Battery Percentage

Many users were disappointed to learn that Battery Percentage is exclusive to the iPhone 3GS, and not a general feature in iPhone OS 3.0.

There are two ways to turn on the battery percentage in the jailbroken iPhone OS 3.0.
1. Through SBSettings
If you have SBSettings installed, simply tap on “More,” then “Extras.” There you will find Enable/Disable Numeric Battery.

2. Through AsBattery
If you prefer to have the stock Battery Percentage toggle found only in the iPhone 3GS, you’ll need AsBattery. To install AsBattery:

1. Fire up Cydia.
2. In its “Search” section, type in iPhone-notes. What you are doing is looking for the repository that AsBattery is hosted in. Install this repository.
3. In Cydia’s “Changes” section, look for “AsBattery” and install that.
4. Reboot your iPhone.

Once you’re back in, the battery percentage toggle will be present in Settings → General → Usage.

The magic that AsBattery does is it adds the string gas-gauge-battery to a file called M68AP.plist (if you have an iPhone), N82AP.plist (if you have an iPhone 3G), N45AP.plist (if you have an iPod touch 1st-generation), or N72AP.plist (if you have an iPod touch 2nd-generation).

Video Recording

Jailbreakers have long enjoyed Cycorder, a free app that records video in MPEG 384 x 288 at 6—15 fps, depending on lighting conditions. Sure, it’s far from the 640-by-480-pixel at 30 fps capability of the iPhone 3GS, but, hey, I’ll take some video over no video any day. It’s better than nothing.

Voice Control… somewhat

If you’re so inclined towards voice dialing, there’s always Vlingo and Melodis Voice Dialer. Both apps work pretty well, though you can’t do neat stuff like ask your iPhone what song it’s currently playing (and have it reply!). One other notable voice-related app is, of course, the Google Mobile App, though it should be noted that this app does not do voice dialing.

Vlingo has one neat feature. You can dictate a status update for your Twitter or Facebook account.

Isn’t North Always Up?

Sorry, it’s a hardware limitation. But it’s not that bad. Do a search for “compass” in the iTunes App Store and you’ll find a plethora of apps purporting to show you the way to The Great North. Most, if not all, of these apps require you to be outdoors and to be actually moving, since they employ GPS to find out your bearing.

If you are in a built-up area, there is an easy way to find our which way north is. Fire up Maps and let it find your current location. Since all maps are drawn with north pointing up, all you have to do is do a visual survey and orientate your iPhone so that any roads around you line up with their counterpart on the map.

But if you’re out in the middle of nowhere with no distinguishable landmarks, you’ll have to settle for sticking a compass on the back of your iPhone.

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In my previous Jailbreak: The Lock Screen Is A Barren Land, I wrote about IntelliScreen and Lock Calendar, two apps for enhancing the Lock Screen of your iPhone and iPod touch. Today, in part two, I’ll be exploring a handful of other tweaks you can make to the Lock screen.

HomeScreen and MultiBarLockscreen

HomeScreen 2.0 (aldwin, Free) looks and feels like Windows Mobile’s Today Screen. Instead of filling up the Lock screen with a list of current events, HomeScreen shows you only a total count of various system events such as appointments, missed calls, new mail, new messages and new RSS feeds. You can also have it display a calendar of the current month and a one-week weather forecast.

Visually, it’s lighter than IntelliScreen, which may appeal to those of you who prefer a minimalist look for your Lock screens. Note that, after installing HomeScreen, you will have to go into WinterBoard to activate it. Also, the first thing you’ll want to do is to change the weather location. Read this tutorial on how to do that.

MultiBarLockscreen (DouweM, Free) is another app that is similar to HomeScreen.

RemindYou

You can consider RemindYou (Make Your Day Media, $9.95) an “IntelliScreen Lite,” of sorts. Its sole function is to populate the Lock screen of your iPhone or iPod touch with a list of current and upcoming appointments. If you ask me, I’d rather spend the $9.95 on IntellScreen instead; the same price buys you a whole lot more features.

