Comments on: iPhone 3GS Jailbreak – After 3 Weeks: Stable, Fast & Not Feeling It with Themes

By: Shobizz3000

Shobizz3000 — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 21:36:15 +0000

In reply to Bob. Thanks! The theme is called Vista Live. You must also have liveclock, iblank and weathericon. Once you enable the theme then you have to make blank icons to add space to make all the vista style widgets stay on the right side of the screen. Hope that helps!!

By: patrickj

patrickj — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 19:11:01 +0000

In reply to Brian. That does look pretty cool. I'm not sure if I want all of that on my Lock screen, but I imagine quite a lot of folks will do. Thanks for sharing.

By: Bob

Bob — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 18:54:56 +0000

That's cool. Can you explain what you did to achieve that look. I can't seem to replicate it. What theme (name) do you use and what other "widgets" did you use to get that layout.____Thanks.

By: Brian

Brian — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 18:45:47 +0000

Kinda missed the boat in commenting on this post, but I'm glad you decided to take the plunge and install Winterboard. Now I can suggest LockInfo along with the Gruppled Lockinfo Theme. I just found this gem and absolutely love it. This is how my lockscreen currently looks:

http://img81.imageshack.us/img81/9149/flowchatupl…

Since it's all JavaScript and CSS, it's very easy to tweak exactly how you want it to look. Having upcoming calendar events right there easy to see with a quick glance has helped me a great deal. Yes, there are the apps Intelliscreen and Lock Calendar that provide similar functionality, but Intelliscreen is an extremely buggy memory hog and Lock Calendar is just not near as powerful.

It's not super simple to initially setup, but once you get it up it rocks. The guide I used can be found here:

http://www.hackthatphone.com/3x/themes_with_winte…

By: patrickj

patrickj — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 23:15:37 +0000

In reply to Jeremy. I've noticed, admired, and posted on the Glass Orb themes before. I think I'm a bit of a stick in the mud, but I don't mind the Unlock slider. :)

By: patrickj

patrickj — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 23:12:41 +0000

In reply to Caleb . Thanks - that one actually looks pretty nice to me, simple. Not diving for it straight away, but it's interesting.

By: Jeremy

Jeremy — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 21:59:27 +0000

I would strongly suggest the glass orb color theme. You need to add the 5 icon dock from Cydia first though. Having phone, MMS, Mail, iPod, and Safari all on my dock is essential and the style of the icons along with the dock really makes it easier to appreciate any background that you happen to have.

I also find Lock Calendar & Notifier to be useful, efficient apps while SwapTunes and SwapCameraRoll are great for syncing music & pics from another computer w/o erasing my own. I would also recommend Emoji for enabling the cool Japanese characters and the Un-UnLockable "theme" to hide your unlock slider (it just looks cleaner that way)

By: Caleb

Caleb — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 18:25:52 +0000

That's surprising that your haven't found any suitable themes. I've gone through a few and by far, my favorite has been the gloaming version of AnnMe (1.1). It's nice because besides being absolutely beautiful, it's custom icons don't look strange next to store purchased app icons, which has caused me to drop certain themes in the past. I also find White Icon Labels to be an essential.

By: patrickj

patrickj — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 15:56:01 +0000

In reply to Chris.

Thanks – that one was mentioned by darklinkhx above as well, but I just don't find it that attractive. 🙂

By: Chris

Chris — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 15:42:12 +0000

In reply to Shobizz3000. That theme actually looks cool due to the widgets..

By: Chris

Chris — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 15:39:37 +0000

The only theme that I have found that I actually like for more than about 5 minutes is called illumine.. Other than that, the ones that I have found are cool for a couple of minutes, and then loose their cool, because I have to go searching for apps due to the icons changing and stuff like that.. Hope this helps!

By: patrickj

patrickj — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 14:58:46 +0000

In reply to Ian Chilton.

I always setup as a new phone when doing these – as restoring from backup has been known to cause multiple issues for as many firmware generations back as I can remember.

On the SMS backup topic, I am aware that there are quite a few options out there for doing this, but honestly don't know which work or work well, as I hardly ever use SMS and have never had a reason to try any of them out – sorry.

By: Ian Chilton

Ian Chilton — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 14:35:49 +0000

In reply to patrickj.

Hi,

Thanks for the replies!

After you restored did you restore from backup or set it up as a new device?

