Pros and Cons of Jailbreaking Your iPod Touch or iPhone

If you own an iPhone or an iPod Touch, you’ve probably heard that you can “jailbreak” it. But just what does this mean? And is it something that you want to do to your precious iPod? Well, Apple doesn’t want you to, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t – or that you shouldn’t. However, there are other reasons that go both for and against jailbreaking your iPhone or your iPod Touch. So read our list on the pros and cons before jailbreaking your own!

One of the many advantages to jailbreaking your iPod is that you’ll be able to completely customize it. Say bye-bye to that boring old black screen and open your iPhone or your iTouch to a whole new world of backgrounds! With apps like Winterboard, you’ll be able to do just that. In fact, with Winterboard, you can even change how the slider looks, customize sounds, and even the keyboard – if you jailbreak it, that is.

By jailbreaking your iPod Touch or iPhone, you’ll also be able to install the Categories app. This app will sort through all of your apps and put them into different categories. Which can be a great feature if you’ve had your iPod for a long time and have tons of apps to sort through just to find the one you’re looking for.

One of the best things about jailbreaking your iPhone or your iTouch though has got to be the games. Fed up with the slow and basic games that you’ll find at the App Store? Jailbreak your iPod and you’ll see just how amazing games really can be! Try the NES emulator to play the classics that you grew up on, or install the Playstation emulator to play some of your favorite current games!

So with all of these wonderful benefits, how could jailbreaking your iPod Touch or iPhone be a bad thing? Well, there is the tiniest chance that you will brick your iPod, meaning that it will be useless to you. But that’s usually fixed by simply resetting it. And, if Apple ever finds out that you’ve jailbroken your iPod, they definitely won’t hold up their end of the warranty bargain – in all fairness, because you didn’t hold up yours. But, if you do jailbreak your iPod and then need to take it in for warranty, you can usually just update the firmware through iTunes and Apple will never be the wiser. So hey, why not? Go ahead and jailbreak your iPhone or iPod Touch and see what it can really do!

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12 comments

  1. Can anyone tell me a jailbreak app that is NOT cydia? Cydia has sucky games and all I want is to jailbreak games.

  2. i was told that if i jailbreak my I-Pod i can get apps that cost money for free and when i jailbroke iti was kinda disapionted that i could not find and thing like that so is there something that will allow me to download free apps? ? ? ? ?

  3. @Tiffany You can download an app called ‘dTunes’ in Cydia to do just that!

    @Rabbit You can download ‘Installoud’ in Cydia for the free apps and ‘dTunes’ for the free music (this app also has videos and torrents)

    @X Sort of yes, sort of no. When you jailbreak it does not, but when you update anything jailbroken will get deleted, but apps you actually bought through the App Store or iTunes will remain.

  4. I was told that if I Jail Break my Ipod Touch that all of my App Data and all of the Data on my Ipod Will be erased. IS this accurate or false?

  5. I have a question. If I decide to jailbreak my touch would I have the ability to download ie: pictures, music and such from websites such as funformobile?

  6. I ask because I’ve had my Touch for a while and I’m getting kind of bored with it. LOL. I just didn’t want to risk not being able to use iTunes after jailbreaking and possibly even bricking it. I haven’t had much luck with electronics lately as it is…I don’t want to go asking for trouble. Thanks for the reply. I may ‘jailbreak’ this weekend.

  7. Hi Danny,
    That’s not a stupid question! I actually didn’t even think about that until you asked and I had to do some research on it myself! Turns out that yes, iTunes will work perfectly fine with a jailbroken iPod Touch!

  8. This might be a stupid question but just to verify – you CAN still do all things iTunes with a jailbroken iPod Touch???

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