iPhone Jailbreaking

Locking the rotation with iOS comes in handy on the iPhone, preventing the orientation of the screen from changing unexpectedly when reading, for example. Accessing the rotation lock button from the home screen is simple, just bring up the multitasking dock by pressing the home button twice. Scroll from left to right and there's the orientation icon.

Apple has limited this feature to locking the orientation in portrait mode only, and the multitasking dock won't appear at all in the landscape orientation. Developer BTPankow has put an end to all this, releasing SwitcherLand to add horizontal orientation lock to the iPhone. This tweak makes it possible to bring up the multitasking dock even when using an app in landscape mode.

Those waiting for a jailbreak solution for A5 devices running iOS 5.1 will have to be patient, according to the latest Twitter updates from developer pod2g. The good news is that work is underway, and parts of a userland jailbreak have already been found.

Even though three different jailbreaks were confirmed on the new iPad, developers MuscleNerd, i0n1c and Chpwn have not signaled when these might be ready for public use. In the meantime, iPhone 4S and iPad 3 owners running iOS 5.1 have no jailbreak option available.

iMessage may make it simpler to communicate between iOS devices and an OS X computer, but there are many file types that can't be transferred using the service as they are unsupported by Apple. For those iPhone users with jailbroken devices, this is no longer a limitation.

SendAny and ReceiveAny are two complimentary iPhone tweaks that open up the doors of iMessage to any file type you care to send. These files can be sent to and from jailbroken iOS devices or between an IOS device and an OS X computer running iMessage beta. Not only this, but SendAny includes built-in DropBox support to send files directly to online storage.

Tweaks to Siri have been cropping up regularly thanks to the untethered iPhone 4S jailbreak. AssistantExtensions in the Cydia app store is available for free, and makes it possible to add all kinds of useful conversations to Siri's repertoire. We've seen add ons to ask SIri questions about jailbreaking and have her announce the latest sports scores and schedules.

Now thanks to BatteryLevelAE, iPhone owners can ask Siri battery-related questions such as "How much talk time do I have?" Siri will respond with a rough estimate of how much juice is left on the battery for both 3G and 2G network connections.

Good news for owners of the iPhone 4S and iPad 2 looking to downgrade from iOS 5.1. iH8sn0w announced the discovery of a loophole that makes it possible to downgrade any A5 device to iOS 5.0.1. Not only this, but the developer has successfully restored an iPad 2 to iOS 5.0.1 using the procedure.

Found a loophole in Apple's apticket system. Restored my iPad 2 to 5.0.1 from 5.1. Works on all A5 devices. :)

— iH8sn0w (@iH8sn0w) March 25, 2012

Downgrading an iPhone, from iOS 5 to 4.3.3 for example, requires saved SHSH blobs since Apple stops signing older firmware when an update is released. It's likely that the loophole iH8sn0w has found will also require saved SHSH blobs to work.