20 Second Lock Screen

If you are using any one of these Lock screen enhancement apps, 20 Second Lock Screen (Optimo, Free) is a Mobile Substrate plugin that extends the auto shut-off time of the Lock screen from five seconds to 20.

Twidget

Twidget (Plizzo, Free) puts Twitter right on the Lock screen. But chalk this one up for strictly the fun department, because it only lets you view and not reply to tweets. Requires WinterBoard.

NoAA

NoAA (Yanik Magnan, Free), or “No Album Artwork,” is a Mobile Substrate that hides album artwork on the Lock screen, and displays your wallpaper instead. This tweak doesn’t come with any configurable settings. To disable it, simply uninstall it from within Cydia.

Important note: Some of these Lock screen mods require either StatusNotifier or Notifier—Mobile Substrate plugins that provide system-wide notifications to work their magic, but neither of them are fully compatible with iPhone OS 3.0 at the time of writing. You are well-advised to check their respective changelogs before proceeding.

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Apple blessed the iPhone 3G with a gorgeous, large screen. There is plenty of screen real estate, so why waste it with just a wallpaper, album cover artwork, or the date and time?

Having been a Windows Mobile user for six years, the Today Screen in Windows Mobile was the one feature I sorely missed in the iPhone OS. With the Today Screen, I could, at a quick glance, see upcoming appointments and know I have new mail, new messages, or missed calls.

It is possible to replicate that experience on a jailbroken iPhone. Today, in the first of two articles, I’ll talk about two third-party apps that’ll turn the barren land that is the Lock screen into a golden field of usefulness.

IntelliScreen

The undisputed king of the hill app for enhancing the Lock screen, IntelliScreen (Intelliborn, $9.99), boasts a long list of features. To simply say it enhances the Lock screen is an understatement. It’s really a productivity suite. To understand what IntelliScreen does, think of it as being comprised of two distinct parts.

The first part puts information such as appointments, mail, messages, weather forecast and RSS feeds on the Lock screen.

This part of IntelliScreen is highly configurable. You choose what goes onto the Lock screen of your iPhone, and you can arrange the order in which each information type is displayed.

What’s more, you can launch the native app associated with each kind of item. For example, sliding across an appointment brings up a button to launch Calendar.

For items such as mail and text messages, you can invoke a QuickView pop-up and read them without having to leave the Lock screen.

The second part completely overhauls the way iPhone OS presents you with system alerts such as missed calls and scheduled reminders. This part of IntelliScreen, called IntelliAlert, is not visible unless your iPhone needs to notify you of a system event, which it does by curling up its usual view and revealing the alert beneath it. Alerts can be by sound, vibration, or a screen flash, and can be set to repeat in intervals.

In addition, IntelliAlert displays in the Status bar notification icons for each type of alert. There are icons for new mail, new messages, new voicemail, missed calls, call forwarding, and due appointments. Small as this may seem, having notification icons in the Status bar goes a long way toward enhancing user experience. More on this in Part Two.

A Rogue App

There is something that should be said about IntelliScreen. Newcomers to IntelliScreen should know that it’s an app with a somewhat bad rep. Many users have reported IntelliScreen to be the culprit in software conflicts with other apps, or that IntelliScreen was the cause of fatal crashes.

These problems are almost always attributable to the fact that IntelliScreen does not hook into Mobile Substrate, the framework that provides third-party apps and mods to inject their code into iPhone OS. Mobile Substrate is designed to boot into a safe mode in the event of a crash, so that your iPhone does not become completely unbootable. Since IntelliScreen does its thing its own way — “rogue,” if you will — the chances of incompatibility with other apps are real and potentially high.

To date I’ve had to restart my iPhone only occasionally, after IntelliScreen becomes unresponsive, but nothing as serious as having my iPhone stuck at the Apple logo has taken place.

