# What good is a jailbroken iphone?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-good-is-a-jailbroken-iphone/542476>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [June 8, 2010, 11:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-good-is-a-jailbroken-iphone/542476 "2010-06-08T23:58:42Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Stoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/stoid/32/272_2.png) [@Stoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stoid)\
**Post date:** [June 8, 2010, 11:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-good-is-a-jailbroken-iphone/542476/1 "2010-06-08T23:58:42Z")

</div>

or any cel phone, for that matter. I’m not asking how it’s done technically, but I’m curious theoretically… there are bits inside the phones that communicate with the networks… if you break the “at&T” part of the iphone, it can, by clever people, be made to function with any other carrier?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Gfactor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/9de053/32.png) [@Gfactor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gfactor)\
**Post date:** [June 9, 2010, 12:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-good-is-a-jailbroken-iphone/542476/2 "2010-06-09T00:03:20Z")

</div>

Moved from The BBQ Pit to General Questions.

**Gfactor**  
Pit Moderator

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Anachronism](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e56c9b/32.png) [@Anachronism](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anachronism)\
**Post date:** [June 9, 2010, 12:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-good-is-a-jailbroken-iphone/542476/3 "2010-06-09T00:26:07Z")

</div>

If you jailbreak an iPhone it means you can run apps not approved by Apple. If you want to use it on another carrier you would have to **unlock** it. Even if you unlock a phone you can only use it on the network it is designed for, in the US there are two different types of networks - CDMA and GSM. AT&T and t-mobile use GSM and the rest of the carriers use CDMA, if you unlock your iPhone you could only use it on T-mobile in the US.

As far as I know most phones are locked to a carrier but can be unlocked to be used on a network they are compatible with.