Jailbreak

From Evernote:

Jailbreak

What you should do if you want to Jailbreak your iPhone ?

Step 0 – Preparation

There are many jailbreak tools / step-by-step guide over the internet. And “Blackra1n” is claimed to be the most simplest one. The latest version may be used for both jailbreak and unlock your device.

Besides take up these, you probably need a decent FTP client on the desktop that support file transfer over SSH. For Windows user, WinSCP is a very good choice.

Don’t forget to backup everything on your device before running Blackra1n. From my experience, you don’t need to restore to the factory settings before jailbreak, which preserve most of the existing stuffs, including contacts, photos and videos .. etc.

Step 1 – Jailbreak

Since Blackra1n is so simple and there are many places you can found the instruction. So, try google it. Or take a look for this blog posts. Note that there are reported case that Icy doesn’t not work well with Blackra1n.

Step 2 – Post Jailbreak Tasks

The first thing you need to do after jailbreak may be to verify if anything missing. Or else, goto install Cydia directly. With Cydia, you are able to enjoy the unleashed power of your iPhone.

Here are some must-have applications to download :

Openssh
Mobileterminal
Appcake
Installous
SBSettings
Safari Download Plugin (or download Safari Download Manager via Appcake / Installous).
iFile

And before dive deep into the JB world, you should take care of the security control properly. At least reset those default shell a/c, including root and mobile. Details instruction can be found here.

Step 3 – Fix a few things …

Note that Blackra1n does not come with afc2  .. mmm, which means you can’t use most file browser client, e.g. DiskAid, iPhoneBrowser … etc.  Follow the instruction here to fix it.

You need to get familiar yourself with the file system structure.  At least remember a few file paths, e.g.

Installous
/var/mobile/Library/Downloads

AppCake
/var/mobile/Media/AppCake/Upload

iTunes U

I think it’s the most amazing stuff happened after MIT
OpenCourseWare. You are now able to access the presentations made in those top universities from your iPhone. Of course you may already done that before via YouTube. But Apple is putting the things in a more organized way (or more rigid) with iTunes Store.

Here is the one I just watched on my way to campus.

image

photo1

PDF Viewer on iPhone

Try to find out an iPhone app (free) that able to view large PDF (say >50MB) smooth and fast …

And it seems that only Aji can handle the size, but not speed for File lite (which crash when exceed a certain limit). Nothing good compare to Foxit on WM6.

Detail testing log :

DiskAid / FTPAid
> PDF viewing performance sucks
> For DiskAid, it access via USD. Need to install the server component on your PC first
> For JB phone, DiskAid may even help navigate over the device ..

Documents
> PDF viewing performance sucks
> WebDAV not supported

Discover
> Nice UI on PC side but problem during Upload
> Known issue with large PDF file

File lite
> Via WebDAV
> cap at 200MB

Dropbox
> Need to register the Dropbox a/c first
> Need to install the server component on your PC first
> Uploading performance sucks causes it requires to access an extra web server connection ..

Mobile Disk
> Require MobileMe account

Aji Reader
> Dedicated for PDF files only
> Need to install the server component on your PC first
> Seems that it’s the only free app that works with PDF files > 50MB