Ever since Apple launched the iPhone in 2007, there have a number of reasons to jailbreak it.

Even though Apple has added features to iOS such as copy and paste, Custom Wallpaper, multitasking, Notification Center, FaceTime over cellular etc, that were only possible if you had jailbroken your iOS device, the jailbreak community has continued to release some amazing tweaks and apps that still make it quite compelling to jailbreak your iPhone, iPad and iPod touch.

If you are on the fence and wondering why you should jailbreak your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch when the evasi0n jailbreak is released then check out our tops reasons below (not in any particular order).

Quick Settings:

SBSettings and Notification Center based tweaks like NCSettings that give you quick access to Settings from anywhere in the iOS. It allows you to enable or disable commonly used settings without going through the hassle of exiting an app, if you’re in one, launching the Settings app, navigating to the setting and then enabling or disabling it.

Customizations:

You can customize your iOS device in every way possible. You can install themes to change the look and feel of your iPhone or you can use Winterboard alternative like DreamBoard that allows you to transform your iPhone into an Android phone or transform your iPad into a Mac. Customizations like changing the carrier logo are also a lot easier if you’ve jailbroken your iOS device.

For The Power User:

Activator transforms iOS into a mobile operating system for the power user. It allows you to invoke actions using shortcuts from anywhere in the iOS. You would be surprised by the number of shortcuts you can use such as double tap on the status bar, triple tap the Home button, double press the sleep button to trigger stock actions or launch an app or go to the Settings toggle. It offers almost limitless shortcuts to make it easier to use your iOS device.

Enhanced Lockscreen:

Jailbreak tweaks such as IntelliScreenX and LockInfo give access to information on your LockScreen so you don’t have to unlock your device every time you get an email or text message, want to check Twitter, Facebook updates or RSS feeds, or be on top of your calendar events. You can access them right from your device’s lock screen.

IntelliScreenX

Tethering:

Instead of paying a monthly fee to your carrier, jailbreak apps like PdaNet and MyWi, allow you to tether your laptop to your iPhone’s data connection for a one-time fee.

However, please remember that this can get you into trouble with your carrier so try this with caution.

FaceTime Over Cellular:

If you are an AT&T customer with an unlimited data plan, then apps like My3G will allow you to make FaceTime calls over a cellular network.

This can also get your into trouble with the carrier, especially if you use too much data, so please try this with caution.

Find My iPhone+:

While Find My iPhone is great in tracking your lost or stolen device, it is not fool proof. Jailbreak tweaks such as iCaughtU Pro and iGotYa that take a photograph of the person who enters the wrong passcode using the front camera and PowerGuard, which prevents someone from turning off your device, makes it a lot more fool proof. There have been several instances it has helped catch a thief who is oblivious of such hacks.

Messages on Steroids:

One of the most popular jailbreak tweaks is biteSMS. It includes number of features like Quick Reply, Quick Compose from Notification Center, scheduled messages, delivery reports, signatures etc. that are not available in the native app.

Set Default apps:

One of the major limitations of iOS is the lack of an option to set your favorite third-party app as the default app. Thankfully jailbreak tweaks like MapsOpener allow you to set Google Maps as the default app instead of Apple’s Maps app and BrowserChooser and BrowserChanger allow you to change the default brower. You can also use jailbreak tweaks like NowNow to replace Google Now with Siri.

Use Wi-Fi Only Apps Over 3G network:

My3G is a jailbreak tweak that will make “Wi-Fi only” apps “believe” that they are running over a Wi-Fi network even though your iOS device is connected to the 3G network thus allowing you to use such “Wi-Fi only” apps such as Bloomberg Anywhere, Cablevision, DirecTV for iPad etc over a 3G network.

xCon is a complimentary jailbreak tweak, which bypasses jailbreak detection in apps, so you can use apps that currently prevent jailbroken iOS device users.

Set any song as Ringtone:

While it is possible to create ringtone and alerts from the songs you’ve purchased from iTunes, jailbreak tweak like AnyRing makes it very easy by allowing you to set any song from your music library as a ringtone or alert tone.

Password Protect an app or folder:

Call me paranoid, but I like the ability to password protect some apps or folders so that someone cannot access them when they’re using my iOS device. Jailbreak tweaks like Icon Passcode and Folder Passcode allow you to do just that.

App Switcher Replacement:

There have been quite a few app switcher replacements, but nothing is as good as Auxo, which was released late last year. It is jailbreak apps like Auxo that makes me excited about the upcoming jailbreak. You have to use it to believe how good it is.

Finder/Explorer:

Miss Finder (Mac) app or Explorer (Windows) on your iPhone or iPad? No problem, iFile does the job. It’s a file manager and viewer, which allows you to navigate through iPhone file system and allows you to open any type of file.

The killer features is the ability to edit files directly on your iOS device, which can be quite useful when you want to hack your iOS device to enable or disable a feature.

Unauthorized apps:

Even though there are more than 800,000 apps in the App Store, a small percentage of the apps get rejected for various reasons. Some of them like tawkon that allows you to check the amount of radiation emitted by your iPhone or grooveshark’s iPhone app for its online music streaming service can be installed from Cydia – the store for such unauthorized apps.

Call Management Features:

While Apple has added a number of useful call management features to the Phone app in iOS 6, it still lacks the ability to block a caller. iBlackList – a popular jailbreak tweak allows you to block calls, including unknown and unrestricted callers and lots more. Thanks shunulu and Rafay for the suggestion.

Please note some of the jailbreak apps and tweaks mentioned here may not be applicable for iPad and iPod touch and may need to be supported on iOS 6 or later, but I’m quite confident they’ll be ready by the time the jailbreak is out.

Let me know if I have missed any other compelling reason to jailbreak an iOS device and I will update this list. At the end of the day, jailbreaking is about freedom, freedom to be able to do whatever you want with your iOS device, just the way you can with your Mac, PC and other things you’ve purchased.