As a tech junky I often find myself involved in trying to exploit anything a device can do, or trying to make a device do what it wasn’t intended to do. This being said when I saw the article on Engadget about molding a PS3 with a Nokia 900, or a Palm Pre, I was interested. And by interested, I meant down to make my PS3 do stuff it wasn’t intended to do. Lucky for me my boss happened to see the same article, and ask if I’d be interested in doing it if he lent me the Pre. The stars aligned and my adventure began.
After attempting to SSH into the Pre for a good 40 minutes, I finally decided that the Pre was not the option I wanted to use. So I instead looked into alternatives, and as if God wanted my PS3 Jail Broken, the Nexus One is another device supported for the mod. Guess it’s time to unlock my phone and void that warranty. Seeing as I’ve never rooted a phone or installed a custom rom on anything I took this as an excuse to have a new experience, and make my PS3 all sorts of shady. My experience really brought me nothing but joy, the Android, and cell phone dev community in general is awesome. Support everywhere. And their forums were the most thorough and helpful I’ve seen for this sort of adventure, especially for someone like me who hasn’t every dove into this before.
After about 1 hour I had my Nexus One running the HTC Desire Rom, and it was ok. I loved the look and feel of the desire the rom was just simply unstable. I then flipped my phone over the Cyanogen Mod 6.0, which is awesome! I highly recommend this rom for Nexus Users looking for something different. It was similar enough to my stock rom that I felt at home, however it had enough cookies put into it that I felt like I had really accomplished an amazing thing, and that my phone was more usable than before (which is saying something, because I still feel the Nexus one is one of the most handy devices I’ve ever owned).
Once this was complete the time to Jail Break my PS3 was at hand, after a few YouTube videos all stating how completely simple it was, and only showing me that you turn off the system, connect the phone, press power then eject, and it works, and ooh how simple it is, did my frustration begin to build. The Jail Break for Playstation 3 has not yet hit a point where it is an easily re-creatable phase for the average Joe. Though I will concede Jail-Breaking and modding different devices isn’t really for the average Joe, there are some things (like modding the original xbox, or jailbreaking the IPhone) that can be done by someone with little to no tech experience.
Any-who, once I dumped the files, flashed the PSFreedom loader, and then activated the commands through my terminal app, the time to mod was here, switch on, power, eject and shabam! Its Jail Broken, it was really that simple!! Now to install backup manager via thumb drive. Insert, click run… BAM!! Done!! Hooray! Life is beautiful! Or so I thought.
Once the Jail Break was complete, I was sad to see that my Netflix ceased to function properly. I also could not get back up manager to boot any of my backups that I used as a test case. I first attempted a backup of FFXIII which would load to the Square Enix screen, and then simply freeze. Two attempts of that, led me to try my ModNation which is a game I love barring the heinous load times. Image ready, boot, aaaand black screen… Stilll no success at booting an image. And to continue my frustration when I reset my system… the jailbreak is gone…. meaning every time I reboot the Playstation I have to re flash the system. Which isn’t hard as long as you have a rooted Nexus or Palm Pre around ready to run the software anytime you’d like to play a game. But for those of us with stuff to do, and phones to use for actual phone use, this is not yet a viable option.
I am however, extremely excited at the prospect this Jail Break brings, I’m hopeful that in 6 months or so the Jail Break community will bring forward a process that is much more stable, permanent, and functional, and we can continue our lives using our devices for the purposes that they were not intended.