Long time no speak everyone. We have made alot of updates and wanted to inform everyone of just a few. Firstly, our main feature Spoofing is still free so long as the calls are kept under 2 minutes. You still have to listen to a short 10 second ad before your call is placed but [...]

I have added a comments section to my pages in Cydia. It’s on the new styled depiction pages. You can view the comments in most recent to oldest order and add your own. I have infrastructure to add ratings as well but left it out for now as Saurik says he’s adding this himself. See screenshots of Cydia:

qTweeter has been updated to version 0.97 to coexist with SBSettings. If you are running both qTweeter and SBSettings, to launch SBSettings, slide your finger horizontally across the status bar. To launch qTweeter, slide your finger vertically from the status bar. Please see this guide http://www.efksoft.com/products/qtweeterforiphone/help/sbsettingsresolved.jpg About qTweeter. qTweeter is the fastest and most efficient [...]

iTypeFastR is the keyboard app to type faster and with less typos. After a little over a week after the launch, we got more than 20.000 users, a lot of praise, and a lot of feedback on things we can further improve. Thanks for all the feedback, this is really helping us! Version 1.1 includes [...]

Today a repository released an app called “PushMod”. The description of this app says “PushMod gives you the option to choose 1 minute push time and allows you to turn any mailbox into a push mailbox.”

I wanted to clarify a bit what this app is and is not. It will be a heavy battery drain. To understand why, read on.

First this does not turn any mailbox into a push mailbox (like it says). Push mail is a technology where the server and the device register then disconnect. After this, when new mail arrives, the server “pushes” the notification to the device sending it a notification. The notification is initiated by the server. The device can be asleep or in a low power state in between notifications. You get real-time notifications with no CPU cost or battery drain.

Unlike push, regular mail is fetched by the device from the server. The device has to connect to the server, ask if there is any new mail, and pull the content down if so. The process is called polling. Polling is not “free”. On a hand held, battery powered device, it can be very battery intensive. One of the reasons Apple provides the options to set your mail poll from 15, 30, 60 minutes is to avoid the heavy battery drain. In many cases, 15 minutes is considered to be too much of a battery drain!

In comes “PushMod”. If you need to get your email instantly, this will help. It will set the poll interval to 1 minute rather than 15 minutes. But don’t be mislead by what it’s doing. It is not installing push mail. Instead, it is having your iPhone fetch mail every 1 minute. This uses CPU, network, and drains a lot of battery.

If you need your mail to be retrieved virtually realtime, this is still a good mod. But it was misnamed and you need to understand what you are getting into prior to installing it. It may be worth the battery tradeoff for you to get mail every minute. But consider yourself warned.

We, at iSmart Dialer Team, invested a lot of money, time and thinking on making Apple’s Dialer a lot more interesting, functional and easy to use. its no secret that Apple’s original dialer is very basic in its core and is missing some key features (We pretty sure we add all of them with iSmart Dialer). As we [...]

- Changelog as of April 7, 2009 Added a backgrounder feature directly into biteSMS (optional via settings) – so that it’s much quicker! Added Quick Compose feature (press volume-up) to allow you to compose an SMS from inside any application! (except YouTube). In Quick Reply and Quick Compose, added a “Call” feature and an SMS [...]

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Update (April 2, 2009 by BigBoss) I just pushed an update to Crash-X’s VoIPover3G v1.0.2 that will enable skype in the plist for you. No need for editing plist files just update the VoIPover3G app.

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Update (April 1, 2009 by BigBoss and ranova): Saurik just released mobilesubstrate 0.9.2805-1. This version fixes the problem entirely allowing for mobilesubstrate addons to work with Skype app. You can now use Skype app with VoIPover3G! -
Quick Tip: The voipover3g string for Skype is: com.skype.skype -All lowercase. You must add it in the VoIPover3G.plist located in /Library/MobileSubstrate/DynamicLibraries/
Full Guide to add Skype to voipover3g

Latest clippy and keyboard custom sounds now also seem to work with Skype using the latest Mobile Substrate update. If you are still experiencing crashes when you open up the keyboard, disable these two components.

