Should You Jailbreak Your iPhone 4? Yes!

With the release of the iPhone 4 and OS4, Apple added some great features and neglected some important basic features. iPhone owners can now add a background wallpaper to their lock screen and home page; however, you still cannot change the icons. The iPhone comes with basic SMS alert sounds and does not allow provide a way to purchase new ones. The iPhone 4 maintains the dock at the bottom of the home screen; however, you are still limited to four applications. One of the worst restrictions on the iPhone is the App Store. Apple only allows the download of applications from their store.

The process of jailbreaking your iPhone 4 is simply altering your phone to accept third party applications. The jailbreak equivalent of the App Store is Cydia. Cydia is a third party application store where iPhone owners can purchase apps to customize their phone in ways Apple will not allow.

Themes

Do you want to change your background and icon scheme? Cydia provides free and paid applications that allow you to change the appearance of your icons, dock, background, lock screen, dial keypad and even your SMS bubble colors.

Productivity

Tired of having a lock screen that doesn't do anything? Cydia has an app (Lock Calendar) that places your calendar entries on your lock screen. There is also an app called SwirlyScreen that scrolls your alert messages for missed calls, SMS messages, calendar events, Facebook messages and the weather. Cydia also has an app that creates a scrolling iPhone dock to add more than four apps to your dock.

Tethering

AT&T finally offers tethering for your iPhone. Unfortunately, there is a monthly fee. Cydia has an app for sale called "MyWi" that turns your iPhone into a hotspot for a one-time fee.

Security

Being harassed by bill collectors or old boy/girlfriends? AT&T does not provide a call block or text block feature. You can get a Cydia app called iBlacklist that blocks unwanted calls and texts.