Two years ago, I bought the iPhone 3g.  It was awesome.  I missed the first rush to buy it, so had to wait for weeks until more were available. 

I liked most things about it.  I was annoyed that it didn’t sync very well with my Windows machine and it forced me to use iTunes, but it was so cool I overlooked all that.  Then it bugged me that I couldn’t tether the phone to laptop so I could surf the web using my 3g connection on the train (so I would have to take out a second contract with O2 for mobile broadband").  But I have to overlook that too.

Six months ago, I got a call from O2 saying my contract was up and asking if I wanted to upgrade.  I told them I wanted to wait for the iPhone 4.  So, as June 7 approached—I couldn’t wait for the iPhone 4 announcement to see what it would be like.  I registered my interest on the site.  The new phone would have a clearer display, video editing, a webcam!  Apple is touting as a game-changer.  The rush is on.  The pre-orders have already sold out. 

You know what?  I don’t want to be a part of this any more.  I don’t want to be someone who drools over the next Apple product.  These game-changer features are incremental improvements.  I never look at my current iPhone and say “Man, the resolution on this thing is awful!”  I never once thought—”If only I could edit video on this thing.” 

I don’t want to wait for new stock or stand in a queue.  I don’t want to pay through the nose for the privilege.  I don’t want to read any more news stories about new features.  I want to break free.

I got my new phone.  It’s an Android phone—the HTC Desire.  It does most everything I need it to do and it was much cheaper.  Highly recommend it.

A few months ago, I applied a Jailbreak to my iPhone.  This was a simple process to install and I lost no data in the process.  There are lots of tutorials out on the web on how to do this.  I used an application called QuickPwn at http://www.quickpwn.com/. 

Having a jailbroken phone gives you some benefits.  The things I like are;

• You can customise the way the interface looks, with different themes and backgrounds.
• You can install applications that weren’t sanctioned by Apple, but completely possible on the phone.
• You can tether your notebook to the phone and use it as 3G modem while travelling.

There are more benefits than this but these are what I enjoyed about it.

Still, Jailbreaking the phone voids the warranty.  It also makes upgrading to newer iPhone versions very difficult.  But, I didn’t mind this as it allowed me to feel as if I’d joined the upper echelons of geekhood and mastered the device.

But every time I had any problems, whether it was a poor 3G signal or an application that didn’t look right, I had to wonder if it was because of the jailbreak. 

Also, the iPhone 3 software is going to be released this summer which will include functionality like Copy and Paste.  I would need to release the jailbreak at some point anyway if I want to upgrade.

Yesterday morning I bought the National Rail app (nice app) which would not let me see the full train times because my custom font was not the font they tested with.  So, the train times showed up as “06:..London Paddington” which is useless if I can’t see the minutes.  The only thing I really use the Jailbreak for is to use PDANet and connect to the phone from my netbook.  So I decided it was time to restore the phone.

Restoring the phone to it’s original settings is easy.  If you Google how to do this, you find a post of someone who says he nearly bricked the phoned when attempting this, but I had no problems.

Apple make it surprisingly easy to restore your phone AND keep all of your settings:

1.  Right click the device in iTunes and do a backup.

2.  In ITunes under the devices, click the Restore button.

3.  It will give you some warnings about losing settings.  I stopped several times before doing this, as I didn’t know what this entailed.  It’s not major.  It also said I paid for songs which were not transferred to iTunes and I would lose them.  I couldn’t find any so I proceeded.

4.  It will download the latest firmware (which is 2.2.21 now, I think).  It’s over 200 Mb, so this takes a while.

5.  The firmware is installed and the device restarts. 

6.  ITunes recognizes the device as a new one and asks if you want to restore a back-up you have created to the phone.  Yes, you do.

7.  This step took about 45 minutes for me.  I was not sure whether or not the backup would replace the firmware again with the jailbreak.  It didn’t.  All my mail settings, pictures, alarm clock settings, etc. were restored.  I found this step pleasantly surprising.

The entire process took over an hour, so don’t do this just as you are about to head off to work. 

My iPhone is back to it’s normal hum-drum interface.  The pizzazz is gone.

This is how it worked for me.  It was surprisingly easy.  If you have problems, I’m no expert.  There is a risk involved here.  I am not liable for any damage to your phone by following the steps above.

If you’re a jailbreak fan, I understand why.  I may go back in the future, but for now, I’ll stay legit for a while.

I spent a bit of time this morning learning how to jailbreak an iPhone. Still playing with it, but I really like the way you can customize everything.