Tweaks for the iPhone in Cydia

If you just so happen to be an iPhone user, jailbreaking your iPhone not only lets you obtain “paid” applications, games in particular, at no cost through a downloaded package called “Installous”, it will enable you to have more of an open user interface that allows you to do various customizations, choose themes to your liking, be creative, and have access to features and such that aren’t otherwise available to non-jailbroken iPhone users. My favorite thing to do with my iPhone is discovering unique things that it’s capable of, so I’ll be introducing some “tweaks” that are found in Cydia.

For users who are sick of the generic and boring font that’s often used in cell phones, they can download a “FontSwap” app that will allow them to swap the font on their phone. After downloading the package, the user would open up the app and discover that they now have the capability to change the dialer/calculator fonts, lockclock fonts, notes fonts, and system fonts. Although access to changing the fonts within the categories come with limited choices, the one with the most option is the system fonts in which users can choose from a selection of 10 fonts that include Binary ITC, Calibri, Cineplex, Default, Casper, etc. As you can see in the example below, I’ve provided a picture of an iPhone with a Default lockclock font and a picture of a tweaked iPhone with a Gas lockclock font.



I would have to say that my favorite customization is through a very simple package called “MakeItMine”. It allows me to change the carrier, in my case AT&T, in the upper left hand corner to say anything I want it to. Also, the banner that’s currently the time that is centered at that top strip can be changed as well. This allows me to make my phone even more unique, and as the name infers, I’m really merely making it mine. I’ve included a picture to show the changes I made on my phone. My carrier now has a “star” (used through a free app called Emoji), and my banner now reads “Marianne’s iPhone”.



There are various other things that can be done that I find to be helpful, but I’m not going to get into too much detail about it. Rather than having a ton of pages, I downloaded “Five Icon Dock” and “Five-Column Springboard”. Instead of four icons, the packages allow for five icons going across the pages as well as in the dock area by making the spaces in between the apps smaller. Another way to minimize pages altogether would be to download something called “Categories” in which I can create and manage folders on my phone. I’m fully aware that iPhone’s latest firmware does allow the use of folders, but unfortunately, there is a maximum of 12 apps per folder. Especially since I have a lot of games, it is inconvenient to have multiple game folders, whereas, with this package, I’m able to have all of my games in one.



There are so many different options available to customize your phone a certain way. Although I’ve only introduced several packages that I personally like and that work for me, there exists plenty of others that do the same or serve very similar purposes. It’s available, but it’s up to you to look and explore. I want to add that when I think about all of these things that I’ve discovered and many, many others that I’m yet to learn, I am reminded of one of the YouTube videos I saw for Professor Armstrong’s Sociology 149 class. Participatory culture is definitely one that makes all this possible. While I’m here aimlessly playing around with my phone, people are out there, possibly collaborating to crack the latest codes to enable all this to be possible with the intent of making the information available; those people are users themselves who’ve become producers that are enabling all of this sharing to take place.