Do you own an iPhone? It’s a really handy device, just ask all of the recently acquired Verizon users who now own iPhones. The main reason it’s so handy, as I’m sure you know, is because of all the apps you can download to it. In case you were wondering, we’ve written a lot of articles around useful iPhone apps over the last few years. For more usefulness, you can also read The Underground Guide To The iPhone.

While these apps can be really useful, not all of the applications in the App Store are free, which leads people to find other ways of getting them installed on their phones. One of the perks of jailbreaking an iPhone is receiving the ability to install hacked iPhone apps, which can be free versions of paid apps or third party apps not even available in the App Store.

In this article, I’m going to show you some of the pros and cons of using hacked iPhone apps.

Jailbreaking an iPhone

As I stated above, you need to jailbreak your iPhone to even use hacked applications. This is actually a surprisingly simple thing to accomplish, especially if you refer to Jackson’s A Newbie’s Guide to Jailbreaking. You can even jailbreak your iPhone in one slide using a service like JailbreakMe.

Once you do that, then you’ll be able to make use of hacked iPhone apps. But not so fast, lets take a look at the pros and cons first.

The Pros of Using Hacked iPhone Apps

There’s really only one pro to using hacked iPhone apps, and I’m sure it’s something we’re all aware of – they’re free. I’m not going to waste much time explaining why that’s a pro. With a jailbroken iPhone, you will have access to third party applications and you can install hacked apps (that work) to your phone without ever having to go purchase them from the App Store.

I use the term “hacked” pretty loosely throughout this article. What I mean when I say hacked is that users have downloaded paid iPhone apps from the App Store and then altered them so that they can be installed on jailbroken phones without having to be purchased through iTunes. If you’ve owned an iPhone for a while and have become accustomed to purchasing apps through the App Store, you can understand how much money using hacked apps could potentially save you.

Third party apps are just applications that other people have designed to work on the iPhone even if they aren’t available in the App Store. There’s a lot of them out there, and you can probably find some pretty useful ones if you look hard enough.

The Cons of Using Hacked iPhone Apps

There are multiple cons to using hacked iPhone applications, as well as jailbreaking your phone in general. The first major thing to be aware of is that it will void the warranty on your phone, meaning that if you happen to break the device or damage it in some way, Apple will not fix it for you if you give it to them and they can tell it has been jailbroken. There is a way around this, however, and that is to erase your phone and set it back to its stock settings before taking it in.

Another thing to be aware of is that installing hacked apps or using ones that don’t come from Apple’s App Store means that you could potentially be opening up your phone to vulnerabilities and viruses. I’ll admit that it’s a rare situation you might find yourself in, but it does happen.

One more thing to take notice of is the fact that you will not be able to update hacked applications, at least at first. Rather than being able to connect to the App Store and download updates as soon as they’re available, you would theoretically have to wait until an updated hacked version of the application gets released.

Conclusion

While I can’t condone the use of hacked iPhone apps, you can see why some individuals might be inclined to alter their phones to utilize them. It’s important to be aware of the implications of using these applications, and I hope that you are that much wiser from having read this article.

How do you feel about hacked iPhone apps?

Image Credit: iQoncept