When Lifehacker posted that you could jailbreak with the click of a link, I couldn’t resist. I stared at the article all day, I looked for others’ opinions, and I quaked in fear of the dire warning. Ultimately, I gave into my deep love of free stuff and clicked the link.

Just a Link? Is it that Easy?

Yes, omg, it is that easy. I clicked a link waited a little bit and then had to restart my iphone (maybe I can’t really remember because it was so easy) — presto an Installer icon appeared. The whole process made me nervous, but it was well put together, and each step told you what was going on (installing, cleaning registry, etc) and usually had a progress bar. I performed the task over WiFi and read comments of others having trouble on Edge. I imagine it’s because Edge is so slow, and they weren’t patient enough (or maybe they lost their cell signal).

Easy Enough, But What’s After Installing?

Once I had Installer.app up (I did have to update the installer itself), I grew frustrated because I didn’t see any of the apps that I read about. I soon found out that you have to install the Community Sources before they will appear. I also ran into the problem that the apps would run and immediately crash. It turns out that I needed the BDS backend (I read that it needed to be installed before the Community Sources, so I unistalled it and reinstalled in that order.)

So, Are You in iPhone Bliss?

Installer is pretty impressive. It lists apps, lets you install them with one click, and you can update them or unistall them just as easily. The apps are conveniently organized in categories and there’s a decent amount of them. Unfortunately, they aren’t that useful. I installed a whole bunch of them, but ultimately there were only a handful worth me keeping installed: flashlight, blackjack, and to-do list. I really have no need to run apache on my cell phone, I’m fine with Apple’s icon themes, don’t care to load custom ringtones, and have no desire to change the AT&T icon. I did like the idea of the dictionary, but the app was horrible to use.

Way Too Beta

My basic impression was that all the apps were pretty beta. Who could blame them they were after all homegrown, but I was disappointed that Blackjack didn’t keep a high score for me without even mentioning the fact that it crashed every other time I used it. The To-Do app was a noble effort but pretty close to horrible when compared with anything that Apple makes. And Flashlight … well, you just don’t use it that much.

It Gets Worse

I could live with buggy betas, but all of this stuff actually makes the rest of the iPhone run much worse. Other Apple apps, would crash, I noticed some buggy behavior in camera (once when I flipped it sideways the picture was cut in half), sometimes the phone would crash after pushing the On button (it would come on then go black, and I’d have to press it again) and the whole thing seemed to hang and run sluggishly.

The Light at the End of the Tunnel

I read that restoring the phone would take it back to normal, but I had no idea what to expect with restoring. The phone was running so buggy that I was willing to loose all my contacts, calendar, etc to go back to normal. It turns out that restoring rocks. It took a few moments, and it warned me that all data would be lost. However, once it was restored, iTunes informed me that it had a backup of my phone and asked if I wanted to restore to the backup. I did, and I didn’t loose any data. My pictures were there, my preferences, and all my contacts.

The Scoop on Jailbreak

I strongly commend the iPhone hacking community. The things they are doing are really awesome, and they did an incredible, amazing feat with the hyperlink install. The whole process was painless and being able to restore back to normal rocked. But … let’s be honest, there aren’t that many useful applications, the games aren’t much better than what you’ll find you can play on the web through Safari, and there are a TON of bugs. Jailbreaking isn’t ready for prime-time, and if you’re thinking about it you probably should stay away. After all, the people who should be doing this stuff, already are. I just can’t wait for the official Apple SDK, and Apple get me blackjack and a To-Do list please.

Samsung released a whopper of a cameraphone. It’s 5 megapixels, but the best part is the 3x optical zoom. This phone looks more like a camera than a phone. Suddenly, I want one; I want one really bad.

Nokia’s got seven new Series 40 handsets. These models include such fancy features as FM radio tuners, video cameras, stereo speakers, Bluetooth, and miniSD slots. Wow, that’s a lot of features too bad they’re distributed over several different models.

Tsaya is selling a patent leather thigh holster for your cell-phone. I’m not sure who the target audience is, but I’m picturing crowded clubs and ladies in short skirts. At $79, it’s not cheap either. via Boing Boing

Jimmy Buffet’s cell-phone was stolen by a busboy at a restaurant. The theif then tried to ransom it back to Buffet until the Secret Service came and recovered the phone.

Vodafone’s V501SH has a more mature outlook on that it’s younger sibling. It allows for conservative texture panels. Alos, there’s a built in motion sensor for gaming.

The Vodafone V501T likes to get dressed up with “Costume Covers”. Basically, they’re wierd looking protective covers. The “Costume Covers” come in all kinds of shapes and sizes including a devil-looking, red hound dog.

Gizmodo is reporting that Motorola’s PEBL V6 now comes with a rubber exterior. I drop cell-phones like they’re atom bombs; rubber would save me a lot of heart-ache.

For now, you can consider the Huawei U326 to be the lightest 3G cell-phone at 92 grams. For more details on how much light that is, read this thoughtful comparison of cell-phone weights.

Gizmodo’s got a write-up on Samsung’s latest MP3, SGH-S380. With 50MB of internal flash memory and a mega-pixel camera, it looks interesting.

DoCoMo is producing an environment friendly cell-phone. The cell-phone is made of a bio-plastic comprised of Kenaf fibers. via Gizmodo

Cell-phones these days do it all: calendars, games, calculator, alarms, and more. You can add blood tests to that list as well. Researchers in Sweden have developed a way to give blood tests via cell phone.

You want a phone that does nothing, but yet manages to do nearly everything? Have I confused you yet? I thought so.

Mobile phone maker, XCute has developed their much talked about DV1, which coincidently is lacking a lot of the “standard” features many mobile phone powerusers come to expect, however what it lacks in “standards” it makes up for with “extras”.

Our good friends over at Mobileburn have written up a superb review of this XCute little phone. Check it out!

Ye all should bow down before me and my lack of will power when it comes to getting new gadgets.

It is true, many great and wonderful mobile phones are coming out. Many of those great and wonderful phones have already made their way onto the grey market, and you’re most favorite geek in the whole world has secured one of these new phones, well almost secured, it is being shipped from HK even as we speak.

So in the coming week(s) — depending on how long it takes FedEx to get the phone to me — you will be able to experience this site’s FIRST ever mobile phone review! Here’s a hint, this phone has a 2mp camera!

That is right, you will get to witness comparison pics between this mobile phone’s camera features and a regular digital camera, you’ll also get to witness this phone’s ability to take full motion video!

I hope you all will stay tuned.