Lock Calendar

For those of you looking for a free solution, Lock Calendar (Thomas Moore, free) is a worthy alternative.

Lock Calendar does one thing and does it very well, which is to display upcoming Calendar appointments in the Lock screen. While functionality in its first release was very basic, Lock Calendar 0.3 is a huge improvement, with some features that even IntelliScreen lacks. These include the ability to display some or all of your calendars, and to change font type, size and color. What I personally like about Lock Calendar is that it doesn’t require WinterBoard to run.

Lock Calendar has a lot of potential for becoming a replacement for IntelliScreen on my iPhone. Its developer, Thomas Moore¹, is looking into adding new features such as themes, customizable view layout, weather information, and notification alerts for text messages and mail. This is an app I am definitely keeping a close eye on.

Which is the App for You?

IntelliScreen is a must-have app for my iPhone. It’s the kind of app you only need to spend a day using to appreciate how well-rounded it is. Telephony-specific enhancements, such as QuickView and IntelliAlert, are the kind of bells and whistles that power users crave but cannot get with the stock iPhone OS.

On the other hand, Lock Calendar is an app that should be sufficient for many users. Its simplicity will appeal to those who simply want to put the Lock screen to better use. Lock Calendar should appeal to iPod touch users, too. In fact, I chose to install Lock Calendar for my iPod touch rather than IntelliScreen; without messaging, telephony or vibrating abilities, there is little else in the iPod touch for IntelliScreen to do.

IntelliScreen and Lock Calendar are by no means the only Lock screen apps available in the jailbreak world. In Part Two, we’ll look at a handful of other apps ranging from clever to plain weird. Stay tuned.

¹ Disclaimer: While I do not personally know Mr. Moore, I was involved in the internationalization work for Lock Calendar 0.3.

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iPhone OS, from its very first version to the current 2.2.1, lacks certain features that many users typically expect in a smartphone. Jailbreaking arose largely to address those shortcomings. With iPhone OS 3.0, Apple has made the first of what will surely be many waves to come that will rock the jailbreak boat.

Having used beta developer builds of iPhone OS 3.0 for a few weeks now, I believe that the release of iPhone OS 3.0 will eliminate a large number of reasons for which users have jailbroken their iPhones.

Of the hundreds of enhancements jailbreaking can bring, the popular ones are, arguably, unlocking the iPhone to accept SIM cards worldwide, SMS management, MMS, Internet tethering, the built-in camera, the Lock Screen, UI theming, and cut, copy and paste. So how do the new features in iPhone OS 3.0 stack up against their jailbreak counterparts? Let’s take a look.

Unlocking the iPhone

For those of you whose iPhones are locked to your respective carrier, sorry, you’ll still have to jailbreak 3.0 in order to unlock your device.

SMS

With iPhone OS 3.0, you can finally forward text messages, delete individual text messages, and read and compose text messages in landscape mode, functionality that would otherwise require third-party apps such as BiteSMS, iRealSMS or MySMS. But there is one feature, available in both BiteSMS and MySMS, that I miss in 3.0: Quick Reply.

When a text message comes in, BiteSMS pops up a floating alert dialog box that lets you send a reply to that message without quitting whichever application is currently running. It’s a huge convenience, and elegant, to boot.

MMS

Some swear by it, while others think its absence is a non-issue. Personally, I stand somewhere in the middle. If I am on a shoot somewhere out on location, and I need to get a photo across to someone quickly, MMS can be really useful. While some might argue that emailing would serve the same purpose, many recipients would much prefer receiving an MMS for the simple fact that not all cell phones have e-mail clients as capable as that of the iPhone. And you’d be surprised at how many cell phone users still do not have a data plan for push e-email and the such.

Internet Tethering

Remember the days when you would tether your cell phone to your laptop via a data cable, Bluetooth, or, horror of horrors, infrared? My old 2G Nokia cell phone did it, even if it was a measly 14.4K connection, so it was quite an inconvenience not being able to use my iPhone as a modem.

