Is There Still Any Point in Jailbreaking an iPhone?
From my point of view, it is no longer necessary, but opinions differ
Apple states that its App Store contains just over two million apps. Is that enough or not enough? It may need to be more for some iPhone users, especially for system customization, which is why they resort to jailbreaking even today. But does it make sense?
Apple has been working hard to increase the security of its iOS, which has also resulted in jailbreak creators taking longer and longer to create jailbreaks for their respective operating systems.
However, after three months of iOS 16 being here, the Palera1n team has released a jailbreak tool compatible with iOS 15 but also with iOS 16.
The average user does not need a Jailbreak
After jailbreaking, unofficial apps (not released in the App Store) can be installed on the iPhones that have access to the file system. Installing unofficial apps is probably the most common reason to jailbreak, but many people also do it to modify system files, where they can delete, rename, etc.
Jailbreaking is a complicated process, but for the dedicated user, it can mean getting a little more out of their iPhone than Apple allows. At a time, jailbreaking was almost necessary to customize your iPhone or even run apps in the background.
However, with the evolution of iOS and the addition of many new features previously only available to the jailbreaking community, this step is becoming less and less popular and ultimately necessary.
So any regular user can do without it. One example might be the lock screen personalization that Apple brought us in iOS 16.
Only for a limited range of devices
The current jailbreak is based on the checkm8 exploit discovered back in 2019. It is considered unfixable because it was found in the boot ROMs of Apple chips ranging from A5 to A11 Bionic. Apple can change other parts of the system to prevent hackers from exploiting this exploit.
Still, there’s nothing the company can do to permanently fix it on older devices, which is why it works from iOS 15 to iOS 16.2 for iPhone 8, 8 Plus, and X, and iPads from the 5th to the 7th generation, along with 1st and 2nd generation iPad Pros. So the list of supported devices isn’t very long.
But when we look at what’s in store for the software in the years to come, it may be unnecessary even to consider a complicated jailbreak installation. After all, the EU is fighting against Apple’s monopoly, and we’ll most likely soon see alternative app stores, which is what the jailbreaking community has been calling for the loudest.
With the growing popularity of the Material You design in Android 12 and 13, it’s also to be expected that, having already brought the ability to personalise the lock screen with iOS 16, Apple will add custom customisation of native app icons in the future.
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