The iPhone 5 and fifth-generation iPod touches have been with us for quite some time now and although they have proved to be extremely successful, consumers are still noticing that some of their favorite apps have yet to be updated with full user-interface support for the larger display that Apple bundled with the devices. After the initial influx of app updates around the release date of the hardware, things have substantially slowed down, but today has brought two notable and much welcomed iPhone 5 based updates, including one that some users never thought would actually come due to the recent Google acquisition.

Sparrow, the creator of those very popular iOS and OS X applications, has just been acquired by Google, in a move which will certainly raise more than a few eyebrows. Sparrow has dedicated its existence on making some altogether great apps for Apple’s platforms, but it is the Big G that has decided to swoop for the start-up, and Sparrow will now join the Gmail team to “accomplish a bigger vision.”

The Sparrow+ tweak that has just landed in Cydia is essentially a package which the jailbreak community had to provide in order to get the Sparrow iOS app to work in the fashion in which the developers would have really intended. Unfortunately for them, for one reason or another, Apple wouldn’t allow the app to be in the App Store with push abilities, leaving users of the Sparrow app having to manually retrieve mail through it.