Many new readers of my blog rack their brains out trying to figure what exactly jailbreak and unlock means. Instead of replying individually to them I felt I could save some effort by writing a post about it. So here you go:
1)What do you mean by Jailbreaking an iPhone?
After purchasing your iPhone the only place that you can officially install applications from is the Apple app store. However, the Apple app store doesn’t always have all the solutions/applications due to various limitations imposed by Apple on developers. For eg: You can’t change themes on your iPhone, you can’t run voip applications over 3G etc. There are developers who know that users need such features on their iPhone. So they develop applications like WINTERBOARD(To change themes), VOIPOVER3G etc and make them available through CYDIA which is like another Appstore(Unofficial of course).
Now immediately after purchasing your iPhone you cannot access CYDIA. There is like a virtual JAIL/SHIELD preventing you from using other store(Cydia). So you need to BREAK THAT JAIL. This is nothing but Jailbreaking.
What do you mean by Unlocking an iPhone?
As we all know our iPhones are usable by default on only certain carriers i.e AT&T(US), O2(UK), Vivo(Brazil), Airtel/Vodafone(India) etc. This means that our iPhones are locked to a particular carrier. Now what IF the user wanted to use other carriers. What if he found the data plans/calling plans better on say T-mobile instead of AT&T, Tesco mobile instead of O2? That’s when you feel like getting rid of the carrier LOCK on your iPhone. This is nothing but UNLOCKING.
Currently, the easiest jailbreak tool is: Blackra1n and the easiest unlock tool is Blacksn0w
For a tutorial on how to jailbreak and unlock your iPhone using Blackra1n/Blacksn0w for Windows and Mac: Click here