Internet tethering via USB or Bluetooth is built into 3.0. I’m happy to report that it just works (for now). I no longer require apps such as PdaNet or iPhoneModem, some of which cost quite a fair bit to purchase. But, as built-in HSPDA connectivity becomes increasingly ubiquitous in laptops, Internet tethering in the iPhone will eventually become irrelevant.

Camera

This is the one area that has not been improved upon in 3.0. The native Camera app still does not offer manual controls such as burst mode, slow shutter, or EV override, things that I, as a photographer, would like to have. On the hardware side, I would love to have auto-focus, something my other cell phone, an old Sony Ericsson, does very well. A full-featured camera app such as Snapture is, hence, still a very attractive incentive for jailbreaking.

Then, there is video recording. Cycorder is what I miss in my now-stock iPhone 3G. I do believe it is inevitable that video recording will make its way into the iPhone. Rumors floating around the Internet seem to strongly indicate that it could be as soon as the next hardware revision of the iPhone we’ll see this June. When that happens, the last of what I feel are the three key ‘jailbreak-worthy’ aspects of iPhone OS — video, Bluetooth file transfers, and cut/copy/paste — will be solved, as far as I’m concerned.

Lock Screen

All that screen real estate and nothing to show for it. Being a convert from Windows Mobile, which has a Today Screen that displays upcoming appointments and system notifications, the Lock Screen of iPhone OS is one area I really wish Apple would devote some attention to next. Of all the goodness I can get with jailbreaking, apps that enhance the Lock Screen are what I treasure most.

When I take a quick glance at the Lock Screen, I want to see information and not just album cover artwork or wallpaper. There is so much potential in what can go onto the Lock Screen. Calendar events, quick-dial for favorite contacts, detailed notifications for missed calls or incoming text messages, or even a preview of new mail — all of these are possible today on the jailbroken iPhone, courtesy of apps such as IntelliScreen and LockCalendar.

And, speaking of what I should see on the Lock Screen at a glance, I sorely miss Notifier, a Mobile Substrate hack that displays in the Date Bar notification icons for new mail, new messages, new IM messages, missed calls, and, especially useful, one for ringer mute.

UI Theming

The user interface plays such an important role in user experience that it is an area Apple will never relinquish control of. This is not a big deal for me, especially more so if it is at the expense of system responsiveness. But the sheer number of ugly themes created by users for WinterBoard, let alone those for other mobile platforms that freely allow theming, should be proof enough that it matters to some. On the iPhone, though, changing the wallpaper is still about as far as it goes…or Snow Leopard’s rumored ‘Marble’ interface at some point in 3.x. But full theming? Don’t hold your breath.

Cut, Copy and Paste

This is a big one. I still do not understand how some users can claim that the lack of cut, copy and paste is not a big deal to them. As someone who likes to write while commuting, the anemic ways in which iPhone OS 2.x lets me move bits of text around drove me to near insanity. Move a paragraph? Sorry, can’t do that. OK, how about something really simple, such as copying the name of a location from one Calendar event to another? Nope, no dice.

As I had stated in a previous post, cut, copy and paste in iPhone OS 3.0 addresses one of the biggest reasons I jailbroke my iPhone (and later, my iPod touch). Despite the best intentions behind jailbreak solutions such as hClipboard and Clippy, cut, copy and paste is really a low-level problem that only Apple can address satisfactorily, which it has in iPhone OS 3.0.

Conclusion

Going forward, I would love to see even more of what can be achieved only by jailbreaking in future versions of iPhone OS, namely enhancements to the Camera app and the Lockscreen. Even if there are no unannounced features hidden up Apple’s sleeve, and what we are seeing in the beta builds now is all there is, 3.x is clearly shaping up to be the first version of iPhone OS feature-rich enough that many users may no longer have a reason to continue jailbreaking their devices.

