Top 10 iPhone Hacks You Never Knew

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As they say “you have an iPhone app for everything you can think of“, still there’s much that the smartphone can’t do. While we are not unsatisfied with iPhone, its inherently that we keep craving for more. Most of you would love to see your iPhone perform what it never does. It requires nimble work around to get an extra edge from your iPhone. What you need to do is go for some cool iPhone hacks. We decided to provide you with top 10 iPhone hacks that you’ve never heard of. Our hacks doesn’t involve much intricacies, and they are safe.

With iPhone’s announcements of two new CDMA iPhones for Verizon and Sprint we are expecting some better prospects than AT&T’s impotent network However, for now, let’s go through the hacks.

1. How to reduce the size of iPhone app icons

Do you have dozens of iPhone Apps installed in your iPhone? Shifting through the pages when you need one immediately, it can be really frustrating.
One of the ways to reduce home screen is by adding additional columns to your Springboard. However, this might lead to a lot of clutter. However, you have an app that will help you to shrink the size of icons. This will allow you to retain the uncluttered look of the home screen, even if you increase the number of columns with apps such as FiveIrows.

The Shrink app helps you to reduce resize the icons on their home screen by specific percentage over the original icon size.

Shrink is available for download at $0.99.

2. How to bring Flash to iPhone

One of the greatest shortcomings with iPhone is the lack of support for Flash. Tobias Schneider has devised a workaround called Gordon that will enable users to view Flash on their iPhone.

It is not an iPhone and merely a script and it is not bound by the iPhone SDK EULA and can be used legally without jailbreaking your iPhone. There are a few limitations like you can execute flash only within iPhone Safari browser.

• It requires Flash files to be embedded within an HTML code.
• It will include few more lines of code on every page that contains Flash.
• The Javascript workaround is CPU-intensive which will drain your battery in no time.

For more details on the project you can visit Paul Irish website.

3.  How to add an extra row of numbers on your QWERTY keyboard

This hack is extremely useful as it adds a 5th row to your iPhone’s keyboard. This would save you from swapping between the “ABC” and “123″ modes. The top row can be changed by tapping shift. This will make the tad smaller. But the problem can be solved by turning to the landscape mode.  Just go with the steps

Step 1: Jailbreak your iPhone
Step 2: Go to Cydia
Step 3: Search and download 5-Row QWERTY

4. How to use SlingPlayer and Skype over 3G

AT&T might lock down SlingPlayer and Skype for iPhone, but you can unlock its 3G features with this hack.

Step A: There are enough reasons to jailbreak iPhone. Skype and SlingPlayers are just few of them. You can go through article on iPhone jailbreak

Step B: Go to Cydia and search for Tricker Three3G. Install the application. SlingPlayer, Skype and Fring will run on Wi-Fi no matter what connection you have.

In case you are not contented with three apps, you can use the same iPhone hack by installing VoIPover3G. This app can trick any app to be used with Wi-Fi, even without 3G connection. You need to have the OpenSSH or DiskAid and the least version of MobileSubstrate. Now you need to tap into your iPhone and install some custom text files for every app for which you want VoIPover3G.

For those who are looking for details, here are the steps for using Skype on iPhone

Step 1: Jailbreak your iPhone
Step 2: Go to Cydia. Search for and install VoIPover3G.
Step 3: While in Cydia install OpenSSH which will allow you to transfer files from/to the iPhone.
Step 4: Install the latest Mobile Substrate.
Step 5: Reboot your iPhone after installing the apps.
Step 6:  connect your iPhone to your home WiFi network and get the IP address the iPhone was assigned. Click on Settings>WiFi>circuluar blue arrow
Step 7:  Pick either DiskAir (option a) or OpenSSH (option b)  to modify the iPhone file.
1) DiskAid instructions:
a) Download & install DiskAid
b) Connect iPhone to PC or Mac using USB cable.
c) Drag the /Library/MobileSubstrate/DynamicLibraries/VoIPover3G.plist file to your PC or Mac
d) goto Step
2) OpenSSH
a) Download a SSH/SCP program. For PC users I recommend WinSCP.
b) In WinSCP, make sure to select “SFTP” and enter in this info:
- Server: your iPhone’s IP address
- Username: root
- Password: alpine
- Port: 22
c) Click on “Connect”, which might take a few seconds to connect to your iPhone.
d) Navigate to: /Library/MobileSubstrate/DynamicLibraries

