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Since I decided not to upgrade to iOS6.0 until the maps thing is sorted out, I've been playing around with Cydia today. For people that might be interested in

by bobbles 14y ago

Since I decided not to upgrade to iOS6.0 until the maps thing is sorted out, I've been playing around with Cydia today. For people that might be interested in what you can do (maybe haven't jailbroken before...) here's what I did. 1) Download Absinthe 2.0.4 for windows. 2) Run the the .exe 3) Click jailbreak They recommend clearing your phone to increase the speed but it only took me 5 minutes (without removing anything). Once completed, it will add the 'Cydia' app to your screen, which you can use to download other apps & utilities. Now onto the interesting part.. the apps I've installed today, and what they can do for the phone (all are free): 1) f.lux: Just like flux for the desktop, this will modify the temperature settings of the screen to adjust according to your timezone, being much easier on the eyes at night. 2) IconRenamer: Rename any icons. I like this because I can take something like 'Samsung TV Remote' which looks like 'Sams...ote' on my phone and change it to "TV Remote" 3) BrowserChanger: This allows me to install Google Chrome as my browser, and open all URLs by default in Chrome instead of safari (So I get all my synced bookmarks, etc. Opening a link from another app like Alien Blue, will use chrome instead of safari, as well as 'home screen' shortcuts) 4) ColoredKnob: Allows you to change the 'scroll to unlock' icon colour and size. 5) MissionBoard: Triple-Home-Click will open a MissionControl style background-app selector which shows screenshots of the apps in their current state on a nice background. 6) Torch: Adds a nice little icon next to the clock on the lock screen to enable flashlight torch. 7) Weather Icon: Causes the 'Weather' app to display the actual weather with icon and temperature. Runs based on the first weather screen, which can be set to 'local weather'. 8) Zeppelin: Customise the carrier logo. You can choose from things like the apple icon and countless others, which I like instead of having a giant "YES OPTUS" on my screen. 9) Adblock: Blocks ads. 10) SBSettings: Allows me to swipe my status bar to quickly toggle options like 3G / Wifi / Brightness. etc. You can also download themes to make this look more like a iOS native application. 11) NoNewsIsGoodNews: Disables the Newsstand icon which I have NEVER used in iOS. 12) Springflash: Enables me to double-tap the power button for a torch.. Not really necessary but I like it. 13) YTOpener: Automatically opens any youtube links in the new Google YouTube app. Works awesomely well. 14) LSMusicGestures: Adds swipe gestures for music controls to my lock screen. I love this as I dont have ipod controls on my car stereo. It allows me to do things like swipe to skip song, or double-tap to pause/resume a song. This is awesome as it means I no longer have to look at the phone, or try hitting the tiny buttons on the screen while driving. Doing all of this took about 30 minutes, doesn't do anything to make my phone look 'tacky', and had no issues at all. Can't believe I havn't been doing this since the day I got my 4S. I had previously tried using some of these apps on my 3G but it was pretty slow. Everything is nice and slick on the 4S though.

noblethrasher 14y ago
How's the battery life? The FUD (?) around that is pretty much the only thing keeping me from jailbreaking.
- bobbles 14y ago
  Haven't really had it installed long enough here to notice, but my percentage hasn't gone down any more than it would normally in 3 hours or so. When using it previously on my 3G it had little to no effect on battery life, the phone itself was just slow. (I didn't jailbreak my 3G until after the iOS 4.0 update turned it to treacle)
- saurik 14y ago
  Looking at the list of things he installed, I see absolutely no reason why any of it should affect battery performance. The problem is that once you give someone the power to do anything they want, some of the things the want to do are things that have consequences they don't want, and many people aren't good at correlating the benefits to the costs, even when it "seems obvious". As an example: if you install something that lets you have an animated HTML5 wallpaper, you are going to have some changes to your battery life. You may also see changes to general performance if the wallpaper doesn't deactivate while you are using apps. However: that's very specific to that extension. If you install something that changes what happens when a text message comes in, then (barring bugs in the implementation) it is only going to happen when a text message comes in, which is likely negligible. To the extent to which it is not negligible, then it should be a direct cost of the feature: if you want incoming text messages to be converted to a 3D ray-traced animation of Tom Hanks reading them aloud and uploaded to your Twitter account, that's going to take more power than, say, playing a different sound if the message contains the word "epic".
- drivebyacct2 14y ago
  Huh? No offense but just jailbreaking your phone and then using it the same as always is going to have ZERO effect on your phone. If you use it with weird apps or have an animated homescreen background, yeah, you're going to see a battery hit. Just like if you install an app that streams music over 3g all day (regardless of whether or not you've jailbroken).

by bobbles 14y ago

noblethrasher 14y ago

How's the battery life? The FUD (?) around that is pretty much the only thing keeping me from jailbreaking.

bobbles 14y ago
Haven't really had it installed long enough here to notice, but my percentage hasn't gone down any more than it would normally in 3 hours or so. When using it previously on my 3G it had little to no effect on battery life, the phone itself was just slow. (I didn't jailbreak my 3G until after the iOS 4.0 update turned it to treacle)
saurik 14y ago
Looking at the list of things he installed, I see absolutely no reason why any of it should affect battery performance. The problem is that once you give someone the power to do anything they want, some of the things the want to do are things that have consequences they don't want, and many people aren't good at correlating the benefits to the costs, even when it "seems obvious". As an example: if you install something that lets you have an animated HTML5 wallpaper, you are going to have some changes to your battery life. You may also see changes to general performance if the wallpaper doesn't deactivate while you are using apps. However: that's very specific to that extension. If you install something that changes what happens when a text message comes in, then (barring bugs in the implementation) it is only going to happen when a text message comes in, which is likely negligible. To the extent to which it is not negligible, then it should be a direct cost of the feature: if you want incoming text messages to be converted to a 3D ray-traced animation of Tom Hanks reading them aloud and uploaded to your Twitter account, that's going to take more power than, say, playing a different sound if the message contains the word "epic".
drivebyacct2 14y ago
Huh? No offense but just jailbreaking your phone and then using it the same as always is going to have ZERO effect on your phone. If you use it with weird apps or have an animated homescreen background, yeah, you're going to see a battery hit. Just like if you install an app that streams music over 3g all day (regardless of whether or not you've jailbroken).