Will I jailbreak 3.0? I’m still on the fence. But, in using iPhone OS 3.0, the thought of sticking with a stock iPhone crossed my mind for the very first time, a thought that was simply unfathomable in the days of 2.x.

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So you’ve just jailbroken your iPhone. Congratulations! Your iPhone life is about to improve in so many ways. Be sure to follow our Jailbreak series to get the most out of jailbreaking your iPhone. Going forward, here are some tips to bear in mind.

1. Never upgrade firmware directly via iTunes

In the process of jailbreaking the iPhone OS, a partition inside the iPhone OS is created specially to store the files and data necessary for jailbreaking to work. This partition is typically 500MB. If you look at the storage bar of your device in its iTunes page, you’ll see this 500MB partition marked as “Others”, since, naturally, iTunes does not recognize this third-party addition.

When a user attempts to upgrade the iPhone firmware by clicking on the ‘Upgrade’ button in iTunes, it will not count the 500MB into the storage space available to install new firmware. The result is that these 500MBs are effectively “lost.” For example, if you directly upgrade your jailbroken iPhone — running, say, 2.2 — to 2.2.1, you’ll find that you now have 1GB of used space in “Others”.

If you wish to upgrade the firmware of your iPhone, always restore to the default firmware first. After you’ve done so, you can safely click that ‘Upgrade’ button in iTunes.

2. You can be a law-abiding customer

Jailbreaking and unlocking are, to the uninitiated, one and the same thing. Do know, they’re not. Jailbreaking frees your iPhone to run applications and code that are not signed by Apple, while unlocking frees the device from the carrier that it is bound to as part of the service contract you’ve signed with your carrier of choice.

So, the fact is, yes, you have to jailbreak before you can unlock your iPhone, but unlocking is not a necessary step in jailbreaking. While tools such as QuickPwn and Pwnage include unlocking as part of their procedure, it is equally easy to skip that step. You are certainly not obligated to unlock if you choose to not violate the terms of service set by your carrier.

3. There is more than meets the eye in Cydia

Cydia, the jailbreak equivalent of Apple’s App Store, is, on the whole, well-designed and easy to navigate. But, being a community, pro bono effort, it is ad-supported. If you are new to jailbreaking, here is how you separate the wheat from the chaff.

This is what you’d immediately see when you click on an item listed in Cydia. Of most interest to you is perhaps the ‘More Information’ link. But before you tap on it, wait a couple of seconds (or more, if your data connection is slow).

What just happened? Ads have loaded and the ‘More Information’ link has been pushed down, out of sight. If you’d tapped before the ads could load, you’d have most likely tapped on the ad instead of the link you intended to visit. So, when browsing in Cydia, patience will go a long way in making your shopping experience a more pleasant one.

While we’re still on the subject, the only page links in Cydia that matter to the typical user are listed below.

More Information — Tapping on this takes you to a sub page where you can usually find a detailed write-up of what you are about to install. But sometimes, a More Information link can take you to an external site. This varies from developer to developer.

Changelog — Some developers offer a list of the changes the latest version of his or her application contains. Reading the changelog gives you a better idea of what to expect, and whether the app is worth upgrading.

Screenshots — Most of the hacks available in Cydia are visual ones. This is especially true of custom themes. Most developers will include screenshots — “Screenies” as they are commonly called in the jailbreak community — accessible thru the ‘Screenshots’ link.

But remember that every page in Cydia contains ads. So wait a while and let those screenshots load.

4. Secure your iPhone

Being an operating system with UNIX components, iPhone OS has a root account. The default root password has already been made widely-known on the Internet, so any one with some knowledge in SSH can easily access the contents of your iPhone wirelessly. Be sure to change the password after you jailbreak your phone.

1. Fire up Cydia on your iPhone.
2. Browse or search for an application called MobileTerminal and install that.
3. Open MobileTerminal and type ‘passwd’ (without the quotes).
4. You will be prompted for the old password; for iPhone OS 2.2.x, the password is ‘alpine’.
5. Hit the Return key. You’ll be asked to input a new password.