If you are still experiencing crashes with the new Mobile Substrate and have disabled clippy and\or custom keyboard sounds, make sure to check other mobile substrate extensions or apps that run in the background and disable them. They may be still conflicting with how Skype runs. This is not a Mobile Substrate problem, but a problem with the extension or app itself and the author of it will have to update it. I had no problems using Clippy, Cydelete, Cyntact, Five Icon Dock, QuickGold, SBSettings, VoIPover3G, and Winterboard as mobile substrate extensions.

Known extensions or apps that cause skype to crash: mcoolphone, mobilelog, AdvLock, Hood, and Intelliscreen (it may work if you mess around with the performance settings in Intelliscreen).
You can check what mobileSubstrates extensions you have running and installed by looking in the folder:
/Library/MobileSubstrate/DynamicLibraries/

If you use Intelliscreen, From User Daron:

Eventually, I discovered that Skype would launch if I *disabled* IntelliScreen. I then tried to disable some of the IntelliScreen Performance extensions (Backgrounder, FileSchemaMobileSafari, MailToAttachmentMessageUI, PrefHooker-iKeyEx, SBHooker-iKeyEx, SBSettings, Veency, VoIPover3G, WinterBoard) and discovered that the culprit was Veency.

Thank you Saurik and everyone else that posted comments that helped us figure out the underlying problems.
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Update (March 31st, 2009): Saurik has released a new mobile substrate and the issue is fixed. No need for intelliscreen or any other hacks. Just update mobile substrate from cydia. Update to v0.9.2803-1 (or newer) of mobile substrate.

To fix the Skype crash, all mobilesubstrate based hacks are disabled on the Skype app. This means you cannot use voipover3g or backgrounder with Skype app. Do not ask how to do it or point out that it doesnt work. The developer of mobile substrate has already stated that it will not work.

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The highly anticipated app for the iPhone has just been released in the US:
Skype in the AppStore.

Now the bad news. It seems that all jailbroken phones do not play well with the Skype app. I had problems getting it to work at all, the app would crash when you try to use the keyboard to login to the app. I later found out, through trial and error, the culprit for keyboard crashing is Custom Winterboard Keyboard Click Sounds and Clippy. Getting rid of the keyboard custom clicks (tock.aiff) seems to work with regular themes. Using SBSettings Clippy toggle to switch it off seemed to do the trick also.

That problem, while small and fixable, is not the biggest problem. Skype seems to freeze within 30-50 seconds while in the app – no matter what you do (calling, idling, chatting, etc). I went into safe mode using SBSettings and tried out Skype – to my surprise, everything worked perfectly – I used it to talk to my friend for about 20-30 minutes. I decided to do a little bit more troubleshooting – deleting mobile substrates one by one to see if it helped or not, and then deleting them all. Nothing seemed to work, the app would still crash within one minute.

I decided to run SysInfoPro and compare running processes (non-mobile substrate) between safe mode and regular mode. They both had the exact processes running at the same time.

Although I didn’t delve much deeper into the problem (could have tried using Top and system logs), I have come to a conclusion that Skype crashes ONLY on jailbroken iPhones. I had a couple friends try it on their newly restored iPhones, and they worked flawlessly. Other people from multiple forums have also said it crashes non-stop for them (their iPhones also jailbroken):

“I managed to download skype and tested myself. It is buggy and all the symptoms the same as described by ranova. I have tried it on a 1G phone newly updated to 2.2.1 jailbroken. The only apps I have installed is sbsettings, ierase, nimbuzz, and skype. It still crashes after 30sec or so. It has got to be the phone that is jailbroken. I have nothing on my phone other than what you get after you jailbreak.” – duceduc

“2.2.1 jailbroken 3g here. It crashes after 30 – 60 seconds.” – jgsx

“Confirmed – Crashes like every minute.” – Zazox

Let’s hope this isn’t an attempt from Apple or Skype to cause apps to crash only on jailbroken phones (to deter the use of voipover3g). [end conspiracy theories]
Update: Saurik has just updated regarding reasons behind the crashes:

“Skype seems to be using some kind of /awesome/ DRM that involves them having an entire replacement binary somehow inside of it: the one on disk doesn’t link against /anything/ ;P. Whatever its doing, though, involves stressing dyld in some weird way.

