iPhone 3GS Jailbreak – After 3 Weeks: Stable, Fast & Not Feeling It with Themes

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Well it ‘s been a little over 3 weeks of running my iPhone 3GS jailbroken now (just over 23 days actually) “ and I have to say I ‘m very happy with it.

Stability has settled down and is now almost as rock solid as when the 3GS was running ‘stock ‘.  In fact, the phone has currently gone 16 days without a reboot – and the last one 16 days ago was due to an app install, not any sort of crash scenario.

Some other very quick thoughts after 3 weeks:

Performance continues to be stellar “ just as fast as the phone ever has been in every area “ browsing, launching apps, working in apps (whether games or productivity apps), and just general usage.  And I give the iPhone a pretty good run for its money as well “ generally running 9-10 screens worth of apps (between favorites and under review items).

App switching is still my single biggest reason for enjoying the jailbreak “ though I wish mQuickDo (my app switching solution) would stop acting so flaky.

I am still not finding a whole bunch of jailbreak apps that appeal for my usage habits.  For example, I ‘m not a big user of text messaging and have zero interest in MMS, don ‘t need tethering, and don ‘t need my device to pretend it ‘s on WiFi when it ‘s really on 3G.  So quite a few of the instant appeal type JB apps are not ones that I feel any need to get. The small handful of apps that I have found that add big-time functionality to the phone are more than enough to keep me on ‘this side of the fence ‘ though. 

That small handful includes: mQuickDo (for app switching), SBSettings (for easy toggling of services, quick resprings, and other cool functions), Screensplittr (for sharing the iPhone screen), and Universal Search, for adding global (internet) search into the built-in Spotlight search.

I ‘m still not ‘feeling it ‘ much at all with themes.  I have Winterboard installed and I look at new themes that come out nearly every day, and honestly almost none of them appeal.  Most fall into one of two categories for me:  1) they ‘re ugly as sin or 2) they want to do way too much “ e.g all these ‘complete ‘ themes that want to turn my device into a Palm Pre or a Windows Vista-like device, or ones that want to rotate wallpapers or all sorts of other fancy tricks that just worry me on the potential for degrading performance side of things. 

So I ‘ve only just barely dipped a toe in the theming waters, as per suggestions from a few of you.  I ‘ve just used Winterboard ‘s ‘User Wallpaper ‘ setting and installed a Mac wallpapers pack, like the one shown in the screenshot at the top of this post.

As I ‘ve mentioned before, another thing that I find annoying about trying to look at themes is the lame way they are dealt with in Cydia.  Nearly every time I tap a ‘More Info ‘ or ‘Screenshot button on a theme ‘s details page, I get what feels like 90% advert splashage and 10% anything to do with the theme.

ThemeDetailspage

I mean, seriously, look at the proportions of the ads on the screen above vs. the screen shot.  Yuck.  Just a thoroughly unpleasant experience.

Anyway, despite that sour note, overall the jailbreak experience on the 3GS is going swimmingly.  I ‘d like to see a few more interesting apps come along, but I seem to recall it being a bit like buses “ you wait ages for one and then three or four come along at once.  Here ‘s hoping anyway. :)

As always, I ‘m very keen to hear how your experiences are going with the 3GS and with jailbreak if you ‘ve done that.

  • http://www.twitter.com/robsarj Rob

    Mine has been great so far. Same scenario, jailbroken and no crashing or rebooting, only when necessary. I agree with you about the themes. Thus far my favorite are the "Glass" themes, but MacCiti has themes that do require some work but look amazing once completed. As for apps, I do agree there are many that don't really do much for the newer 3GS however I find the following the most useful:
    - SBSettings
    - Categories (allows you to set up folders vs. having pages of apps)
    - iFile (view your entire iPhone's folders and file's – can be dangerous if you don't know what your doing)
    - biteSMS (use the biteSMS network to send international text messages for a cheaper rate than carrier)
    - iMobileCinema (Allows flash videos to play on iPhone, however not compatible with all flash video sites)
    - CyDelete (allows you to delete jailbroken apps the same way as legit App store ones)
    - Veency (allows you to control your iPhone on your desktop using Remote Desktop )

    Other than that, again my experience has been great and smooth sailing! Love it…

    • http://intensedebate.com/people/patrickj patrickj

      Thanks for the feedback. Glad yours is going so well too. May give iFile (which has been mentioned here before by some of our smart readers) and CyDelete soon. Have used Categories in the past and never liked it much.

