Gadgetory

you know what smartphones are great out of the box but if you're a Tweaker or a tinkerer you might find the customizability of your iPhone or Android phone a little underwhelming after all being able to change your background in room tone and whether or not Siri has a British accent only goes so far when it comes to tapping into your phone's hardware potential so because of that many people have turned to processes that remove some limitations that's jailbreaking for the eye sheep and routing for the fan droids and although jailbreaking and routing are technically quite different they accomplish similar goals namely they give you privileged access to the devices operating system allowing you to do things you wouldn't normally be able to kind of like when neo was able to see through the matrix except you won't be able to stop bullets seriously please don't try let's start with Apple iOS by default blocks any apps that haven't been approved by Apple and placed into the App Store and it also forces you to use Apple's default user interface on top of that the iPhone hides its filesystem from users so not only is it tough to see all your files conveniently that are actually on your device it also prevents you from using the free space as a handy-dandy USB flash drive if that's what you're into if you have a jailbroken iPhone though these limitations are removed and you can intensely customize the look and feel of your user interface install and use any program written for iOS no Apple approval needed and directly access the file system allowing you to use your phone as a flash drive or external hard drive and a large community has popped up around the practice of jailbreaking and you can find plenty of jailbreak exclusive tweaks and apps for your iPhone including everything from Windows Phone lookalike themes to classic game emulators but what about Android they already have gaming emulators as I mentioned before the Android equivalent to jailbreaking is rooting which also allows for a large number of visual and usability tweaks as well as advanced features like app automation the ability to turn your phone into a free Wi-Fi hotspot sometimes even if your carrier doesn't allow it and even overclocking but frankly many users do it on the Android for far less exotic reasons to get rid of the annoying hard-to-remove bloatware that comes pre-installed on many Android devices and even change operating systems entirely so what if you're ready to take the plunge then and give it a shot well jailbreaking or rooting your phone often isn't horribly difficult a quick google search will yield a number of downloadable tools that you can use to enable elevated access rights on your device but keep in mind that since these tools are technically software exploits that take advantage of security flaws in the operating systems code jailbreaking and rooting might not be available if you have a newer or a more obscure device or a very recent version of iOS or Android as some phone manufacturers work actively to prevent these practices when they release software patches well hon oh wait a second Linus did you just say their exploits all this sounds kind of shady aren't there risks involved well yes like many things you can do to tweak your gadgets jailbreaking and rooting do come with a few caveats modifying your phone in this way can often void your warranty and if you do it improperly it could even brick your device a lot of people also wonder whether jailbreaking or rooting is even legal I mean fine jailbreaking even has the word jail right in it and although I'm not a lawyer and the true answer depends on where you live and the time that you live in I can tell you that the short answer for those of you in Canada and the u.s. living in the now is yes it's legal as long as you're not doing it to infringe on a copyright but remember guys that laws change frequently so you might want to do some digging around before you decide to trick out your phone with that super cool Linus theme that I'm sure one of you has spent days working on right no all right then that's fine anyway I'll use this awkward silence to tell you guys about fresh books fresh books is a cloud-based accounting tool that's designed for freelance workers or small businesses it makes invoicing getting paid and tracking expenses easier with a phone base things you can just leg bippity Boop here were the hours I work bippity boop send it invoice and boom they can pay you by credit card online so the whole process is much simpler because as you all know if you're a small this owner half of the battle is getting the work done the other half is actually getting it billed and paid so you can do all kinds of little self-management stuff that is easy now as opposed to involving tedious paperwork and sitting down at a computer so you can spend your time doing the work you need to do as opposed to just you know filling out forms and invoices and sending up bills and follow-ups and all that kind of nonsense so head over to freshbooks dot-com slash tech wiki and don't forget to enter tech wiki and how did you hear about us section so that's pretty much it guys thanks for watching this video like it if you liked it dislike it if thought is suck leave a comment below if you have suggestions for future videos just like this one and as always don't forget to subscribe and follow if you enjoy our content and you want to see more of it