync my contacts and calendar to Outlook… would I still be able to do that?
Thanks!
– Brad
plz help me,I want to jailbrake my iPhone but i’m affraid.this is my one and only phone i have, please i need ur help,
infact i love to jailbrake my iPhone since i’m already explore all fact about how to jailbrake but the effect not yet
I really really really want to jailbreak my 3gs Ver. 3.1.2 with Blackra1n but it is brand new and I am so afraid to.
Does anyone know if I can absolutely undo the whole process if something goes wrong or if I have to take it to Apple for repair or someting? I have read in places where people have bricked their phones trying to jailbreak them and then had no way to undo it.
If it is undone can Apple tell you had it jailbroken?
Thanks
Cassie
Just follow the directions from this website, remember to backup your Iphone, there’s nothing to worry about you’ll be fine just trust in yourself and of course in BlackRa1n file. Follow the directions to the letter and have fun you can do it.