  • Kerry

    I have found the Smoog2 theme to be quite nice. I have not been a fan of all the shiny of the OS and this theme helps with that. Also the MobileMe GUI package tones down the rest of the device. Can't live without Categories or SBSettings.

    • http://intensedebate.com/people/patrickj patrickj

      Cool, another one to look for. Thanks. SBSettings has always been a big favorite for me too.

  • Pete

    If your not a good speller (like me) you have to try inspell
    It will unline words that you type that are incorrectly spelled When you double click on the underlined word a new correct pop up button (with copy & paste) will show. Click on it and will give you suggestions. Click on the suggestion and it will change the word. It's a killer app for me and i can not go back to a non jailbroken phone because of it. If fact to wrote this post with inspell correcting my spelling mistakes! 

    • http://intensedebate.com/people/patrickj patrickj

      Nice one. I always work with no net on the spelling thing – lookout. :)

  • kelly

    i've been using Tenuis (macthemes) since it came out…great theme. Cydelete is a must have, as well as Categories.

    • http://intensedebate.com/people/patrickj patrickj

      Wow – cool – thanks to all of you – now have three themes to take a look at. Thanks for all the suggestions.

  • http://intensedebate.com/people/darklinkhx darklinkhx

    you should try the theme illumine because if they don't have the icon for the app it shrinks to look good with the theme just try it out its on the Complete section on cydia
    Plus that theme doesn't require any blanks or crap like that lol

    • http://intensedebate.com/people/patrickj patrickj

      Thanks. Have taken a look at that one, but just don't find it very attractive. Different strokes I guess. :)

  • http://www.intensedebate.com/people/Shobizz3000 Shobizz3000

    I've been having great success too. This 3GS is miles ahead of the 3G performance wise. I was not planning on upgrading, but I was really getting frustrated with the slowdowns of JB'ing and running Winterboard themes. I COMPLETELY understand your frustration with themes. I wish I had a bit more creativity and programming experience so that I could make my own. The only one I loved, and I mean I really liked it, was Glasklart. Don't know if you've tried it, but I recommend it 100%. What it does is it makes the icons somewhat transparent. Just a slight ghosting effect, which is awesome. It really allows your background to shine through! Also the dev is constantly upgrading the app, almost weekly, with new icons for new apps. Worth checking out.
    I'm running a Vista theme now actually. I know u hate them, but I like the look and the functionality that it adds. I have only 1 page on my iphone. I couldn't stand having to flip through tons of pages looking for apps, or always reorganizing the pages to put frequently used apps to the forefront. But this theme with it's working vista style widgets for calender, notes, email, and weather, combined with my use of categories to separate my apps into either utilities, web based/social apps, and games has completely uncluttered my screen and streamlined my usage. I put up a screenshot for your viewing pleasure…LOL!! Later!
    http://lh6.ggpht.com/_vENS7dpHxj4/SotIclaYATI/AAA

    • http://intensedebate.com/people/patrickj patrickj

      Great screenshot – thanks for sharing! Not for me, but does look very slick I have to admit. Will look for the other Glas… one soon.

    • http://chrisjohnston.org Chris

      That theme actually looks cool due to the widgets..

  • http://www.ichilton.co.uk Ian Chilton

    Hi,

    Thanks for the updates – very interesting!

    Do you not have Backgrounder on?

    Do you find Winterboard slows things down?

    How do you find battery live compared to been un-jailbroken?

    When you jailbroke (I assume you used redsn0w on 3.0.1?), did you just jailbreak and get on with it or did you restore?

    Thanks,

    Ian

    • http://intensedebate.com/people/patrickj patrickj

      I have run Backgrounder, but am not currently using it. I find app switching via mQuickDo plenty fast enough without it, and I don't often need radio apps or IM apps, for example, running coninuously. I'm only using Winterboard in the very tame, limited way mentioned above, so no so far.
      Battery life = it feels roughly the same, but I really haven't tried to measure it much.
      On the last jailbreak question, I did a restore as my first step, and captured the two files that are supposed to be needed to preserve jailbreak after 3.1 is released.

      • http://www.ichilton.co.uk Ian Chilton

        Hi,

        Thanks for the replies!

        After you restored did you restore from backup or set it up as a new device?

        (and on the latter, do you know any way of backing up SMS messages? – I think everything else is either in iTunes or sync'd from online but i've got loads of messages I want to keep).

