Recommended iPhone iOS 5 Jailbreak Apps

iOS 5 was released for the iPhone 3GS and 4 for on October 12, 2011. Two days later, Apple released the iPhone 4S with iOS 5 preinstalled. The new OS has over 200 new features, many of which were inspired by previous jailbreak tweaks. While the new OS is great, there are still a few areas where it falls short. Here are my Top Ten Jailbreak Tweaks for iOS 5 which takes care of some of these shortcomings.

IntelliscreenX is the reason the jailbreak your iPhone. The notification center that Apple designed is good and all, but IntelliscreenX just blows it out of the water. You can access it from the homescreen and the lockscreen. The first of four screens feature the following: time and date; a ticker that displays the latest Tweets, Facebook posts, and RSS feed news; weather (today and five day forecast); collapsible notifications; and anything else you can put into the notification center. If you pull down the first screen, you will discover a hidden top shelf where you can find a couple of tweaks reminiscent of SBSettings. You can put your iPhone in airplane mode, turn on Bluetooth, turn on Wi-Fi, turn on 3G, activate lock rotation, respring, and toggle the brightness setting. The second screen features your Facebook feed. You can like and comment on posts, or you can open them up in the Facebook app. The third screen displays your Twitter timeline. You can open links, open in the Twitter app, and reply to tweets. You can also tweet by pressing the + button on the top right corner. If you press the Twitter bar on top, the timeline switches to display your mentions. The fourth screen displays your mail. If you press any mail message, it expands for you to read the whole message. You can also delete them, mark them as read, and open them in the mail app. The last screen displays your RSS feeds in collapsible form. If you press any news, they are displayed in Safari Reader format. You can also add them to your Reading List or open them in Safari. IntelliscreenX is currently in beta and the developers keep adding new features every couple of days. One upcoming feature is a Quick Reply for text. IntelliscreenX is extremely customizable from the iPhone’s settings app.

Bite SMS is a substitute for your Messages App. The Bite SMS App is very similar to the Messages App. There are other things that you can do with BiteSMS that you can’t do with the regular app, however. If you get a message, you can either leave it as a banner or you can tap it to reply from anywhere without having to leave the app you’re using. You can also enable it to appear whenever you tap the volume button and then tap the volume icon. That way, you can quickly compose a message, once again, without having to leave any app. This tweak is also extremely customizable. It is now compatible with your Notification center and hence IntellizscreenX.

Activator: Activator is a tweak that lets you customize actions within the OS. It is mostly a behind the scenes app that is very useful. The best way to explain it is to provide examples of use. For example, I programmed it so that whenever I double tap the clock in the lockscreen my Flashlight app turns on. I also programmed it so that whenever I double tap the status bar in the homescreen a blank Twitter pop-up appears that lets me tweet from anywhere, without having to add links or photos. Activator makes the OS highly customizable.

App Locker: App Locker is a very useful tweak that lets you lock apps and folders. Once you have enabled App Locker, the apps or folders you have designated will be locked and you will need to input a password of your choice in order to open them. Note: The current version (1.6.1) has a glitch that makes the springboard crash every time you use it, so you might want to wait for an upgrade before taking the plunge.

App Center is a very useful tweak that lives in your Notification Center. You can go into the settings and choose your favorite apps so that they will appear in the Notification Center. App Center can display 4 or 5 apps at a time and they can also be sorted by name or category. If you have IntelliscreenX, App Center will also appear on your lockscreen.

Call Bar is a cool little tweak. It routes your phone calls through banner notifications instead of having it interrupt whatever you’re doing. My only gripe is that it uses your default ringtone. It doesn’t recognize any ringtones that you have for your contacts. Maybe in a later update.

Now this is fun little tweak. It allows you to change your carrier name to anything you want. If what you put doesn’t fit, the text just scrolls. You can put anything you want. Yes, anything. You can also use emoticons.

Favorite Contacts works in a similar way to App Center. It takes your favorite contacts from the Phone App and places them on the Notification Center with pictures with the pictures you have assigned to them. You can have 4-5 contacts on the screen and swipe for the rest. When you press the pictures it asks you if you want to call, message, or e-mail. Or you can set it to always call or message. Note: It makes the Notification Center and IntelliscreenX a bit laggy.

This is something that should have been included with iOS 4 from the beginning. It is extremely useful. It adds a little red skull (or two big red skulls) to your Multitask bar. When you press it, all the open apps are closed. You will no longer have to kill each app, one by one. I expect Apple to copy this for one of their future OS releases.

Since there is no Untethered Jailbreak available for the iPhone 4 yet, you run the risk of having a useless brick in your hands if your iPhone ever reboots for some reason. In order to bring your iPhone back from the brink, you will have to go back home, plug it into your computer, and boot it through whatever jailbreak program you are using. By using the Semitether tweak, if your iPhone ever reboots, you will have access to all services and apps in your phone except for jailbreak tweaks, the mail app, and the Safari app. In order to get all your services and tweaks back, you have to go back to your computer and boot your iPhone through a jailbreak program such as RedSnow. Some people have reported that it is unstable, so use it at your own risk.