We could be just a couple of months away from gaining an insight into what Apple plans to do with iOS 7, but as the Cupertino company's software development team continues to work in collaboration with lead hardware designer Jony Ive to create the next revision, many Apple fans have also been offering their own ideas on what could be done to improve the look of the famed mobile OS. We've seen quite a few concept designs hitherto, but a theme we recently discovered over at MacCiti rather delightfully combines elements of the current iOS interface with a tiled, Windows Phone-esque appearance which in turn borrows from the HTC One design. It's an interesting recipe for sure, but as I suspect you'll agree after seeing the screenshots below, it's one that works very well indeed.
The ability to record voice calls would seem a basic feature in comparison to the many options we have as smartphone users nowadays, but it's not an avenue Apple has hitherto explored, so once again, it's down to the jailbreak scene to try and help users work around this limitation. Audio Recorder, a new tweak offered at the ModMyi repo, is the very first tweak to allow the recording of voice calls natively, and if you're the kind of person that likes to keep a record of important business correspondence, Audio Recorder will help you keep them safely stored for your records.
Smartphones have made it very easy for almost anybody with a vested interest in photography, or cameras in general, to hone their skills. Okay, so Instagram doesn't really count, but you get the idea, and if you regularly use your smartphone to shoot and edit your very own video clips, you may be interested in a nifty little free app by the name of Fast Forward. It allows you to create wonderful stop-motion masterpieces by pre-setting the number of frames you wish to capture, as well as the amount of time between each frame, and the result is breathtaking at times.
Preparing your smartphone's camera quickly enough to take a decent shot before the 'Kodak moment' has passed, is a predicament many of us find ourselves in on a frequent basis. Apple's solution has been to place a camera slider on the lock screen of the iPhone for quick access, but having found it to be rather slow at times, I, like many, rarely use it. If you also feel as though the camera shortcut could be put to better use, you may be taken in by a tweak called PowerSwipe, which allows you to instead reboot, reboot or power down your device when performing that upward swiping gesture.
Most of us have come across a third-party app from the App Store at one time or another that has been built on an extremely confusing navigation structure and has managed to leave us all baffled. Does the app require a swipe to go back a step or does it have a simple back button on the navigation bar? Sometimes developers do get carried away and it can become confusing. Thankfully, Apple's native apps don't have this issue and seem to be extremely intuitive with the consistent placement of a back button on the left-hand side of the navigation bar that carries the title of the originating page.
SBSettings is, in my opinion, one of the best jailbreak tweaks on offer over at the Cydia Store. Through different revisions of iOS and on numerous devices, it has always been the very first tweak I have installed following a jailbreak, and when I am lucky enough to have it running on a jailbroken device, I’d say it saves me an average of ten minutes a day. Dragi, a new tweak over at the BigBoss repository, takes the power of SBSettings and its various toggles to the next level by allowing you to use the lock screen's slider to trigger custom actions.
As we would fully expect from a new flagship release from Samsung, the Galaxy S4 has not only added a bunch of new and impressive hardware to the fray, but also a hatful of intriguing software features bound to make our life that tad bit easier. During the announcement of the device a couple of weeks back, the company made much of the Dual Shot feature, which allows both front and rear-facing cameras to operate simultaneously to capture images or video. Such a feature is useful, for example, if you want to capture your environment as well as your reaction to it, and although this feature is exclusive to Galaxy S4 users for the time being, it hasn't taken long for a similar offering to reach the iTunes App Store.
Even with the jailbreak scene having thrived for a number of years, and many bases having been covered in terms of what Apple is missing by default, there's still plenty of scope for innovation. Every week, I am genuinely surprised by just how creative developers have been with ideas and execution, and a new tweak by the name of Icon Tool shows a great degree of invention. In essence, Icon Tool acts as something of a 'right click' for your home screen icons, providing a bunch of useful extras aside from the basic open/move/delete offered by Apple at stock level.
The Secret “Now Playing” package is one of the latest jailbreak tweaks to make itself at home on the BigBoss servers and could prove to be a must have package for those secretive music lovers amongst us. Everyone loves a bit of mystery in their lives, especially those who secretly harbor a terrible taste in music and want to hide the fact that they are bouncing their leg to a bit of Justin Bieber when on the train home from work or college. Secretly Now Playing means that your lock screen visuals no longer need to give away the monstrosities that you are listening to.
LockLauncher, a popular jailbreak tweak has seen an update to version 2.0 today, adding new features and compatibility to the mix. More details can be found right after the break.
