Without Jailbreaking… the iPhone Would Suck

Settings/Toggles SBsettings

Have you ever been using your iPhone or iPod touch and wished that you could quickly change the brightness? On a default iPhone, you’d have to exit your current app and return to the homescreen. Find the Settings app, click on brightness, adjust the slider, then return to what you are doing. Sound complicated? It is… unnecessarily so. Luckily SBsettings let’s me access important options from pretty much anywhere in the operating system (even inside other apps). A simple swipe of my finger across the status bar drops down a handy list of important settings and toggles, brightness included. From here I can toggle WiFi, Bluetooth, 3G, adjust brightness, and much more should I choose to do so. Heck, I can even see a list of currently running processes and terminate them at will.

In-app SMS Replies iRealQuick SMS

This is a big (and annoying one). I can’t believe that Apple doesn’t let you respond to texts within other applications. I feel terrible for people who don’t know how to jailbreak, because life without the ability to reply to text messages without leaving your current application is horribly annoying. If jailbreaking didn’t afford this capability, I’d list this as one of the things that makes the iPhone suck. By default, when you receive a new text, it’ll pop up as a notification on your screen and you can read it. From there, you have two options, close the notification, or click the “reply inch button which means closing the current application (perhaps you are in the middle of a game?) and being taken to the messaging app to reply. Keep in mind, the thing that you were in the middle of doing hasn’t just been put on hold. The app gets terminated when you are whisked away to the messaging app to respond to the text. With iRealQuick SMS, you can actually reply directly from the notification, and without leaving what you are in the middle of doing.

Tethering PdaNet

Now this one actually can’t any longer be blamed on Apple. Though for some time, jailbreakers were able to tether while non-jailbreakers couldn’t, Apple has added the ability to tether since with the iPhone OS 3.0 software update. Sadly, while 99 other carriers around the world have enabled tethering on the iPhone, AT&T in the U.S. still hasn’t given Apple the go-ahead to turn on it’s official implementation. Fortunately, jailbreaking comes to the rescue once again. While there are several options, I personally use PdaNet which allows me to tether through either USB or WiFi (with an ad-hoc network).

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