As an extra security measure, you can install utilities such as BossPrefs or SBSettings and turn off SSH.

5. If your device is getting sluggish, uninstall WinterBoard

“Jailbreaking slows down your iPhone.”

“Your device will become unstable.”

I often hear these two comments about jailbreaking. To be fair, there is some truth in them. If you think the performance of your iPhone is beginning to feel really sluggish, chances are you have installed too many WinterBoard themes and hacks.

WinterBoard is a well-known feature of the jailbroken iPhone. The most visible part of WinterBoard that you see is as an application that lets you apply themes to the user interface of iPhone OS.

The invisible part of WinterBoard is a platform for system hacks to run, injecting code into iPhone OS while it is running on your device. In an over-simplification, it does this via a system process called the Mobile Substrate. Mobile Substrate runs beneath SpringBoard, Apple’s name for the home screen of your iPhone. You can think of SpringBoard to the iPhone what the Desktop is to Mac OS. Some system hacks are dependent on WinterBoard, ‘piggy-backing’ on it and running in the background.

An iPhone freshly rebooted typically has about 30—50MB of free memory out of the total 128MB available to iPhone OS. Running in the background, WinterBoard typically takes up 11MB or so. Add a theme and some hacks, and it adds up quickly. Remove WinterBoard, and you will see a dramatic improvement in the responsiveness of your iPhone. But you’d lose what many users consider as the most compelling reason to jailbreak the iPhone, so it’s really your call.

If you really must keep WinterBoard, go easy on the number of themes and WinterBoard-dependent hacks you install. Also, uninstall the themes and hacks that aren’t in use; you can certainly claim some speed and memory back this way.

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There are many aspects of the iPhone that I wish were more developed. Better usability. Time-saver shortcuts. Visual enhancements. Missing functionality. We each have our own list of what is missing, what we would love to have, and what we would love to see in a future iPhone OS update. While I am confident Apple will meet expectations eventually, I, along with thousands of other like-minded individuals, am not going to sit around and wait.

So I have a confession to make: I jailbroke my iPhone 3G the day I got my hands on it, and I’m liking it so much I’m never going back.

The thing is this, I form a bond with every gadget I own. For a device such as a cell phone, something you have on you almost 24/7, it seems only natural that you will grow into both the way it works and its various quirks. For the latter, you either learn to live with it or find a workaround for it. The casual user will most likely live with what is offered out of the box, while the power user and the adventurous will pursue new and novel ways to suit their devices to their ever-increasing needs.

On the Mac, it is very easy to go out and look for the right application that will do exactly what the OS does not. On the iPhone, where the platform is fragile and hence rightfully closed, the hard part is waiting for Apple to figure things out. In the meantime, there are the hundreds of clever workarounds that independent developers — iPhone owners and enthusiasts themselves — have devised. The catch is that you will have to jailbreak, which Apple certainly does not endorse.

I was inspired to write about jailbreaking after having several casual conversations I had with other iPhone owners. I was surprised at the amount of fear, uncertainty and doubt some of them had regarding jailbreaking. Some didn’t know what it was, while others had heard of it, but had dismissed it due to what they perceived as black art, complex and mysterious. But really, just as it has always been, is, and will be on any other computing platform, with enhancements and new functionality come certain caveats. Just do your homework, follow the instructions and you’ll be fine.

This post is an introduction to a regular iPhone jailbreaking column I will be penning, one that will include everything from reviews of applications to tips and techniques. Regardless of whether you are an iPhone owner who has yet — but is looking to — jailbreak your iPhone, or an enthusiast who’s already hacked your iPhone, I hope there will be something for everyone. And if there is anything you would like to see in a future post, do drop me a line.

Coming up next: Five Things You Need to Know About Jailbreaking. Stay tuned!

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