Coach’s Trip Into Jailbroken Bliss

Disclaimer: This is my personal trek into the world of jailbreaking an iPhone. Neither I nor WOIP either encourage or discourage you from doing the same. You know the risks involved and what Apple thinks about it!

So I had a really rough week, 2 of my players’ legs in casts, the rest sick, including myself. Then we lost a close one Friday night. I get up Saturday morning thinking I needed to do something. So I log into WOIP and see a post from The People’s Champ about jailbreaking his phone. I thought, there it is! I’ll just jailbreak my phone and maybe forget about my team woes and loss for a while. Here is my experience down the dark path.

First off, I have never altered an iPhone. I knew what jailbreaking was, but thought the phone is pretty good as is and did not want to risk it. My first step was to go to the QuickPWN website. I am still on a Windows machine so I located and downloaded the file I needed. At this point I am riddled with excitement. I feel like such a rebel. The rest of my family is sleeping soundly as I attempt to make my iPhone truly MY phone. Download finishes and I unzip….error- cannot initialize. I retry several times, throw the file away and redownload. Nothing. I almost gave up thinking a higher power was sending me a message! Finally I talk to my old friend Google and see that the error could be due to not having the .NET framework installed. Since I wiped everything and did a clean install in December I figured that might do the trick. It did! So Windows users make sure the .NET framework is installed. It can be found on the Microsoft website.

Once the software installs you just follow simple instructions to get your phone “broken.” I was really nervous and was hoping I wouldn’t have a beautifully crafted paperweight. Once the software sees your device there are several short steps involving pressing and holding the home and lock keys. My advice is to read the instructions first. You can see each step before you begin. I chose to rush! The first time, I accidentally lifted my finger off of the lock key for a split second when it said not to. No worries. I just rebooted my phone and tried again successfully. It is a lot simpler than you will imagine. Then you wait as the break magic occurs and software installs.

You will see two new icons installed on your springboard. Cydia and Installer. These apps are where the fun begins. I have not used anything off of the installer yet, I have only used Cydia. I was completely clueless at this point. Just go to searching around and figure it out! The first thing I did was search for and install Winterboard. This allows you to make all of your customizations and install themes. I understand BosPrefs is good also, but have not tried it yet. Remember I am now 36 hours into this adventure. You will get the hang of what to look for and how to change your items in Winterboard.

This experience was so much easier than I had anticipated. I also did not know how much fun the iPhone was until I did this. You can make your own adventure if you choose to partake in the process so I won’t bore you with too many details. Here is a brief list of what I installed. Most of these apps came from Bret’s post and through chatting with him in the new WOIP chat room located in the tool bar.

Winterboard- Must have! Change everything from the theme to the lock screen.

Backgrounder- Run apps in the background.

Clippy- Cut and paste!

Cycorder- Record video.

Emoji- Turns on emoji emoticons. Only works to other iPhones, but hey.

Extended preferences- um extends your preferences.

Five Icon Deck- Put 5 icons in your launcher.

Flashlight- Simple flashlight which is brighter than those available in the app store.

SBSettings- Moves your toggles into the springboard.

Weathericon- Displays current weather on top of your weather icon.

My current theme is iComplete.

The coolest lock screen I have seen is Sexy Lockscreen. Makes it look like your phone scans your thumbprint to unlock.