iPhone 3GS Jailbreak – Day 1 Quick Thoughts
As I mentioned in a previous post, I gave in to temptation and jailbroke my iPhone 3GS last night “ via the new purplera1n jailbreak application. Since late last night I ‘ve had a chance to play around a fair bit with my newly ‘freed ‘ phone.
I have to say I feel a bit like a jailbreak newbie again, as it ‘s been a fair while since I ‘ve run my phone jailbroken for any substantial length of time “ and I ‘m just getting to know my way around a few newer jailbreak apps. Even so, I ‘ve got some very early, Day 1, quick impressions of running the 3GS jailbroken.
An Old Friend Is Doing Well
I always mention SBSettings when talking about jailbreak apps I ‘ve missed the most when running my iPhone ‘stock ‘ (non-jailbroken). It ‘s good to see that this app works as well as I remember “ to do things like toggle on and off battery-burning services like 3G, Bluetooth etc, and make it much easier to manage them with far fewer taps than on a stock phone “ and has even added a few nice new capabilities since I last saw it.
The most notable of its new abilities is management of running processes “ as in, it lets you display what apps / processes are currently running in the background and choose to close any of them from the same process display screen, or free up memory.
Speed Is Still Great, but Stable Is No Longer My Phone ‘s Middle Name
I have not noticed any ‘lag ‘ or slowdown of the iPhone since jailbreaking. It is still super quick at every activity I use it for.
It is not behaving like the Iron Man that it was prior to jailbreak though, at least in these early stages. Since jailbreaking just before 11:00pm last night (around 18 hours ago) I have had these incidents:
As the install of SBSettings completed, it showed a Restart Springboard button on its Cydia install page. On pressing that button, the iPhone looked as if it was attempting the respring and then completely locked up. Would not even power off and needed a hard reboot to get past that. (the install went fine after the hard reboot)
When using the Stack app, three times I tried to tap on the Settings app from within the default stack, and all three times I got an ugly Springboard crash that initially acted as if the phone was going to lock up again, then showed me this error screen and required a respring:
Immediately after installing the mQuickDo app (for apps switching) all icons on all the phone ‘s home screens became unresponsive. I could swipe to move between home screens, but could not launch any apps. I ended up doing a restart of the phone, and the issue was resolved.
It ‘s possible that some or all of my issues thus far could be down to user error on my part, but I ‘m not immediately thinking of why that would be the case when reviewing each incident (and I ‘ve been taking pretty good notes to track all this stuff). The purplera1n install is beyond simple “ literally one click “ and said it completed successfully and reported no errors. Same goes for the Stack and mQuickDo installs “ pretty simple, just choose the version of each for 3.0 firmware, hit Install, and Confirm “ and again, no errors reported.
In any case, the scoreboard on the stability side of things does not look good on Day 1 “ with the jailbroken 3GS boasting one forced restart, one complete freeze-up requiring a hard reboot, and multiple Sprinboard crashes “ all in less than 24 hours. The 3GS prior to the jailbreak had a grand total of zero forced restarts and zero Springboard freeze-ups in 30 days.
Oh, and I ‘ve avoided installing Winterboard or going anywhere near themes so far based on advice from a trusted friend and expert over at the EIC forums (Tinman) “ so that is not a potential cause of any stability issues.
Those are my very quick, very early impressions of running the iPhone 3GS jailbroken “on Day 1 after the purplera1n jailbreak. I hope the speediness will continue. I hope the stability issues will be a fluke, not a constant (that would be a dealbreaker on remaining jailbroken or not), and I am discovering that one of my very biggest wants with the iPhone is fast app switching (more on that soon).
i have had my 3GS jailbroken for 2 weeks…i did have a couple springboard crashes but i had TONS more on my 3.0 JB 1st Gen.
i will say i have had NO issues with Winterboard. You should install it…i see NO problems at all.
I'm too naive to know for sure, but I wonder whether using Dev Team's JB would provide a more stable system?
While I certainly respect Geohot's skills, I was swayed by the Dev Team's comments about the initial wifi and other issues due to incomplete kernel extensions with PurpleRa1n. I've heard that the PurpleSn0w unlock is clean and some say is better than the Dev Team's re-purposed YellowSn0w (RedSn0w) but my limited choice of carrier in the US makes it pointless for me.
I used the purplera1n jailbreak and have winterboard installed. Some themes cause it to go into safemode, others do not. The one I have running now is stable and nice. I couldn't live without my jailbreak.
I've always had very good results when using Pwnage (and even older) Dev Team jailbreaks, but I've also heard all good things about purplera1n .
