What is iPhone jailbreaking?

I'm thinking about getting an iPhone 5s, so I've been kind of researching Apple vocabulary (since I'm not very familiar with Apple products other than the iPod nanos--3rd and 7th generation--that I've had. So I've basically only dealt with music in iTunes all these years).

Is jailbreaking useful? What are the pros and cons to it? Will it cause problems? If so, what kinds?

If you can answer some, if not all the questions I just asked, that'll be great.

Also, if you're a current iPhone 5s user, how's it working for you?

IPhone when you buy from Apple usually can be used in your country only. If you want to use it in another country, you have to jailbreak it. This is illegal activity.

Jailbreaking removes restrictions that Apple puts in place that prevent you from installing apps besides ones from iTunes/App store, and which prevent you from making low-level changes (for instance, changing the theme).

So after you jailbreak you can customize your phone more than you could, and you can install apps that Apple didn't approve for their app store for whatever reason, and a lot of those apps do cool things (like better multitasking, etc.) compared to what you can get from official apps.

  • Will jailbreaking your iphone 4 harm it in any way? I have an iphone 4 and i'm really thinking about jailbreaking it but iI'm scared that if i jailbreak it, it will mess it up.
  • Will jailbreaking my iPhone do anything bad? I want to jailbreak my phone, and i have a softwear thing for it or whatever, but i just don't know if it will mess up my phone at all?
  • Un-jailbreaking a iPhone 3gs? I jail broke my iPhone 3gs, and it is a tethered jailbreak, I'm trying to sort of… Upgrade it to a un tethered jailbreak, but when I try, I get: Error: Device is already jailbroken. So how do I go about sort of taking the jailbreak off, and re jailbreaking it.
  • My iphone 4 won't work after jailbreaking? I just recently jailbroke my iphone 4. Cydia won't load & my internet won't work? Someone said it was a bad jailbreak & that i needa do it over which mean rejail ream it… It that right?