By Steven j. Campbell




What is the first thing you can remember about your iPhone on day one?

For me it was walking out of the AT&T store and immediately turning on the GPS and watching the blue dot as I went home to the wife.

But on that day I also learned that the dirty secret about the iPhone becomes very clear very quickly:

THE IPHONE'S BATTERY SUCKS

I'm so sorry iPhone. It really isn't completely your fault. Part of it is me. I really can't help wanting to use your shiny advanced features such as 3G web browsing and 3d gaming.

When you first get your idevice, the battery is but a wee child. Not really sure of itself and prone to feeling drained and needing a recharge quite frequently.
After a few weeks your idevice battery has matured and will now behave the same way for the better part of it's remaining lifespan until you need to replace it.

My battery was passable. I heeded all the apple advice on how to prolong use. Then something happened.

I JAILBROKE.

As it stands, the iPhone itself is a remarkable device. It has a fast processor and by default acts as an incoming mail device, mobile phone, and web browsing device. You open and close an app and it's process is terminated. This is how apple designed it and how they want you to use it.

ALONG CAME THE MOBILE SUBSTRATE

When you jailbreak you install what is known as the mobile substrate. Basically a layer that sits between you and any customizations you wish to install and the native iPhone software. This allows custom jailbroken apps to inject code into the regular iPhone software. All this is absolutely necessary to give you all the mods and hacks a jailbroken iPhone can pull off.
Each customization you install (and some people I see have upwards of a dozen) which runs constantly consumes both memory and CPU.
Apple hates this.

WHY IT MATTERS

Ever have a friend or relative who always complains they have a slow pc? If you see the computer itself often times the user has dozens of icons next to thier clock on the taskbar.
Each icon represents an application which is running and consuming memory and CPU.

The iPhone is no different than a pc in the sense that it has a CPU and memory.
More mods and customizations mean more CPU and memory usage.

SO THEN WHAT?

So your battery drops and can drain. Quickly. This also means that your phone could become unstable and crash. If the phone crashes it will crash into a safe mode or may not come back to life at all.

The moral of it all is to be sensible. Be safe, and never bite off more than you can chew when it comes to your modding of your iPhone.

By Steven J. Campbell








If you read my last guide on how to jailbreak an iPhone (located here: http://bit.ly/5n7zCG ) then you are familiar with the name GeoHot who is the man behind the Blackra1n software that jailbreaks an iPhone.

TETHERED VS UNTETHERED JAILBREAK:

Before we continue, I must explain these terms. To the unfamiliar it can be slightly confusing.

Newer iPhone 3gs models and 3rd generation iPod Touch models use andofferent type of memory than earlier models (this has nothing to do with software but only depends on the hardware inside the device.) This means that the Blackra1n software used to jailbreak them cannot make permanent changes to the memory.
As a result, if a newer model idevice is restarted or has a complete battery drain it will not restart properly unless connected to a computer which runs the blackra1n program again. This "tethers" the phone and this is called a tethered jailbreak.

All other idevice models will reboot with no problems after a jailbreak.

THE PRICE OF FREEDOM:

Recently geohot posted this to his Twitter feed:

"ACEPOLLS.COM - Do you want a dongle to boot tethered iDevice on the road? If demand is high enough, I may build http://bit.l..."

So what is geohot implying? It seems logical that he could be able to build a small device that would simply run the blackra1n code on the device it is attached to. You could just press a button and have it run and reboot your device.
Sounds great.

Does this mean that there is no software fix for the new hardware in the retail chain?

That's strange because Geohot offered an untethered jailbreak late last year if people helped him win the red baloon challenge (which would have netted him $10,000)

A second theory is that this is a way to make money. Sell the device, collect a profit. It all seems to work perfectly, doesn't it?

ALONG CAME APPLE AND A JOB(S)

I can't imagine that apple would stand for this. They already have tried to make jailbreaking illiegal and claim that it voids warranty on the users device.
When PsyStar bypassed the apple EULA (end user license agreement) by installing the OS X operating system on non apple hardware. They were sued repeatedly, and lost in court.

If Geohot begins to profit from his work few would argue that it was unwarranted. He does after all provide an amazing service to all of the end users who want some freedom over the apple ecosystem, but directly profiting off the community will definately rub some the wrong way, and worst of all the all might Apple.

Let the battle begin.