Anybody jailbroken/unlocked their smart phone?

[DaffyDilly]

I have my sisters old iPhone 3GS which if I'm successful in jailbreaking/unlocking, I'll be repairing so that it reads a sim again. I think it just needs a new back casing.

It cost me £40 to get my 3G unlocked and I'm starting to understand why - so many little things to download and do! I have jailbroken it but iTunes is just updating it for me and I suspect I'll lose the jailbreak and have to redo that.

Why am I doing it? My 3G doesn't have an up to date enough version of the iOS and I am sick of not being able to download apps like PayPal. Also, the home button doesn't like the cold (that cost £40 to get fixed once before so I'm not paying it again!) and I dropped it recently making the power button a little bit particular about when it will and won't work. Lastly, the 3GS is bigger (32gb to my 8gb) and faster, so if I can get it working to tide me over a year I'll be happy. This time next year I'll be starting to look at phone contracts or just buying an iPhone 5 (or 6!) outright.

[DoctorMowinckel]

I rooted my Kindle Fire and installed Jelly Bean 4.2.2 on it. Completely changes the device. It went from being 'well I guess I should sell this', to 'I can not be without this'.

It's not really difficult, just tedious. Find a good tutorial, follow directions, eventually it'll get done.

[Eviecorn]

Please note that in the US, if you purchased a phone after January 26th, it is illegal to unlock it.  It is still legal to jailbreak a phone, though, through at least 2015. 

Unlocking and jail breaking are different - unlocking means to render the phone to accept different service carriers.  Jailbreaking is more of a customization technique, but it will void your phone warranties.

That said, I've thought about jail breaking but have never done it.

[rybett]

What happens when you break a Fire?

[Kiwi]

My iPhone is legit and staying that way, but both of our iPod Touches are jailbroken - extra customization

[kaoskat]

I have no smart phone and don't really want one so no for me.

[melodys_angel]

I have a friend that says that the warrenties will not be void if its jailbroken because you arent physically breaking anything on the inside 9its just a program mod)...but its not one of my fortes so im going ot raise my hands and leave it at that

[cobalte]

Please note that in the US, if you purchased a phone after January 26th, it is illegal to unlock it.  It is still legal to jailbreak a phone, though, through at least 2015.

Really? Wow  so I guess if someone has a locked phone their only solution is to buy a new one with the carrier they want. That just sounds like a royal pain in the butt.

I don't have a smartphone or other device so I can't talk much about the jailbreaking, I just found that most curious

[MLPlyte]

When I had an Android-based phone, I did root it. I loved how custom everything could be, but it did glitch on me a bit. Now I have an iPhone 4s, which is jailbroken. I'm really happy with it. And yes, it voids your warranty, if they know about it. Just un-jailbreak if you really need to take it in. I'm not familiar with the capabilities of the older phones, though, so I'm not sure what a jailbreak would do for you.

[DaffyDilly]

Please note that in the US, if you purchased a phone after January 26th, it is illegal to unlock it.  It is still legal to jailbreak a phone, though, through at least 2015. 

Whereas in the UK, it's illegal to sell a phone that cannot be unlocked! They don't have to make it easy or free though.

Itunes asked to update the 3GS and restore it so I let it and now it's running iOS 6 summat. Or it was, it's in pieces on the desk because I'm changing the back cover. I did get it to recognise a sim, but I'll still need to unlock it to take my sim as I'm on a different network to the phone. Whether I'll still go through with jail breaking it completely or not now that the operating system is updated...

Neither of these phones have any warranty whatsoever (the contracts ended a couple of years ago) so I'm happy to tinker.