If something does go horribly wrong, sorry. Lol, but seriously, don't forget to Back Up your phone. I've had to restore my phone several times in the past, this jailbreak seems pretty stable, but it's still risky. Just so you know, Apple allegedly will not work on jailbroken phones. If something has messed up in your phone, that isn't jailbreak related, and you need to take it to the store, then you need to restore your phone before taking because they will refuse service to you and your devil phone. Also, don't go crazy with utilities and patches, because your phone is super awesome, but still contains flaws. So, just exercise caution and you'll be fine. Hope you decide to come to the dark side.
Now then, I'm going to give you a list of things to do, taking them one at a time. One very important thing you need to do, is make sure and back up your phone. It is very possible that the jailbreak will screw up your phone in some small way, or brick it (render your phone valueless, other than using it as a paperweight). Granted, these flaws are rare, and I've jailbroken my phone about 30 times. The reason the number is so high, is because I get carried away with adding so much extra jailbroken crap to my phone, it overwrites too many essential files, and sooner or later my phone would stop booting. So, it's important to have your phone backed up before proceeding.
The List
- Back up your phone
- Go to blackra1n.com on your computer
- Choose either windows or mac at the bottom
- Save the file to your desktop
- Make sure only one iPod/iPhone is connected to your computer before opening blackra1n
- Click "make it ra1n"
- After you see Geohot, the author of blackra1n, on your phone (don't worry, it only does that the one time while your phone is being jailbroken) you can close the blackra1n app on your computer.
- Now your phone is jailbroken
Basically, this was the easiest jailbreak ever. As soon as your phone restarts, scroll to the last open spot on your springboard (iPhone desktop) and find blackra1n and open it up. You can choose what to install, but I highly recommend Cydia. It works very well, and can be trusted. I've used it in every version of iPhone jailbreaks, 1.1.1-3.1.2. It will organize data on the first launch, and will ask you to update the Cydia app after the first run. Go ahead and do so, just to keep it happy. Now, depending on what you want to do, there are several Repositories or Repos which are basically just new sources to download apps from. You see, Cydia runs on a user developed system, where anyone can make an app, upload to their own server, or have it hosted, and then make a repo to catalog them in Cydia for anyone to download. Cydia comes stocked with essential repos, unless you want to watch megavideo on your phone, you probably won't need any new repos. Or if you want that YouTube download manager I have, you'll have to add a repo.
Enough about repos, let's get into what apps you'll need. First of all, let me tell you about queueing on Cydia. While you're looking through apps, and find one to install, you click the blue install button and then a confirmation pops up. After you click "Install", you've reached the point of no return. Once the confirmation pops up, you can confirm and commence the download, or you can hit the "cancel/queue" button and save it in the queue for later download, or clear all. So, if you hit install on an app you don't really want, BUT you already have a queue, then you either have to add this sucky app to your queue or start all over again with the queue. I use queue when I first jailbreak mine, because I have a long list of things I want. And sometimes, certain apps require restarts, or resprings (restart of the operating system without shutting down, basically like logging off then back on) and those are time consuming. So I recommend using the queue for the first few apps you get.
What to get
I have some absolute favorite/necessary apps that I'd like to share with you. One of the first ones I get is called Winterboard. Winterboard is what gives you themes for the iPhone. And believe me, it's popular. You'll find tons and tons of themes in Cydia. When applying a theme, just click on it and check it, then hit the home button and it will apply immediately. Great app, something to note though, is every change you make in Winterboard makes you respring, so, don't flip out if your phone takes a minute to wake up after you exit Winterboard. The theme I use with the wooden shelves is called "Wooden REALIZE". Beautiful theme, with a ton of icons. One more thing to make your phone look pretty is the Five Icon Dock. It does, just exactly what the name implies.
Another great/necessary app, is SBSettings. SBSettings is a shortcut to the general settings of your iPhone, with more addon toggles available in Cydia. Once you install, I believe you have to restart your phone, but when it comes back on, you'll be able to swipe your status bar, on any screen (go into settings > SBSettings to make swiping on lockscreen available) and SBSettings will show up. Or down, in this case. If you click on the "More" button, it will take you to the SBSettings menu. In this menu, you can go to "Extras" where you'll see all sorts of things to enable. Definitely enable the Numeric Battery. That one is very useful, and is available to 3GS users without jailbreak, but we got screwed. While you're still in the SBSettings menu, go to themes, and the one I use is "Tennuis Matte", at least I believe that's how it's spelled. Very pleasant looking, although, the toggles on the icons aren't actually slidey, you just click them on or off. You can download more themes for SBSettings in Cydia
One last absolutely necessary app, is called dTunes. It does a number of things, first of all, and most importantly, it enables downloads in Safari. Yes, you can download MP3s, AACs, MP4s, Whatever, with Safari now. It gives you a media player that will continue playing even after you go back to the home screen, but when it's running in the background it's not as stable as iPod is. To copy these MP3s to your computer, is a breeze also. This requires a package from Cydia called "afc2add", this package is only part of the solution. Afc2add just enables USB data transfers between your iPhone and your PC. Now, you need the PC program to get you ready for those transfers. The program is called Disk Aid. It's here at their website. This is just a two week trial, maybe worth buying, but eh. Once that's installed, you can open it up it'll let you know at the bottom if it's connected to your phone. As soon as it does, you'll see in the left pane of the window a folder named "Start Here". Ignore this, go to the bottom of the screen in the far left corner and click on the text there and select root folder. This will allow you to see/modify/remove any file within your iPhone. The location for all downloads from Safari is /var/mobile/Library/Downloads/. This is where all of your MP3s will be downloaded. You can just drag and drop files from out of the window into any folder of your PC.
Now, for the YouTube download manager, you'll need to add a repo to Cydia. Open Cydia, let it download it's releases, and then go to Manage, and click Sources, then hit edit and go to add. You're going to need to add the Fishbone repo, they specialize in Georgian utilities. The country, not the state. The address to add into your sources is http://fishbone.ge. Cydia will check it out, then reload it's data again, making you wait. But as soon as it's done, Return to Cydia, and go into Sections, then find Fishbone. At the bottom of the Fishbone category, you'll see YourTube. Install that, and as soon as it's finished, you'll see the download button in the Native YouTube app after you click on a video for more info. In the YouTube app, you can also go to More > Edit and drag your Downloads to the front page of the YouTube app. And that's it.
