JailbreakMe, was released in the last few days and has make opening up your iOS device (including iPhone 4, iTouch and iPads) a whole lot simpler.

This new site allows iOS applications to easily install non Apple approved applications.  Users simply visit the JailbreakMe.com site and slide the Jailbreak switch to Jailbreak the device.

Apple officially disapproves the act and has said that the process violates the warranty.  Even though users could experience instability or disruption of services on the Jailbroken devices, going back to the original settings is as easy as re-syncing and restoring through iTunes.

Last week, the U.S. Library of Congress issued an exemption that allows smartphone users to jailbreak their devices and non encounter any issues with legislation or legality.

In addition, a new non-Apple controlled app store has sprung up with over 15,000 non-Apple approved apps that could be installed in the Jailbroken iOS device.  That app store is as easy to access as installing the Cydia Store app.  Its creator, Jay Freeman, says that a model similar to Apples will be in place shortly which will allow a revenue split with the non-authorized 3rd party app developers and the Cydia store.  With over 800 million dollars at stake, I’m sure Apple isn’t going to sit by and wait to see how things pan out.  So for now, feel free to try the Jailbreak, and the Cydia store, and let us know how it works for you!

Now that I’ve had the opportunity to use the iPhone 4 for a while, there are a few obvious things and a few not so obvious things that I wish it had.

I never had a serious problem with the antenna and opted to get a bumper case early on because I liked how it looked and offered additional protection to my phone.  So obviously, the non-bumper fix for the antenna would make top of my list.  The other public issue that I think needs some addressing is the proximity sensor one, which doesn’t happen to me often, but we’ve heard enough complaints about (even after the latest OS update), that it still seems like something that needs addressing.  Other than those two, here are a few more;

• Carrier-Free: The iPhone should be offered carrier-free.  Apple should offer easy access to the internals for assigning it to whatever wireless carrier they wish.  Most in the U.S. would then flock to Verizon for quality and others for price.  I personally have had my share of problems with AT&T (I live within eye shot of NYC) and wish AT&T could do something about all of these dropped calls.
• Wireless Sync – There is no reason the iPhone couldn’t wirelessly sync with iTunes over a network.  It’s an option offered on jailbroken iPhones.  Wires are so yesterday, so why not make this a standard feature?
• Webcam – The iPhone should plug into any computer and act as a webcam.  Of course that would involve straightening out the issues with FaceTime, which brings me to:
• FaceTime – This should have been interacting with iChat from the starting gate.  Apple should also give each phone a unique ID unrelated to its telephone number so it’s possible to FaceTime purely from WiFi without the initial need for a cellular connection.

I’m sure there is more I could think of over time.  Is there any options on your iPhone wish list that I didn’t include?

I’ve got a 3G iPhone—I know it isn’t the latest, greatest or fastest, but what it does it seems to do well. Until I installed iOS 4.0. Let me back up a little here…over the past several months, the performance was getting worse and worse. Blame it on bad apps, or AT&T or the moon lining up with Jupiter, it doesn’t matter. The phone was running slow. 

So I did what every geeky person would do, I installed iOS 4.0 on it.   Sure the footprint for the OS is larger, and it was designed for a phone that had over 2 times the RAM and 2 times the processor speed, but hey, it COULD run on my 3G, so why not? How bad could it be?

Well, I found out.  After the over 2 hours to get all the software downloaded and installed and running, the phone was pretty darn slow. Sending a text message took over 30 seconds from the time I tapped on the icon to when I could actually TYPE something. It was that bad.

I was told that just powering it off and on would fix it, so I tried that—and it worked for a little bit but not long enough. The last straw came when the performance was so bad that I could be having a phone conversation and the screen that displays who is calling and the ‘Slide To Answer’ prompt would still be up. I never knew if and when I was even on the phone! That was the last straw—the phone was officially unusable.

Power cycling didn’t seem to help any more, I needed to do something else.   After searching, and reading, and investigating I found a series of steps that claim to fix the problem.  Your results may vary, and use at your own risk, but this helped me fix my problem.  If you try this, please post your comments and let us know!  

1. First, do a ‘hard’ reboot. To do this, hold down the 2 buttons (like you are powering it down) and keep holding. The phone will go black, then the apple logo will show, and then it will go black again. The phone is now completely off. Then, turn it back on.

2. Clean up your settings and optimize them as much as possible. The simple rule is that if you don’t need it, turn it off. For myself I disabled Bluetooth, push notifications, an old email account that was disabled, and changed my ‘fetching’ from every 15 minutes to manual. Remember, you’re trying to squeeze out every CPU cycle you can.

3. While still in ‘Settings’, Clear your History and your Cache—this seems to save RAM which (with a 3G) is VERY important.

4. Remove old apps that you don’t use. For example, Skype–which currently doesn’t support 4.0–was on my phone. Removing it freed up several resources and less clutter on my spring board.

5. Do another ‘hard’ reboot.

After doing this, my iPhone seems MUCH faster, and much more responsive. Answering phone calls works like it should; sending a text message (from tapping on the icon to typing) is now 9 seconds, definitely an improvement.

Hopefully these tips will help you too.  Let us know!