What is a jailbroken iphone?

What's so special about it?

Apple places restrictions on their phones to prevent people from making them better. Effectively forcing you to buy the latest and greatest (most expensive) thing. Jailbreaking supposedly gets rid of these restrictions, allowing for things like 4G coverage, upgraded Wi-Fi, graphics upgrades, and JavaScript installation. But usually it just puts one hell of a virus on your phone. Wouldn't recommend it.

Jailbreaking is the process of getting around apple's security mechanisms, almost always used to install things apple doesn't approve of. For example, you could delete the newsstand folder. Or download pirated apps(not saying that you should).

If your not tech savvy, i would recommend not jailbreaking as if you don't know what your doing you can really slow your device down, and a fast unjailbroken device is usually better than a slow jailbroken device. However I could never live without my devices being jailbroken.

When an iPhone or iPod is "Jailbroken," it means that the device no longer has restrictions on the alteration of the nature of the device. For example, you can change your jailbroken iPhone so that the unlock screen is like an android unlock screen, or you can have folders within folders.

Usually, when you jailbreak an iPhone, a program will be installed on it (usually Cydia). This is where you can download stuff that will change your iPhone. One of the downsides of jailbreaking is that the device usually runs slower than regularly. Also, if it is a "tethered" jailbreak, you will have to plug it into the computer and jailbreak it again if you have to restart your iphone.