Downside of Jailbroken iPhones

As is well documented, there are a number of things that the iPhone can technically do, that Apple or the carriers that host iPhones don’t actually allow.  This includes some weird stuff like not allowing dictionaries for including the profane word “ass” or actually including words like “f**k” if the user inputs them!  One of the main bugbears with the App Store has been that you can’t use things like Skype when on a 3G signal.

It’s for this exact reason that I wanted to change things on my iPhone, because I couldn’t use Skype on anything but a WiFi signal, which is a real pain.  The 3G network definitely has enough bandwidth, as 3 demonstrates with it’s working Skype.  Another issue is the inability to run Skype “in the background” so that it can be running waiting for calls whilst running other things on my iPhone.  A conventional iPhone will switch Skype off everytime you use another app.

So, naturally I ‘Jailbroke’ my iPhone, and I can now do the following cool things:

• I have terminal access to the OS
• I have a copy of Doom on my iPhone
• I can spoof any app into considering the 3G signal to be a WiFi signal
• Each page of apps now holds 20 icons, not 16. (4×5 not 4×4)  and the dock holds 5 icons not 4 (which is ideal, Phone, Text,Email,Browser,iPod)

So yeah, I can do loads of cool stuff, and I’ve tricked Skype into thinking that it always has a WiFi signal, which is all good.  But there’s a downside to all of this:

With the newly Jailbroken iPhone comes the opportunity to download a load of different packages, and some of them include some pretty battery draining features.  With the Linux packages OpenSSL and OpenSSH installed, the phone behaves like a small server allowing me to login to it, and access files within the file system.

Problem with this is that the phone’s standby cycle, normally lasting around a good couple of days, now lasts no more than one.

I’m working on deactivating the server bits I don’t need except when I need them.  But for now, my iPhone is out of jail, but the activity of being out of the slammer is tiring the poor little phone out!

I’m working on it.

Related posts:

1. Confessions of a Mac Fanboy