Hi I'm considering jailbreaking my iPhone 3GS I want to know a few things:
1. What are the benefits of jailbreaking?
2. What am I able to do that I couldn't do with an unjailbroken device?
3. What is Cydia and what does that offer?
4. What jailbreaks are available?
5. Can I reverse the process easily without ending up with a bricked phone?
6. How legal is it?
1) possibilities are limitless. Themeing, tweaking, remove ads from apps, customization of the UI.
2) Technically, offers more controlled security. A couple of weeks ago, I was at a party where my phone was stolen from my hotel room. Luckily I had iCaughtUPro installed and was able to track down the thief, show the police the evidence I had and retrieve my phone. $2.49 tweak saved me nearly 900 bucks. Mind you, this was with the phone not having a sin card. I received a picture, location, and time stamp of the event whenever someone tries to shut down my phone. You cannot do this in stock and I know without my jailbreak is never see my phone again. Well worth it.
3) Cydia is the web store for all things jail breaking. It offers a bunch of tweaks like BiteSMS, Callbar, IntelliscreenX, Twitkafly, Auxo, Remote Messages 2, and the list goes on. I have all of these tweaks (paid for, don't support piracy, support our DEVs) and they each make the iOS experience much more fluid than stock.
4) YouTube top Cydia Tweaks and you will see a bunch of videos that show tweaks, what they do, how go use them, where you can find them and for how much. My favourite 5 are BiteSMS, IntelliscreenX, Auxo, iCaughtU Pro, and Applocker.
5) If you want to remove jailbreak completely, simply plug in the phone to iTunes and restore. It's that simple. If you want to return to the state right after jail broken, but clean from tweaks, go into Cydia and remove tweak "mobile substrate." This is probably the most important thing on your phone and controls everything. Removing this doesn't remove jailbreak, just lets you start over from scratch if you have issues. Also, if you end up in a bricked state, then the phone off, hold the volume up button and turn on. Hold this until it powers up in safe-mode. This mode allowed you to use the phone like stock and remove any recently installed tweaks that may be causing the phone to crash.
6) Jailbreaking is legal, locking the carrier of the phone is illegal I believe in the states. Over here in Canada it is not illegal to modify your phone.
If anything else you want to know, message me