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RSSWhy I Restored my Jailbroken iPhone (again!)
Aug 17
Technology, iPhone iPhone, jailbreak, MMS, OS3.0, restore, video No Comments
I bought my first generation iPhone almost a year after the original launch, only when I could afford to because O2 had drastically reduced the price without contract. Selling my old iPod 30Gb and my old mobile meant I could just about afford it.
Now, I have desperate geek-lust towards the iPhone 3GS, but there is no way that I can afford to get one at the moment. So I am resigned to using my old original iPhone for the foreseeable future.
This isn’t such a bad thing really, I love the iPhone as a device, and the OS3 software update went a long way towards making my iPhone more of a pleasure to use.
I regret not having GPS in the old iPhone. This is a pain because I would like to try out some of the apps that would track my route/elevation/speed via GPS when I go Cycling and also for tagging my photos.
Hardware issues aside, the key ’software’ features my 1st Gen iPhone was missing in comparison to the 3GS, and that I could do something about, were MMS (duh, Apple!) and video recording. Both of these, and of course a few other system level things, were easily addressed by Jailbreaking the iPhone.
With all the talk about the enhanced and new features for the 3GS iPhone, I really felt like it was time to redress the balance a little, and the only way I could do that with my 1st Gen was to Jailbreak it once more, and so I did. I have Jailbroken my iPhone twice before, either as Apple updated their iPhone OS, or as I decided it was time to restore it, so it was no great worry for me to Jailbreak it again after the update to OS3.0.
I got MMS working fine with the excellent but paid-for SwirlyMMS and was happily recording video on my original iPhone with the free Cycorder (much better in my opinion than the paid iPhoneVideoRecorder app, and I have paid for it!). Having video on my phone is a real advantage and great thing to have for catching the antics of my nearl2 and 4 year old kids. There is never time to get the video camera out, or charged, when they do something cute, or funny, that we want to remember. And a lot of the time I don’t want to carry the video camera around with me.
But the iPhone is almost always near me, or in my pocket, and so video is the one Jailbreak app I will miss more than anything else. I’ll miss it because I had to restore my iPhone. I just could not put up with the poor performance of my iPhone whilst it was Jailbroken.
The other times I had Jailbroken my iPhone, I didn’t notice any real performance hit, but this time was different. I don’t know if it was because of OS3.0 or something else I had installed, but this time my Jailbroken iPhone was crashing all the time, taking forever to start or re-start, acting slow and unresponsive, not responding to presses of the home button for 10-15 seconds; basically the whole experience felt like I was navigating my way through a sea of porridge in a treacle covered slow-boat.
The crux of the matter, in my opinion, is that OS3.0 is not optimised for my old model of the iPhone. Even after restoring my iPhone back to how it ’should be’ I have a sneaky feeling that Apple didn’t do too much to encourage people to hang on to their old hardware with the new OS.
I think this is why the Jailbreak experience was less enjoyable for me this time, but I am curious, it might just have been me. If you are reading this and you have Jailbroken your iPhone running OS3.0, especially if it is a 1st Gen model, please leave a comment and let me know how it went for you. Did you have a similar experience, or was everything fine for you?