Step 8: Double-click VoIPover3G.plist to open the file
Step 9: Following text will appear within “VoIPover3G.plist”or something very similar:

Filter = {Bundles = (”com.Fringland.Fring”, “com.apple.AppStore”, “com.audiofile.Interstate”, “com.apple.MobileStore”);};

Append “com.skype.skype” to the text (with a comma) which will then look like this:

Filter = {Bundles = (”com.Fringland.Fring”, “com.apple.AppStore”, “com.audiofile.Interstate”, “com.apple.MobileStore”, “com.skype.skype”);};

Step 10: Now save the modified file. If using WinSCP, it will automatically upload back to your iPhone. If using DiskAid, just drag-and-drop the file back onto the iPhone overwriting the old one.
Step 11: Uninstall the Skype app & reboot your iPhone
Step 12: Reinstall the Skype app from the Apple App Store

And now you will be able to make Skype over 3G calls.

5. How to get rid of the iPhone accelerometer

Reading on your iPhone while laying down can be tough, as you have to keep it from flipping the content. Now, if you are one of those who’s annoyed with accelerometer, which flips the image from portrait to landscape with the slightest turn, we gotta a hack to turn it off. Here are the steps you need to follow

Step 1: Jailbreak your iPhone

Step 2: Go to Cydia

Step 3: Search for Boss Prefs

Step 4: Install it

Step 5: Go back to Cydia and search for Rotation Inhibitor and  Install it

Step 6: Simply open up the Boss Prefs to toggle rotation on and off.

However, you need to remember that the app will lock your screen in portrait mode, not landscape.

6. How to add an extension to a contact’s phone number

Everytime you are trying to call a party you have to listen to the speech “If you know that extension of the party you’re trying to reach, enter it now”. However, there is an easy work around to have your iPhone automatically dial the extension along the phone number.

Step 1: Click on the contact

Step 2: Click on Edit

Step 3: First press on the number and then press “+*#” in the bottom left corner

Step 4: Press “pause” which inputs a comma.

7. How to redirect a call to voicemail

It might have happened to you often that you don’t wanna answer the call immediately and the phone keeps on ringing. The easiest way to deal with the situation is to not hang up with the person and send the call to voicemail directly. There’s an easy work around to accomplish it.

Double click the Sleep/Wake button on the top right of your iPhone. In case you are using headphones, simply double click the microphone button.

The only hassle to this is, listening to people’s voicemails.

8. How to disable auto-correct and auto-capitalize

Step 1: Go to the Settings

Step 2: Go to General

Step 3: Go to Keyboard

In the keyboard settings you can toggle Auto-Correction on/off. Disable auto-capitalization enable caps lock, disable the “.” shortcut or change the number of international keyboards.

(The “.” shortcut refers to double tapping the space bar to insert a period followed by a space.)

9. How to get push Gmail

Eventhough iPhone has a push notification, it lacks the push version for Gmail. But, you can get push Gmail for application in the iTunes App Store called Prowl-Growl client. This app allows you iPhone to be connected with the famous Growl program. Growl has one function that is to notify the user.

With Prowl a $3 iPhone app every notification form Growl will get pushed right to your iPhone. Whenever you get a new email, Growl will notify you on your computer and by Prowl on your iPhone. What you need to do is simply download Growl and set it up to notify you of new emails on Gmail.

10. How to use Emoji icons on iPhone 3.0

Step 1: Install spell number from the iTunes App Store

Step 2: Launch the app

Step 3: Type 91929394.59

Step 4: Press the Home button

Step 5: Go to Settings > General > Keywords

Step 6: Select Emoji under Japanese

Step 7: Delete the app since the emoji icons will be still there