Coach’s Trip Out of Jailbroken Bliss

Several weeks ago I made the leap into the world of Jailbreaking.  I spent the first week trying out many themes, sounds and applications.  Some of them were really nice; some of them were not worth the bytes it took to save them.  Much of that first week was spent searching and searching trying to find the apps and theme to make the iPhone “complete.”  While jailbroken, I was able to shoot video on my phone, copy and paste, and use Japanese Emojis.  These tend to be the things we hear people cry to Apple for most.  Along the journey I leaned a few things about this amazing phone.

Once going through many themes, I finally found myself sticking with one called iComplete.  It was basically a colorful version of the current iPhone theme with custom keyboards, lock screen, charge bar, and even weather page.  Although nice, It was basically a painted up version I already possessed.  Copy and paste was ok, but I did not find myself using it very much.  Emojis were fun for a couple of hours while I sent silly smileys to my friends with iPhones.  Yes, only people with iPhones could see them.  Custom sounds were really fun for a week, and then I eventually wandered back to my standard sounds.  I think you can see where I am going with this.  Basically, the old adage, “The grass isn’t always geener” applied to my experience.

     As some of the above options were fun and customizing anytime was enjoyable, there were some issues I decided I did not want to deal with anymore.  First of all, your phone is much slower while being jailbroken.  In the beginning, it does not seem to be an issue probably since you are paying more attention to customizing and finding more apps.  The speed issue seemed to get worse as time wore on.  This could be due to me paying more notice to the fact, or from the amount of “junk” you can accumulate.  Either way, it became an issue for me.  When typing an email or text, the keyboard would often hang up.  The letter just pressed would pop up and hang for a few seconds, and then it would catch back up.  The typing issue alone began to drive me insane. 

     What will I miss from being jailbroke?  I will miss having five applications in my launcher bar the most.  I had phone, sms, mail, iPod, and Safari all there.  Being able to change themes is nice, but not if it causes a slower phone.  Really, other than these things, I am perfectly happy with the Apple prescribed experience.  I have enjoyed the smooth running fast iPhone I so loved the past 24 hours and for now will stay with it!  By the way, my custom carrier logo stayed up there!  Not sure why!