Tips

One of the cool features coming to iOS 6 this fall is a Twitter widget for the Notification Center. Users can also expect a similar Facebook widget when the service is fully integrated into the iOS system with version 6. In the meantime, it's possible to install the Twitter widget right now on jailbroken devices.

After jailbreaking your iOS 5 device, you can find the iOS 6 Twitter Widget in Cydia under Addons (Notification Center). The package comes to us free from developer Mathieu Hendey on the BigBoss repository. Once installed, the add on can be activated by navigating to Settings -> Notification Center -> Twitter Widget -> ON.

What's great about Twitter and several other apps on the iPhone is that you can simply pull down to refresh information. Jailbreakers may already know this is the preferred way to refresh with IntelliScreenX, for example. Apple has seen the light and will be adding this functionality to the Mail app in iOS 6.

If your device is already jailbroken with Absinthe, you can add pull to refresh to your Mail app right now for free. The name of the tweak is Pull To Refresh for Mail and it comes to us from developer xh and the BigBoss repo on Cydia.

It may seem like a simple thing, but one great feature that Cydia has over the App Store is a queue. Several packages can be browsed and selected, then the whole list is installed at once. While this speeds up the process of installing apps, the App Store exits every time you download an individual app.

All of this is set to change in iOS 6. The revamped App Store will stay open and download apps in the background, so you can continue browsing. This avoids the whole process of having to reopen the App Store every time you install or update an app. Luckily if you have jailbroken your iPhone, you can add this functionality to the App Store right now.

Ever notice how some song titles are too long to fit on an iPhone or iPod touch display? The iOS Music app simply truncates the text and adds a trailing elipsis at the end. Now thanks to iOS 5 you can actually view all of the track information with this simple tip.

When you're interested in seeing the whole track name, just hold down on the track listing and a black pop-up box will appear. Inside this box will be the complete track title without any abbreviation. Once you lift your finger, the box will remain open until you tap the screen again.

Once again, some iPhone owners have experienced problems with their battery life after updating to the latest firmware, in this case iOS 5.1.1. Updating over-the-air is convenient, but for some it caused battery life to be noticeably shorter despite the fixing of several bugs. Problems including 2G to 3G network switching and AirPlay video bugs were among the problems fixed.

This is nice, but when your battery takes a hit this can seem to be the bigger problem. The good news is that thanks to CNET there are simple steps that will return your battery to its full potential.