        Thanks,

        Ian

        • http://intensedebate.com/people/patrickj patrickj

          I always setup as a new phone when doing these – as restoring from backup has been known to cause multiple issues for as many firmware generations back as I can remember.

          On the SMS backup topic, I am aware that there are quite a few options out there for doing this, but honestly don't know which work or work well, as I hardly ever use SMS and have never had a reason to try any of them out – sorry.

  • http://intensedebate.com/people/bornslacker bornslacker

    I recommend you check out macciti.com for themes. I think there's are the best by far. The forums usually have tutorials that show you how to set it up. Very clean themes.

    I'm using this theme currently: http://www.macciti.com/forum/iphone-releases/596-

    That's an easy one to setup (has a few things I would change) but it looks nice enough to make up for the shortcomings, plus I hear the creator is working on adding some of the features I wanted (like springjumps).

    Worth a look.

    • http://intensedebate.com/people/patrickj patrickj

      Thanks – I'll give that site a look around. Checked out the one you're using – very striking, but way too radical for my taste at the moment I'm afraid.

  • http://chrisjohnston.org Chris

    The only theme that I have found that I actually like for more than about 5 minutes is called illumine.. Other than that, the ones that I have found are cool for a couple of minutes, and then loose their cool, because I have to go searching for apps due to the icons changing and stuff like that.. Hope this helps!

    • http://intensedebate.com/people/patrickj patrickj

      Thanks – that one was mentioned by darklinkhx above as well, but I just don't find it that attractive. :)

  • http://blog.masslive.com/comicbookzeitgeist/ Caleb

    That's surprising that your haven't found any suitable themes. I've gone through a few and by far, my favorite has been the gloaming version of AnnMe (1.1). It's nice because besides being absolutely beautiful, it's custom icons don't look strange next to store purchased app icons, which has caused me to drop certain themes in the past. I also find White Icon Labels to be an essential.

    • http://intensedebate.com/people/patrickj patrickj

      Thanks – that one actually looks pretty nice to me, simple. Not diving for it straight away, but it's interesting.

  • Jeremy

    I would strongly suggest the glass orb color theme. You need to add the 5 icon dock from Cydia first though. Having phone, MMS, Mail, iPod, and Safari all on my dock is essential and the style of the icons along with the dock really makes it easier to appreciate any background that you happen to have.

    I also find Lock Calendar & Notifier to be useful, efficient apps while SwapTunes and SwapCameraRoll are great for syncing music & pics from another computer w/o erasing my own. I would also recommend Emoji for enabling the cool Japanese characters and the Un-UnLockable "theme" to hide your unlock slider (it just looks cleaner that way)

    • http://intensedebate.com/people/patrickj patrickj

      I've noticed, admired, and posted on the Glass Orb themes before. I think I'm a bit of a stick in the mud, but I don't mind the Unlock slider. :)

  • Brian

    Kinda missed the boat in commenting on this post, but I'm glad you decided to take the plunge and install Winterboard. Now I can suggest LockInfo along with the Gruppled Lockinfo Theme. I just found this gem and absolutely love it. This is how my lockscreen currently looks:

    http://img81.imageshack.us/img81/9149/flowchatupl

    Since it's all JavaScript and CSS, it's very easy to tweak exactly how you want it to look. Having upcoming calendar events right there easy to see with a quick glance has helped me a great deal. Yes, there are the apps Intelliscreen and Lock Calendar that provide similar functionality, but Intelliscreen is an extremely buggy memory hog and Lock Calendar is just not near as powerful.

    It's not super simple to initially setup, but once you get it up it rocks. The guide I used can be found here:

    http://www.hackthatphone.com/3x/themes_with_winte

    • http://intensedebate.com/people/patrickj patrickj

      That does look pretty cool. I'm not sure if I want all of that on my Lock screen, but I imagine quite a lot of folks will do. Thanks for sharing.

  • Bob

    That's cool. Can you explain what you did to achieve that look. I can't seem to replicate it. What theme (name) do you use and what other "widgets" did you use to get that layout.____Thanks.

    • http://intensedebate.com/people/Shobizz3000 Shobizz3000

      Thanks! The theme is called Vista Live. You must also have liveclock, iblank and weathericon. Once you enable the theme then you have to make blank icons to add space to make all the vista style widgets stay on the right side of the screen. Hope that helps!!