Some AppStore apps instruct to reboot after installation so I don't think it is too concerning. Assuming after reboot it all runs fine I think it is acceptable, no?
I'm not hugely concerned about it, and hope this will not be a continuing feature. Having said that, it honestly doesn't create a great first impression, given how the stock phone was 150% rock solid.
Hey PJ, i've been running my 3GS jailbroken with redsnow since the day i got it(2 weeks now). I will say at first i had a few of those respring messages. I was never able to figure out what caused them. i myself though it might have been an issue with winterboard, but with you not even having it installed i don't believe that was the case. I can say it was only initially, and i haven't had an occurance in about a week.
Also, I don't know what Tinman's reasoning for advising against it, but i myself have had no issues at all with it. I'm running a vista theme that completely KILLED the ram and functionality of my old 3G. But the 3GS handles it effortlessly and i'm running around a consistent 120-130 mb free ram. Give it a shot!!!
Good to know. Tempted to try out theming, will see how things go.
Couple thoughts. Your post sounds like you got Stack from some repository through Cydia. Currently the 3.0 build of Stack is in ALPHA testing and only available from the author directly. If you got it from somewhere else, that would be a good reason for any issues. Also, as it is still alpha, it's still likely to have issues. I personally have had zero problems with it, but I didn't ever try it with the default stack it comes with. I immediately removed all those apps and added all my music apps. I regularly launch Pandora, Last.fm and the iPod app through Stack.
I also never experienced a crash, lockup, or forced safemode reboot while installing or using SBSettings. I have bene using it for about a month now with no problems. I'm not trying to claim there's no way it has any issues, but I just don't want you to think instability with jailbreak is even remotely commonplace. In fact my 3GS has been jailbroken since the day purplera1n was released and I never once had a crash or lockup until two days ago when I decided to give GriP a try.
Again, I'm not trying to discount your post. Your concerns are legit, I just know myself and many many others have not had any stability issues while being jailbroken, so there may be some other factor coming into play. Either way, welcome back to the jailbreak world. Go install Backgrounder and start streaming music in the background with Pandora or Last.fm while still making full use of your phone.
Thanks for the comment. I did get Stack out of Cydia – and I thought I'd heard it was only in Alpha and wondered about that. I'll remove it now. SBSettings is a long-time favorite of mine, so I have no lasting qualms about it, or about the jailbreak process itself – I just wanted to share some notes and experience with purplera1n. I realize others' mileage may vary.
I am very tempted to try out theming again – always enjoyed it in the past, but will be taking it a little slow this time round (or at least that's what I'm saying for now).
I did the jailbreak on my 1 week old 3GS 2 days ago – works okay though battery life seems to be reduced with apps like WinterBoard – what are your experiences? Thanks in advance!
I haven't installed Winterboard as yet, so no experience for me at this time. I am thnking I probably will install it soon though – not sure yet, but leaning that way.
It seems that you have an app loaded that is not compatible with 3.0 that's why your springboard is crashing. I myself installed lock calendar and had my springboard crashed, so I removed it. That was like a month ago, and ever since I have not had any crashes or instability issues with my 3GS. I have winterboard installed and had never had any issues with it. I can’t really say anything about battery life because I always had all my iphones (1G, 3G, 3GS) jailbroken (not unlocked) when ever I bought them. Although I have realized that my 1G phone had better battery life than the 3G and 3GS.
Yes – I mentioned the app – called Stack. Apparently it was not the 'proper' version of it, which is in Alpha stage right now. So I've since removed it from the phone.
Thanks for the info on Winterboard and battery life.
About Battery Life:
Heard from somebody that it's maybe the "amount of usage" of MobileSubstrate which reduces battery life.
This could mean if you just have installed one app which uses MobileSubstrate it has only little impact and if you install 3 or 4 it will be worse…
Anybody else on this track? Love WinterBoard and SB Stuff but also don't wanna reduce battery to 4 hours
Thanks again!
Interesting. I haven't installed that many things as yet, and I'll need to check back and remind myself which ones use MobileSubstrate.
Very interesting – please keep up the progress reports / thoughts.
Also it would be great to have some round ups/mini reviews of what Jailbroken apps you are running!
Thanks,
Ian
Thanks – I'll certainly keep posting about the jailbreak experience. I may also do some mini reviews on apps – truth is, I'm not running many JB apps at all as yet.
Yes, the battery life reduces with jail breaking. I am 100% sure about this as i I and some of my friend tried it.
It reduces the battery life about 35%
Regards