Okay so I love my iPhone 4, I want to jailbreak it but I'm really scared of lag and battery life taking a hit. I hear most of this comes from using winterboard. This is a problem cause I want to use different icons on my iPhone. If I SSH the icons instead of using winterboard will this not decrease performance? I should also ask if this is even possible lol.
Both methods are valid. Using the ssh method, you would be substituting your image for a stock image. No performance hit unless your images are huge . This method is prone to errors, mis-deleted files, etc, etc. That's why Winterboard is the ideal and preferred method. You're not going to see any noticeable battery drain with Winterboard unless you go crazy and install a cpu/memory intensive theme.
Thanks for the reply. So you're saying using winterboard and a basic theme wont kill my performance or battery? I just want a theme with nice icons and I'll probably use another lockscreen something like typophone 4. I wont be using a crazy theme with changing backgrounds and what-not, so I should be fine right.
Winterboard is the way to go like sb said its simple. Sshing i use for more customization, but i ssh into winterboard and change the themes in there so i dont mess up my stock icons.