My iPhone 3g, keep the Jailbreak, or upgrade to iOS 4

Admittedly, I think that the jailbroken iPhone is awesome for all the wrong reasons.

I am a huge fan of hacked hardware. I have neither the drive nor the intellect to hack hardware myself so I have to rely on others to hack, then I just use their crap.

I jailbroke the iPhone for a few reasons:

1. Backgrounder. At first I thought this would change how I used the iPhone. Over a short period of time I discovered that I used this very little, then I realized I NEVER used it. Then I deleted it. Background apps sound really great, particularly using Pandora Radio, but for me, I never really found a place for it. Leaving this device, like any, constantly streaming audio over wifi or 3g drains the battery like free pudding at fat camp.
2. Winterboard. Being an artsy-fartsy guy I wanted the iPhone to look pretty. Prettier than it already did. This worked, there’s some battery/performance penalty, but it’s negligible and for day-to-day use it’s unnoticeable. Having 5-icons in the bottom dock is seriously great, as simple as it sounds it’s probably my favourite jailbreak perk. I’m easily impressed.
3. QuickReplySMS. I never bought it, it’s $3. I guess two things influenced my lack of purchase on this one. First thing I don’t trust the iPhone Hack Community with my credit card. I could have taken a big pain-in-the-ass route and used prepaid but that’s just ridiculous. To me, these apps are hacks, not in a bad way, but they are being written by someone who is circumventing an established paradigm to make money. This strains my trust. No offense, I’m sure you’re all wonder and ethical people, but it ain’t happening. Secondly, I don’t know if I will keep the jailbreak, so this may be money in the toilet.
4. Emoji. Turns out, this is already free in the App Store, who knew.
5. Emulators. These turned out to be expensive, the free ones worked ok, but I was not impressed with the performance or the fact that my big, fat sausage-fingers covered half of the screen and these games were meant to use an unobstructed screen.
6. Sweet Nerd Crap. SSH, SFTP, etc. This is the only reason why I look at Android phones with any level of lust. The iPhone SUCKS for nerd-factor. The jailbreak opens this up and makes it awesome! Grab SBSettings so you can shut off the portal at will and you’re off to the races!
7. Tethering: Shhhh... I can tether.. and it works well.. and it’s free*. PDANet is the app, and it works like a champ. I have never used this for any real purpose aside from going “Holy smokes.. this tethering WORKS”. I don’t travel and if I’m that desperate for data, I’ll just use my phone. This is a nice safety net to have available, though. I got $20 that I will never use it.
8. Turn-By-Turn GPS. xGPS is nice, used it, got where I needed to, but it’s a FAR stretch from a decent GPS even a cheap one. I could live without this.
9. Other miscellaneous apps. Let’s be clear on something: Apps in Cydia (or other non Apple App Stores) are not free, and frankly the GOOD apps, are more expensive than the ones in the Apple App Store. There are cracked-app repositories where you can download pretty much any paid app for free, but I wasn’t willing to do that. I found the lot of free apps in Cydia to be disappointing at the best and the quality of the apps is FAR lower than anything you’ll find in the Apple App Store. If you are one of the ones that bitches about Apple’s “Tight Reigns” on apps, spend a week with a jailbroken iphone after a week with a non-jb, the difference in application quality is astonishing. While they may be a bit tyrannical in their approach, I’m of the opinion they’re doing it right. If you’ve ever run Linux for a few months and installed a lot of open-source software, you know what I’m talking about. Inconsistent UIs, poor stability, and sometimes apps just don’t work at all without expert-level hackery and changes to source code. As a programmer, I think this is unacceptable and irresponsible.
10. Screen Rotation lock. I don’t use this, but my wife thinks it’s the best thing ever, so that counts. I jailbroke hers too.

The only reason I am considering staying with the jailbreak is the geek-apps, and tethering.  With iOS 4 I get some upgraded controls (screen rotation lock, better iPod control) some nice organization tools, and some other little perks. The thing I want most: Stability. The jailbreak overall does come at a price. My iPhone freezes up more (rarely, but more), has to be restarted more, and there is a very noticeable lag in performance overall. If I’m playing a song in iTunes, and I post a Facebook status the song judders... yeah.. I’m the only guy in the world who can make an iPod skip.

We’ll see. I may keep it jailbroken until novemeber when I get a new iPhone... but by then there will probably be pwnage for iOS4 ?

Decisions, decisions.