Original jail broken iPhone and 2.1 Software update
My phone was jail-broken so I could use it on T-Mobile where I have a contract running I cannot move from. One needs to be careful in talking about Jail Breaking because it seemed to be 2 things originally:
1) A part that enabled you to use another mobile provider for comms
2) A part that enabled you to add new applications especially created for a jail-broken iPhone. This was cool because the original iPhone was closed and there was no Apple market for extra apps.
Now the 1 part seems to exist very separately from the 2 part – to the point where you can use iTunes/Apples normal iPhone update facility and still the phone talks to the ‘alien’ sim just fine. The only thing you loose is not being able to download jail broken apps, but there are not so many of them anyway, and to be honest all I ever really wanted was just to use the iPhone with the network I need to.
Anyway I upgraded to 2.1 using the normal Apple facilities and all went well:
1) T-Mobile still working
2) they fixed the Mapping Locate me now feature
3) back to more snappy machine – ie can move between menus more quickly than with 2.01 and 2.02
Unknown – still not sure about occasional browser crashing.
I’d stress again this is an original iPhone, not a 3G one. While my iPhone can talk to third party comms providers I don’t believe there is a software solution to do the same on the iPhone 3G yet. So while I might not have fast comms at least I have the benefit of not changing contracts and all that stuff.
While I’m glad that Apple have dug themselves out of a hole they should never have made, I’m still not sure about iPhone usability overall and the lack of 3G on mine is a drawback when I have a Nokia E61 that does. I’ll probably run the iPhone for a week and then review. Slightly longer term, my mobile contract comes up for renewal at the end of the 2008 and teasing out a new mobile will be fun.