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5 Reasons You Should Jailbreak Your iOS Device

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An official jailbreak has released for iOS 7 devices, but it’s a bit buggy still, seeing as there’s no official Cydia support just yet, so we recommend holding off for a little while until Cydia support is built in and updated.

We’ve already went through several reasons as to why jailbreaking your iOS device is a bad idea, with the above reason being just one of them. However, the pros can strongly outweigh the cons in some cases, and jailbreaking your iPhone or iPad — while risky — can have huge benefits for iOS users, and you’ll be able to able break out of Apple’s so-called “walled garden” and give you a much more freedom on the software side of things.

Jailbreak

Customizations

One of the biggest reasons that users jailbreak their iOS devices is so that they can truly make it their own. A big drawback of iOS is that it’s not really all that customizable, but with a handful of jailbreak tweaks, you can pretty much change anything to your liking.

While an iOS 7 jailbreak is available right now, there aren’t really any tweaks yet for iOS 7, but we’re looking forward to some specific tweaks that will allow us to change around the Control Center, as well as a tweak that will bring back the old Notification Center for those who don’t like the new layout.

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Tethering

Another feature that makes jailbreaking worth it is the ability to tether your iPhone or iPad’s data plan to your laptop or desktop computer. Carriers allow you to do this with a “Mobile Hotspot” feature, but you usually have to pay for it on a per-month basis and you’re only allotted a small amount of data.

tethering

There are plenty of tethering apps available for jailbroken devices, with PDANet and TetherMe being some popular options. You do have to pay a small up-front fee to buy these apps, but there’s no steep monthly fee that you have to worry about.

Changing Default Apps

iOS doesn’t allow you to change default apps for certain tasks, and it can especially be cumbersome when you’re not a fan of the default iOS apps in the first place.

However, jailbreaking will allow you to use third-party apps as defaults, so instead of iOS opening up a link in Safari, it can open it up in Chrome or other third-party mobile web browser. You can also have Siri use Google Maps for directions instead of Apple’s own Maps app if you prefer.

Using Unauthorized Apps

The iTunes App Store has over one million apps to choose from, but that doesn’t mean that Apple isn’t strict when it comes to what apps it does and doesn’t allow.

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There are plenty of great apps that have been pulled from the iTunes App Store, and the only way to get them now is to download them through Cydia on jailbroken devices. Some examples are SNES emulators, App Gratis, and the recent MyGlass app from Google. MyGlass isn’t available in Cydia, and it’s likely that Google will change it to get it accepted into iTunes, but it goes to show that Apple doesn’t just allow any app into the App Store.

Improve Siri

Siri is a great virtual assistant, but it’s not perfect, and there are a lot of commands that it should understand, but it doesn’t. You can get several jailbreak tweaks for Siri that enhances the virtual personal assistant and boosts the library of commands that you can say.

In the end, jailbreaking is a double-edged sword, and even though it can vastly boost the capabilities of your iOS devices, there are things you sacrifice in order to get that luxury. But seeing how iOS 7 comes with so many trivial problems that add up to one big problem, jailbreaking is the surefire way to fix it all.

5 Comments

5 Comments

  1. Aron Tripp

    12/27/2013 at 8:56 am

    I find it hilarious that every article that ever explained why you SHOULD jailbreak an iPhone ends up explaining that a jailbroken iPhone basic adds features from Android 3 years ago. I could do all of this, sans siri, on my Droid x 2.2. So sad.

    • Pot

      12/27/2013 at 11:30 pm

      it was more sad to know that you are still with your android after 3 years of suffer with hang, apps crashes and many more.

      • torquadon

        07/08/2014 at 2:47 pm

        Clearly You didn’t see android device for a very long time. I own iPad Air and nexus 10, I understand that apple design is appealing, but regarding cistomization iOS 7 is years behind android 4. As for crashing apps, didn’t see any for a very long time. It is even worse with jailbroken / rooted devices, xposed framework is far more advanced then any cydia tweaks.

  2. LostInNY

    12/30/2013 at 12:48 pm

    In android, if you decide to root the device, you will gain ability to run privileged applications, in IOS if you jailbreak your device , you get to enjoy your device without having to ask Apple for permission. In android,with stock OS device, I can add media anyway I like, in IOS Stock OS I have to sync my media, no way to just add one file or picture, no way of managing your device stored media. The IOS Eco-System is not for everyone, I like greater control over my device, I do not like asking permission to add one song from my computer. now I will confess i love my Ipad MIN with retina display.

  3. osukaru

    03/15/2014 at 12:47 am

    I dont jailbreak my iphone until recently because official iphone dont have Bitcoin Wallet ! but luckily jailbreak iphone have otherwise I will scrap this iphone

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