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This is the first of a series of posts I am planing to write on why I love my jailbroken iPhone so much more than a vanilla , out-of-the-box device.

1. Music Controls

Music Controls is probably my favorite app in the Cydia app store.  If you don’t know what Cydia is, don’t worry I’ll have a post on it later, but basically it’s the app store for jailbroken phones.

My first real disappointment with my phone was the inability to run anything but the core apps in the background.  So while I could listen to anything from my ipod while surfing the web or sending a text message, if I wanted to listen to Pandora, I had to stay in the Pandora app and was unable to do anything else.  If I got a text, or an email, I had to quit it.  So as soon as the 3GS was jailbroken I hopped on the train and my first stop was Backgrounder.  This app allows you to run any app in the background, while it worked for what it was meant to do, it also caused problems for me in other functions of my phone.  Mostly not being able to turn it on occasionally requiring me to reboot the device.  I’m pretty sure that this problem has been fixed by now, and Backgrounder is a great app, but the only thing I really needed to run in the background were music apps.  While searching for a fix to the freezing problems I came across Music Controls and have been so happy with it I never went back.

Music Controls is also great because you can use the free trial before you decided if you want to pay for it.  The trial is just a limited version of the app and once you pay you can register it to unlock the full set of features.  For most people the free version might be all you want or need.

After using it for a while my new favorite feature is the controls in the status bar of the display.  When I have my phone in the makeshift dock I constructed in my car to use it for gps navigation and playing music, I have control over my music while staying in my navigation app.

As you can see, it shows the artist and title of the current track, and has button for play/pause, and previous and next song.

2. Scrobble (Scrobbl for 3.0+)

See to the right over there? —>

The last 10 songs I listened to, that comes from last.fm a free music service that tracks the music you play and is able to do many things.  It has an online radio portion to it that many people swear by, even over Pandora.  However, my favorite part is that by tracking your songs it is able to give you recommendations based on what other people listening to the same music also like.

Since apps can’t be run in the background on a non jailbroken device, the only way you are able to ‘scrobble’ a track is by using the official Last.fm app which is limited to playing the online radio stations.  Scrobbl runs in the background all of the time, and scrobbles my tracks even when I’m on the road and playing music in my car.

Check back for part 3.