Can using my iPhone as a development device ruin my iphone for normal use?

Question

I'm a programmer with about 5 years of experience and I'm thinking about going into iPhone development. I checked out some books from the library for info. I found something that disturbed me tucked in a little corner of a book:

"A development unit needs to be devoted exclusively to development. Using a device as a development unit means that it is subject to onboard data changes and might no longer work reliably as a field unit."

The book is "The iPhone Developer's Cookbook" by Addison-Wesley/Pearson Education. I didn't find anything else like that in any other book, so I was wondering if this was true. I'd rather not have to buy another iTouch/iPhone just for development if it's avoidable.

Thanks!

Answer 1

I try to minimize on-phone testing to keep the number of writes to the flash memory to a minimum, using the Simulator when possible, but I have not run into any technical problems using my phone for development.

Answer 2

I've heard that before too and never understood the implications. I think it would very much depend on the type of work you performing on the phone. I've been developing regular stand-alone applications and continue to use my phone "in the field" without any ill effect to the phone's performance.

Answer 3

I've been using my iphone as a development device for the past 6 months with no affect on its normal usage. I have not installed any beta sdk's though. I have an ipod touch for that purpose. But if you're sticking with the released version of the sdk everything should be fine.

Answer 4

I agree with ennuikiller's response.

One thing to add is that iPhone development may require you to test your app on the device against different OS versions. XCode does give you the ability to do this, however it requires you to restore the device. Obviously if you want to keep data on it other than for development purposes, this could be a problem.

Answer 5

Along with the use of released versions of SDKs (per ennuikiller's response), as long as your iPhone is not jailbroken (jailbreaked?), there are limitations in place that should prevent it from being "destroyed."

Answer 6

I've installed every beta OS on my primary phone since the SDK was announced and have had no problems that prevented my using the phone, just performance issues during the 3.0 betas. YMMV, obviously.

Answer 7

I installed Beta 3.0 on my ipod touch, and it broke. Never could get it to work again. Took it into Apple, they said it was a memory problem, so not due to 3.0, just bad timing.