Last month, we told you of the grand return of the famed BookBook case. Looking like a book, but functioning as a wallet accommodating credit cards as well as your iPhone, creators Twelve South delighted long-time users by taking the wraps off the iPhone 5 version. As well as having been adjusted to snugly embed the longer, slenderer Apple smartphone, the new BookBook finally offers a hole for the camera, so your device no longer needs to be slid upward in order for the pointing-and-shooting to commence.
WhatsApp Messenger is the go-to instant messaging app for those looking to communicate for free cross-platform. With an app for Symbian, BlackBerry, Android, Windows Phone and iOS, it covers most of the market, and the version for those using an iPhone has just been updated. While there are no significant new features or noteworthy alterations, version 2.8.6 does bring some welcome performance enhancements for those running on the new iOS 6 software and / or the iPhone 5.
The notification system for those using an iPhone has improved a great deal over the past couple of years, something which has been helped greatly by software enhancements like Notification Center of iOS 5. However, there is always room for improvement, and while Research In Motion's BlackBerry brand continues to slide, one feature of those old devices many users tend to miss is the notification light.
iOS users have been tripping over themselves to pour scorn on Apple's lackluster Maps offering, and even though Tim Cook released a public apology for the disastrous native app, consumers are still waiting to see most of the promised improvements bear fruit. Many have pined for Google to bring a app that at least gives the same functionality as the pre-iOS 6 version of iOS Maps to iOS 6, and although that may seem a simple enough concept, Google has been dragging its heels somewhat. Now though, it has emerged that a native Google Maps app could reach the App Store by the end of the year, and as the Wall Street Journal reports, the Mountain View-based search giant is applying the finishing touches before submitting.
If you use your iPad for the purpose of reading news and magazines, you haven't adequately done your tablet justice until you've used Flipboard. A stunning, innovative interface makes keeping up with the latest content a real joy, and if you like reading books as well skimming through the content of Flipboard, you'll be pleased to know that the app has just added a Books category which integrates with Apple’s iBookstore.
We've known for quite some time that Ryan Petrich is probably one of the hardest working and most productive developers in the jailbreak community, but if we need further proof regarding that notion; a wave of tweaks were released in Cydia bearing his name. Although a lot of the developer’s packages often land on his own private repository for testing purposes, a number of them were pushed out to the main repo for everyone to take advantage of. One of the simplest releases, but one that a lot of users may find useful is the UpsideDown package that pretty does exactly what the name suggests.
Aside from the issue with Maps not quite living up to the high standards of consumers, the iOS 6 has been fairly incident-free thus far, but while it may have been adopted in record numbers, a major bug has been discovered with the new Apple mobile software. Although it is said to have been amended in iOS 6.0.1, those on 6.0 could be susceptible to a bug in the AV Framework which causes podcasts and audio streams to download more than once, potentially leading to significant data overages for those downloading over a cellular connection.
The release of the iPhone 5 has, by and large, gone without major incident. The Antennagate scandal of two years ago with the iPhone 4 was regarded as the biggest tech fail of that particular year, and while the battery issue plagued a few iPhone 4S handsets back in October 2011, the software-related Maps app has been the only real issue this time around. With that said, not everybody has had such a great first two months with their shiny new device, and while a couple of complaints have arisen with regards to scratching of the anodized aluminum, some have had to contend with the altogether more pressing issue of poor Wi-Fi performance.
Since its inception, the iPhone's camera has gotten stronger and stronger. While the hardware has improved to the point whereby the iPhone is now the most popular point-and-shoot on the market, the actual app has remained largely unchanged. There's nothing wrong with it, so to speak, but if you like to make casual edits as you go along, it certainly comes up short.
Although iOS is one of the faster and more fluid mobile operating systems out there when it comes to viewing UI animations, it seems that jailbreak fans do seem to love a good Cydia package that gives the impression that the system is performing faster that it actually is. In the past we have had tweaks such as ClockWind that existed to boost animation speed, so users perceive it to be faster than it actually is, and now we have a tweak called Accelerate that is claiming to be the revival of iOS, although we aren't to sure that it was in such a state that it needed revival.
