It’s been a little while since I’ve posted on more than just a brief news announcement. As the end of the year was quite hectic for me, I wasn’t able to dish out the typical quality app review I’d normally do. Well, now that we’re under way in 2010, I figure I’d take an opportunity to tell how just how cool my jailbroken iPhone 3GS is, and explain what JB apps I use and why.
You may remember I’d been holding off on getting a 3GS iPhone this last fall, telling myself I was content with a 16GB 3G. However, when I tried to jump over to the dark side (aka “jailbreak world”), the experience was less than stellar, since the iPhone 3G (and the first-gen too, for that matter) has a much slower processor and less system memory, which drastically limited the usefulness of many jailbreak apps.
With many of the other JAiB team members raving about so many cool jailbreak apps, and how much better the experience was on a 3GS, I took the plunge, and on Black Friday 2009 I got myself a brand spankin’ new 32GB white iPhone 3GS, which I promptly jailbroke using Blackra1n just as soon as I got it home! I’ve been jailbroken ever since, and now that I’ve experienced this whole new world, I couldn’t imagine having to give it all up for a stock iPhone again.
So, without any further ado, here are the 16 jailbreak apps I use (complete with lots of pictures!), and why I use them! All of these apps can be found in either Cydia or Rock, and most of them are in both. Some are free, and some I’ve purchased. Each one is worth every penny I’ve spent!
Backgrounder
This was the first jailbreak app I installed. I commute commute between 2 and 3 hours every single day, and have grown tired of local radio. Well, since I have an iPhone and a connection to my car stereo, not to worry, I have a practically unlimited about of music to listen to. Pandora has become my de facto music app with excellent quality sound over 3G and customized commercial-free stations tailored to the music I want.
However, I hated how Pandora couldn’t run in the background, and if I wanted to read an email or respond to a text or browse my Twitter feed while sitting in stop-and-go traffic, I’d have to quit Pandora to do so. With backgrounder installed, I can now launch Pandora, start up my music, background the app and continue to use my iPhone to its full functionality!
Cost: free
ProSwitcher
Now that I could background apps, I wanted a nicer way to access and control those backgrounded apps, and there’s no nicer way than ProSwitcher. ProSwitcher gives you a Palm Pre-style “swipe-and-slide” method of switching between currently-running apps and closing out apps. To call up ProSwitcher, I’ve found the double-click on the home button to be the easiest and most intuitive for me. Not only is it intuitive and responsive, it’s just plain fun! 😉
Cost: free
SBSettings
SBSettings is probably one of the most beloved jailbreak apps, and it’s no different for me! These are my go-to toggles to enable or disable core services, such as wifi, bluetooth, 3G, the gps, etc. to save battery life. Instead of digging through the Settings apps to turn these features on or off, a quick sideways swipe on the status bar drops down a pane of toggles that’s my iPhone’s command center!
Cost: free
Overboard
I have 11 pages of apps. Yes, 11 pages! Not every page is full, as I organize my apps my category such as photo apps, music apps, navigation apps, games, etc. But I do admit I have a fair number of apps and swiping back and forth between these 11 pages can easily grow tiresome.
Enter Overboard, with its beautiful Expose-like zoom in/out display of all of app pages. From any home screen, I just press the home button once, and the screen zooms out to show me miniature tiled views of each page. I just tap on the page I want and the screen zooms in to it. Not only is this much faster than 11 swipes on direction, but again, it’s just plain fun!
Cost: $1.99
AutoSilent
I carry my iPhone with me everywhere I go, and it’s on my nightstand every night. In the past, I would set up different “profiles” on my cell phone or pda for different situations, such as meetings, sleep time, driving, etc. and I could toggle between them depending on what I was doing.
AutoSilent provides this functionality for iPhone users, and takes is a step further by switching between the profiles automatically based on time rules you set up. So for instance, my iPhone goes into “work mode” at 8am, where most audible noises except the email and ringtone are silenced, and vibrate alerts are enabled.
At 5pm, it switches into “driving mode” where all sounds are enabled and volume set to louder along with vibrate on. At 10pm, it switches into “sleep mode” where everything is silenced including vibrate turned off, with the exception of the ring tone which is set to a low volume in case someone needs to call me in the middle of the night.
Of course, I can still manually invoke any of these profiles automatically, and can choose to allow the silent switch on the side to override or be ignored. Now, I don’t have to keep remembering to set the proper profile throughout the day, AutoSilent takes care of it for me!
Cost: $2.99
LockInfo
One of the features I’ve always missed from my days as a Windows Mobile user was an “at a glance” home screen that combined a view of my upcoming appointments and unread messages. LockInfo solves this by overlaying an informational screen over my iPhone’s normal lock screen.
This informational screen can be configured to display different details, such as unread SMS/MMS messages, missed calls and new voice-mails, emails from selected accounts, historical log of push notifications, and even the current outside temperature and a 6-day weather forecast. Each section can be collapsed and expanded on the fly, so I can quickly and easily view a large amount of information right from the lock screen.
Cost: $4.99
qTweeter
I’m a frequent Twitter user, carrying on conversations with other Twitterers about various topics throughout each day, as well as sharing my own thoughts and status updates. My go-to Twitter app is Tweetie 2, but there are often times I want to fire off a quick status update without launching a full-blow app.
qTweeter runs in the background at all times, using very little memory, so its always ready when needed, and is accessed by pulling it down from the status bar with a finger swipe. A text bubble slides down where you can type a message and update both Twitter and/or Facebook. One of my favorite features of qTweeter is a swipe, tap, and tap to send is all that’s needed to share out the name along with a link of whatever song I’m listening to in the iPod app. Very slick!
