Alright, that’s a pretty lame title, I know. In any case, I feel I blog too little about the iPhone, seeing as it is, in my humble opinion, the smartest Smartphone out there. Sure, the initial version you get isn’t really all that, although it’s clever. It has a lot of cool functions, but lacks a lot of functions that BlackBerry, HTC and other major phone companies have integrated since 2003. One major feature is multi-tasking, and while I don’t miss it per se, it’d actually be quite convenient if my email wasn’t the only application doing background checks. For example, to find out if there’s any new tweets, I have to start Twitteriffic/Twinkle/Tweetie myself, and check. Jailbreaking opens up for multi-tasking, but since the API currently disables cloud-syncing, the official apps from the app store still won’t check for updates.
Apple claimed last year that they’d enable push services for applications, but the API/SDK has not been updated to support this, and there’s no news from Apple regarding this either, so we just have to wait and see, I suppose.
However, on to the subject at hand. The Jailbreaking. Since a lot of people claim that the iPhone has its lacks(and I partially agreed in my review of it), and that those lacks are basically deal breakers, it’s nice to know that there are people out there on a mission to fix it.
After a lot of thinking and muttering about whether to jailbreak or not, I looked up what I would essentially get while doing so, and the list was just utterly jaw-dropping. Amongst the stuff available is MMS, video recording, multi-tasking, swappable iTunes library, and much, much, much more. The only thing “missing” now is a stylus, to make it appear like an actual Smartphone. Cause, as I see it, it kind of lacks some of the stuff that makes it one, but man am I happy a stylus was never meant to be an accessory to it. I hate those blasted things. Hell, I don’t even use one on the Nintendo DS, but that’s a story for another time. Back to the issue at hand, and here’s some general info on how to jailbreak, as well as lists of apps available, and what they’ll do for you.
The first thing you’ll need is an application to break the phone for you, and from my knowledge, PwnageTool for Mac, and QuickPWN for windows seem to do the tricks necessary. I can’t speak for PwnageTool, but QuickPWN was surprisingly easy to understand and use. It was almost as if Apple themselves made the damn thing, that’s how easy it was. You get clear instructions on what you need to do, and if you fail, you don’t have to worry about bricking that precious i of yours, you just start again. At least that’s what I did, after it went blank. This was entirely my fault though, as I didn’t read the instructions properly. You’d think that after I said how easy it was, I shouldn’t fail, but, I’m just human, so give me a break. Once the installation is complete, your iPhone will have reverted back to the way it was when you got it, also known as “Factory reset”, but with a couple of additions. First, there’s Cydia. Then there’s Installer. Now, Cydia is as excellent as you’ve been reading up on, and truly is the one app you can’t live without. It features repositories(libraries) with apps, themes, fixes, etc. all ready for download and install. It’s really easy to use, updated very frequently, and even provides info regarding 2.2.1 upgrades. (and I’m sure it’ll change to 2.3 once that’s out) Installer isn’t that stacked with stuff, but it has nice things in it as well. It’s basically the same thing, but it has other features as well, and it’s own uses. The pwnage also comes with “Kate(previously known as caterpillar)”, a program available through the settings that can alter a lot on your phone. However, Kate actually has a price, and it’s also quite steep, but I assume it’s worth it, in the end. There’s a lot you can customize, such as having a 5-icon dock, backgrounds on your springboard(Springboard=Home menu), themes with different icons, changed system fonts and whatnots. Most of these things can be changed using “Winterboard” as well, though, so not having Kate isn’t really a huge issue. Although it tends to keep settings when you restart the device. This is especially handy when using the 5iDock. In my case, all my icons were set to a perfect state. The first screen had only apps I used frequently, the second one less frequently, and so on. However, I rebooted, 5iDock was reset, and all my icons were scattered across 5 pages. Oh joy.
By the way, you” know that screen you normally have a background on, and swipe your finger to get to the home-screen through, right? Excellent. The “lock-screen” is actually quite more capable than Apple wants you to think. One of the greatest apps that deal with the lock-screen, is Intelliscreen. It not only displays your email, it can show rss feeds, weather, SMS-inboxes, sports events, and even comes with a quick dial, so you can call your friends right from the lock-screen.
Now, on to some more relevant stuff.
If you want to send MMS’es, SwirlyMMS is your best shot. I don’t even think there’s alternatives out there, but Swirly is a truly awesome(and functional) app. It does exactly what you’d expect of it, and it works just like it should. It’s even able to find auto-settings for mms that work with the iPhone. Great stuff there. It costs money, but the first 2 weeks are free.
The second thing I want to notify about, is video-recording. In cydia, look up “CyCorder”. It records video, and saves it. It’s free, and has literally no limitations. Now, there’s another app I tend to use a bit more though, and that’s “qik”. If you’ve ever been to qik.com, you’ll know the deal here. If you never saw it before, qik is an app that records video through the iPhone’s camera, and live-streams it to your own qik.com page. It doesn’t save locally, but you can do live coverage from wherever you’re from, and it will pop up on qik as a viewable video once you press stop. Before you click stop, it’s streaming. Excellent stuff.
Thing number 3; SwapTunes. What it does? It’s simple. You open it up, and without having to configure anything, it’s readied your iPod library to sync with more than your first iTunes connection. Wow. One thing I really hated, was that I had to have stuff on my WORK computer(since that’s where I fired up the iPhone the first time) to transfer it to the phone. Now, it doesn’t matter, as long as it’s iTunes. Yahoo! (see what I did there? oh yeah)
4th and last on this list(for now, anyways), is VLC for iPhone. It’s not released by videolan, as far as I know, but it’s generally the same thing. You will, however, need to set up SSH for the phone(also available through Cydia, as with all the other stuff mentioned here, and IIRC, it’s called “OpenSSH”) to be able to access the directories rather than the libraries, but damn, it’s working out perfect.
Well, that’s it for now. I have a job too, and I think my boss might be annoyed that I blog about the iPhone rather than sort that logo-issue he gave me yesterday. Oh well, one can’t work ALL the time, can one?