(and on the latter, do you know any way of backing up SMS messages? – I think everything else is either in iTunes or sync'd from online but i've got loads of messages I want to keep).

Thanks,

Ian

By: patrickj

patrickj — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 14:29:49 +0000

In reply to Ian Chilton.

I have run Backgrounder, but am not currently using it. I find app switching via mQuickDo plenty fast enough without it, and I don't often need radio apps or IM apps, for example, running coninuously. I'm only using Winterboard in the very tame, limited way mentioned above, so no so far.
Battery life = it feels roughly the same, but I really haven't tried to measure it much.
On the last jailbreak question, I did a restore as my first step, and captured the two files that are supposed to be needed to preserve jailbreak after 3.1 is released.

By: patrickj

patrickj — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 14:17:49 +0000

In reply to bornslacker.

Thanks – I'll give that site a look around. Checked out the one you're using – very striking, but way too radical for my taste at the moment I'm afraid.

By: patrickj

patrickj — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 14:16:29 +0000

In reply to darklinkhx. Thanks. Have taken a look at that one, but just don't find it very attractive. Different strokes I guess. :)

By: bornslacker

bornslacker — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 13:16:21 +0000

I recommend you check out macciti.com for themes. I think there's are the best by far. The forums usually have tutorials that show you how to set it up. Very clean themes.

I'm using this theme currently: http://www.macciti.com/forum/iphone-releases/596-…

That's an easy one to setup (has a few things I would change) but it looks nice enough to make up for the shortcomings, plus I hear the creator is working on adding some of the features I wanted (like springjumps).

Worth a look.

By: Ian Chilton

Ian Chilton — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 07:32:36 +0000

Hi,

Thanks for the updates – very interesting!

Do you not have Backgrounder on?

Do you find Winterboard slows things down?

How do you find battery live compared to been un-jailbroken?

When you jailbroke (I assume you used redsn0w on 3.0.1?), did you just jailbreak and get on with it or did you restore?

Thanks,

Ian

By: Shobizz3000

Shobizz3000 — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 06:59:42 +0000

I've been having great success too. This 3GS is miles ahead of the 3G performance wise. I was not planning on upgrading, but I was really getting frustrated with the slowdowns of JB'ing and running Winterboard themes. I COMPLETELY understand your frustration with themes. I wish I had a bit more creativity and programming experience so that I could make my own. The only one I loved, and I mean I really liked it, was Glasklart. Don't know if you've tried it, but I recommend it 100%. What it does is it makes the icons somewhat transparent. Just a slight ghosting effect, which is awesome. It really allows your background to shine through! Also the dev is constantly upgrading the app, almost weekly, with new icons for new apps. Worth checking out.
I'm running a Vista theme now actually. I know u hate them, but I like the look and the functionality that it adds. I have only 1 page on my iphone. I couldn't stand having to flip through tons of pages looking for apps, or always reorganizing the pages to put frequently used apps to the forefront. But this theme with it's working vista style widgets for calender, notes, email, and weather, combined with my use of categories to separate my apps into either utilities, web based/social apps, and games has completely uncluttered my screen and streamlined my usage. I put up a screenshot for your viewing pleasure…LOL!! Later!
http://lh6.ggpht.com/_vENS7dpHxj4/SotIclaYATI/AAA…

By: darklinkhx

darklinkhx — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 04:19:35 +0000

you should try the theme illumine because if they don't have the icon for the app it shrinks to look good with the theme just try it out its on the Complete section on cydia
Plus that theme doesn't require any blanks or crap like that lol

By: patrickj

patrickj — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 03:40:37 +0000

In reply to kelly.

Wow – cool – thanks to all of you – now have three themes to take a look at. Thanks for all the suggestions.

By: patrickj

patrickj — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 03:39:59 +0000

In reply to Pete.

Nice one. I always work with no net on the spelling thing – lookout. 🙂

By: patrickj

patrickj — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 03:39:24 +0000

In reply to Kerry. Cool, another one to look for. Thanks. SBSettings has always been a big favorite for me too.

By: patrickj

patrickj — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 03:38:43 +0000

In reply to Shobizz3000.

Great screenshot – thanks for sharing! Not for me, but does look very slick I have to admit. Will look for the other Glas… one soon.

By: kelly

kelly — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 02:02:58 +0000

i've been using Tenuis (macthemes) since it came out…great theme. Cydelete is a must have, as well as Categories.