Believe it or not, jailbreaking my iPhone has never been a “must have”. Still, back when I had an iPhone 3GS in the iOS 3 days, I used it to allow customisation; toggles, wallpapers, ringtones. But now, Apple have conceded a lot of that sort of functionality to the user, and then some. For free, iPhone users now can have wallpapers, background tasks, A2DP, custom ringtones, built-in Twitter and more, all of which once needed a swift jailbreak of the phone. This means that a jailbreak now may not unleash as much customisation, but there’s still more I’d like to change about my favourite mobile operating system, iOS 5? Wanna see what they are? Here we go.
5. SiriToggles
Siri, the voice-controlled assistant for iPhone 4S is pretty sweet, but it has limitations. The only functionality availabile for Siri covers base iPhone functions, but falls short when interacting with applications or even toggling hardware, like bluetooth and wifi. Step in SiriToggles!
This jailbreak app extends Siri to enable or disable wifi, bluetooth, data, airplane mode, and even change the brightness to any percentage.
4. BlurriedNCBackground
This may seem like an odd feature, and wasn’t something that I’d particularly request, but I love it all the same. BlurriedNCBackground changes the grey cross-hatch background of the Notification Centre screen to a screen that blurs whatever’s underneath. A nice touch that works flawlessly on the iPhone 4S. Being a purely visual enhancement, you can see for yourself if you think it is worthy. (See #2, SB Settings screenshot for visual of BlurriedNCBackground.)
3. NCQuickDismiss
In the same screenshot below is NCQuickDismiss, as the small cross button at the bottom of Notification Centre. The same quick dismissal latches onto the banner notifications too, where it is more useful. I’ve always had the problem of the banner notification getting right in the way when I need to access the top of the screen. Now, with NCQuickDismiss, a convenient close button is placed on the banner for simple and quick dismissal. Just what I needed.
2. SBSettings
The third feature pushed into the following image is SBSettings, they are toggles for inane low-level functionality such as Bluetooth, Wifi, location and airplane mode. The ability to toggle these features should be in iOS from the start, and is my biggest bugbear. This is one of the primary reasons for me jailbreaking my iPhone 4S, to have a quick access to my Bluetooth, Wifi, 3G and location settings, proving an easy way for me to disable the settings and saving some energy and battery life.
1. Springtomize 2
Finally the number one package to download from Cydia must be Springtomize 2, made specifically for iOS 5. Springtomize is the only package in this list that costs to download, $2.99 in fact, but brings a whole wealth of brand new customisations to your iPhone or iPad.
For example, I have five app icons on my dock, I could have more! They can be arranged like coverflow if I like. I can have multiple rows, columns of apps on the home screen, which can scroll vertically, or even not have paging. As you can see in the screenshot, I can resize any app icon, home screen, dock or even in the task switcher. The best feature for the task switcher is to dim app icons that aren’t actually running in the background. The taskbar is not off-limits either. Icons can be hidden or extra information can be added such as memory or cpu usage.
Springtomize is a veritable swiss-knife. It can do many things, and then some more. Sure, it costs a few bucks but it’s totally worth it, and is exactly what jailbreaking is made for.
