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.
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.
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TAGS: iPhone 3GS jailbroken
