I gave in to Jailbreaking my iPhone!

Yes I know some people think it is horrible to do this to your beautiful iPhone and risk screwing it up. I actually thought that to then maybe I still do to a point but here is my take or rather how I came to the decision.

I've only had my iPhone for a few weeks and being one of the latecomers to the iPod\iPhone craze, I got a really good deal and didn't have to pay insane amounts of money for the pleasure. So technically it's not as big of a loss to me if something goes wrong as it would be for someone who paid like 700 $$800 for their phone.
In the beginning I kept wondering what the point of Jail breaking was. They have so many free applications available and it already looks pretty nice. So I was already decided I would most likely not attempt any kind of Jail breaking and I didn't think I needed to. Then I saw a friend of mine on Facebook post his different themes he put on his iPhone and I started to get a little envious but still not enough to do it to my own phone. However, it was always in the back of my mind nagging at me.

Searching the Web for new iPhone information, I ran across an article called "Why Jailbreak iPhone " and it had some really good points.
First of all it said that it was risk-free (and I'm not an idiot, I know nothing is risk-free) which was really nice to hear even if it isn't always true.
Next he went on to list other things you could do with your Jailbroken phone and I was pretty much sold but I still needed more info. After all, I still loved my iPhone the way it was and really didn't want to have to go without it because it turned into a paperweight.

I looked up information on how to actually do it and it surprised me how easy it was. Plus I like that you can restore your phone back to before the jailbreak if you don't like it. Keep in mind, that I am on Windows XP and the method I used was for somebody who NEVER intends to unlock their phone. I don't know if that's what made it easier, but it was definitely simple. I watched a video of someone else doing it just to make sure I knew what to expect (I chose this YouTube video at random so I don't know if there are any much better for not) and then I was ready! By the way, it was a really good thing that I watched that video first because at the end of the software installation, it looks like your phone freezes forever and I probably would have turned it off if I didn't know any better but in the video he mentions that it takes about 12 minutes toward the end after your phone reboots so keep that in mind!

I backed up my phone just in case, but I did not restore it to factory settings before jailbreak. Surprisingly, no one ever mentions whether you need to start the Jail breaking with a freshly restored phone or if you can just run it over your phone the way it is. I took a chance on that one! I left everything intact the way it was and downloaded the software to jailbreak (It was called QuickPwn-2.2 and I found it through a search on Google) and ran it. That was it! It took a total of 12 to 15 minutes and when my phone restarted everything was exactly the same except now there was a new icon for Cydia and one for Installer. I must admit that I was kind of scared and crossing my fingers as I waited for it to finish. Now that it's done, I'm extremely happy and don't regret it at all!

For anyone that's wondering, after I jailbroke my phone, I was still able to use my iTunes apps and I was still able to sync with iTunes, I had all my contacts, text messages, photos, app data. Honestly, everything was exactly the same and iTunes worked exactly the same.
Since I had a backup anyway though, I did attempt to restore my phone to make sure I could go back and it worked fine. Everything went back to normal Apple standards and I Jailbroke my phone again.

My experience went well but it could've gone badly for any number of reasons so if you're going to do it, make sure you think hard and read everything you can before you attempt it so there are no surprises!

Now here is my pretty new theme:






P.S. I don't condone stealing apps from the app store. There are a numerous amount of things available through Cydia and other sources if you just take the time to look. Plus most of the apps are either free or pretty reasonably priced.
I still buy and download from iTunes as usual!