Cost: $4.99
ActionMenu with Plus Pack
The copy/paste menu in the iPhone is one of those features you’ll either use all the time and love, or never use it and don’t care. I’m in the first group — I copy and paste text and images between apps all the time. But wouldn’t it be nice if this menu could function more like a traditional “right-click” menu offering context-sensitive options for whatever is selected? ActionMenu, along with its additional Plus Pack, does just this, including the ability to lookup the definition of a word, translate, share to twitter, and more.
My most-used feature is the “Favorites List” where you can store frequently-typed phrases or words, and paste them in with just 2 taps. I save URLs and email addresses I find myself typing all the time for easy inserting into any app. The app also changes the pop-up menu to show icons rather than boring text, making it look more like native Apple functionality.
Cost: Free (ActionMenu); $2.99 (Plus Pack – adds additional actions)
Cyntact
Cyntact is a small “app-mod” in which is simply adds some new functionality to an existing iPhone app. In this case, it’s the Contacts app which gaines a new feature — the addition of the contact’s profile pic in the scrolling list of names, which in my iPhone’s case it’s their Facebook pic thanks to the newest Facebook app feature. This makes is much easier to flick through 100+ contacts looking for a particular person by their profile picture which I’m already familiar with and will recognize.
Cost: $0.99
tlert
tlert is a neat little jailbreak app that modifies the text message (SMS/MMS) popup style to be less intrusive and more functional. Rather than a focus-stealing popup message that must be dismissed, marking the message as read, before I can do anything else, tlert replaces this behavior with an iChat-like bubble that slids out from the left side, without stealing focus. I can choose to just ignore the chat bubble and after a few seconds it will slide back off the screen, the message remaining in an unread status.
If I want to respond right then and there, I just tap on the chat bubble that has appeared, and another one slides out from the right side of the screen, along with a keyboard that slides up from the bottom. This takes place over the top of whatever app I was currently in, and I can fire off a quick response and once sent, both bubbles slide off the screen and I’m back to whatever app I was working in. This is so slick I’m surprised it wasn’t created by Apple.
Cost: $4.99 (available only on Rock)
Winterboard
Winterboard lets me tweak various features of the iPhone’s springboard, including the status bar, the dock, as well as activate various themes. I’ve enabled the features to display my iPhone’s wallpaper behind the icons on the home screen, which allows me to enjoy my picture much more often than from just the lock screen. I’ve also enabled a transparent dock, which hides the grey background to the dock, and I’ve also added a Matte UI Graphite Theme, which replaces the glossy, shiny look of the iPhone’s UI with a soft matte look. It’s just a minor change, but immediately striking.
Cost: free
Infinidock
Infinidock is a new app that modifies my dock to let me put as many icons as I want in it, and simply swipe the icons side to side to reveal more, similar to swiping the apps’ pages side to side. I’ve also set it to display a five icon dock, which lets me get one more app onto my primary home screen, while still looking pretty damn nice! This is a more recent addition to my jailbroken iPhone so I’m still trying to get the hang of using it, but so far I do like it.
Cost: free
StatusNotifier
StatusNotifier solves a problem that has bugged me from day 1 when the iPhone launched: there’s no way to tell at a quick glance if I have any new messages without unlocking my iPhone and opening the mail app. Most other smartphones have some kind of notification symbol or light indicating unread messages. StatusNotifier adds this functionality to my iPhone, and places different icons in the status bar next to the battery indicating unread emails, text messages, instant messages, calendar invitations, etc. This way, I can easily tell if I have anything I need to attend to from the lock screen or from within any other app. It’s just a small thing, but it’s priceless to me!
Cost: free
WeatherIcon
WeatherIcon is a simple little “app-mod” that overlays the built-in Weather app’s static icon with an icon that actually shows the correct temperature, taken from whatever location is set in the Weather app – location 1 if there are multiple cities selected. It can also add the temperature to the status bar, so I can tell at a glance from within any app how warm (or lately, cold) it is outside.
Cost: free
ReflectiveDock
ReflectiveDock is just a small UI enhancement, and offers no additional functionality besides just looking cool! It adds a live reflection to the dock icons, and combined with the Winterboard transparent dock option, looks pretty sweet especially with the right wallpaper behind it, which you can see in the screen shot at the top of this post.
Cost: free
Snappy
Snappy is a camera app that has saved my butt on more than one occasion. Often, they’ll be something I want to snap a quick pic of, but by the time I get my iPhone unlocked, back to the home screen with the Camera app, and then wait for the Camera app to launch, the moment is over and I’ve missed the shot. Snappy launches in under a second just by tapping and holding on the status bar. It can also be launched directly from the lock screen, so I don’t even have to waste time unlocking my iPhone when trying to snap a quick shot!
Snappy takes full advantage of the iPhone’s auto-focus and tap-to-focus, and can even shoot videos. And unlike the built-in Camera app, Snappy doesn’t pause between every shot while it saves it to memory. Instead, Snappy lets me snap shot after shot with no pausing between them, while the app writes the pictures to storage in the background. Very clever!
Cost: $1.99
Conclusion
So there you go! Now you know what jailbreak apps I use and why I use them. I’m always on the lookout for new, great jailbreak apps that add functionality or enhance existing features — or just make the iPhone look amazing! If you have any suggestions for jailbreak apps to try, let me know about them!
Continue reading:
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TAGS: iPhone jailbreak apps, reasons to jailbreak
