It has recently been announced that firmware 2.2 for the iPhone has been jailbroken. For the free minds and geeks of our country this is more appealing than ever.
For those of you who don’t know, jailbreaking of iPhones started with the very first firmware to come out. Basically, what it does is unlock the iPhone's hidden abilities essentially freeing it from Apple-imposed restrictions. Once jailbroken, you can add third-party applications that would not be allowed by Apple — including unapproved apps or GUI theme sets. I know, jailbreaking sounds great, but it may cause the iPhone to have problems and null all warranties.
Before the App Store became available I had the iPhone 2G jailbroken and loved it. The issue with this is that it was unreliable. I was never sure whether the app would function properly or if it would function at all. Today I have the iPhone 3G and I am much more satisfied with the App Store than I ever was with the jailbreak.
This was found over at blog.iphone-dev.org
The second beta of firmware version 2.2 has been out for a few days. It looks like Apple still doesn’t have a fix for devices already prone to the pwnage jailbreak and unlock.
Here’s our obligatory screenshot (seen above) of a jailbroken and unlocked 1G/2G iPhone running 2.2beta2 (which also shows an interesting daemon they left lying around.)
The iPhone may still be necessary to jailbreak for those who do not want to go under the AT&T service. Of course this is greatly frowned upon, but it does happen and can still be done. And when you use other services you can’t access the App Store so you need to jailbreak to get applications.
Although jailbreaking is still possible to this day in every firmware version, I believe that the average iPhone user is satisfied with Apple's App Store. But don’t fear all you free thinking programmers out there, the iPhone is still able to be jailbroken and it's easier than ever.