Interestingly enough, its not anything MobileSubstrate does to the code: its just it existing in the process before it loads its replacement. (Which is extra weird, as the new MobileSubstrate links against almost nothing: just CoreFoundation.)”

So what we know so far:

• If Skype crashes when trying to input text: Disable both clippy (Use SBSettings toggle) and any custom Winterboard sounds relating to the keyboard tick (tock.aiff).
• If Skype crashes within 1 minute of having the app open: Update your Mobile substrate via Cydia. The latest version (April 1st, 2009) allows mobile substrate to play nicely with Skype. Thanks Saurik!

Temporary fix that allows mobile substrates extensions (voipover3g, backgrounder, winterboard) to run, from Autotrade at Engadget:

“For people having crashes (especially the 1 minute thing) use this FIX: I had to enable in Intelliscreen, Performance, App Boost ON and select the apps below (in my case I set Backgrounder and VoipOver3G both to ON). That fixed it, no more crashes at all, tested this on 2 iPhones.”

Well there you have it, Skype on the iPhone is amazing – sound quality sounds better than regular cell calls. I briefly tested it on T-mobile’s EDGE network (using voipover3g) and for the 30 seconds that it lasted, there was no noticable lag and quality was great! I look forward in using Skype as a regular VoIP app. Thanks for all the comments and thank you saurik for looking into this.

This post will tell you how to downgrade from 3.0 to 2.x.

iPhone 3.0 beta is out for developers. You may find that the feature list sounds great, and it does! However, this is an early beta that is for developers only. Do not download and install this version on a live, iPhone. Doing so will result in:

1) The iPhone OS will probably expire every couple of weeks. If you are out and need a phone the day it expires you are screwed. You will not be able to use the iPhone until you restore to the “upgraded” version. If the current version is “leaked” (meaning you are not a developer and got it through unofficial means), there is no guarantee you will have access to the next beta to keep the iPhone running.

2) The iPhone v3.0 OS is due out for this summer. That puts the release date to be about 3 months away still. That is a long time! The OS is not done. Why would you want to run a buggy incomplete OS on your iPhone?

3) The beta will have compatibility issues with some apps.

4) You will not be able to jailbreak your beta.

5) If you want some of the new features, read this post on how to use them on a 2.x.

6) Your 3g baseband will be updated, and you cannot go back. Yellowsn0w on 3g will also stop working. There will be no fix for this. It is permanent!

7) The 3.0 beta is likely very battery hungry and has a lot of debug symbols in use. It is likely also to use more memory than expected causing some apps to outright crash. Such is often the case with beta operating systems.

8) The 3.0 beta baseband is likely to not be very efficient and tested.

Too late? Already upgraded and don’t know what to do? You can downgrade the OS (but not the baseband) using these instructions:

iPhone v3.0 –> 2.x downgrade:

Step 1) Shut off your iPhone and then enter DFU mode. Instructions here.

Step 2) Restore your iPhone in iTunes to v2.2.1, 2.2, or such. Remember you will need to hold shift and click restore in Windows, Option-restore in OSX. If you need to locate the firmware to download, look here. If you need help on how to restore in iTunes read this guide.

Step 3) Your restore will get an error message. It should be one of these: 1011, 1013, 1015. If you get something less than 100, you did not enter DFU mode correctly and need to retry from step #1 of this guide. If you get 160x something else went wrong. The 1011, 1013, 1015 type error codes will be a failure to write the baseband and will be expected. After this, your iPhone will remain in recovery mode. Note: on 2g iPhone you probably should not get a restore error since the 2g baseband is not updated by the 3.0 update so there is no reason for the baseband update to fail.

Step 4) Windows Load quickpwn for Windows and select your device and run through the first 3 or so prompts until your iPhone resets.

Step 4) OSX:

iRecovery is a command line tool that requires you to install a library. For this, you are required to understand how to use the terminal. These instructions are *very clear* if you understand the terminal and shell commands. If you do not, this is not for you. Find a windows computer or someone that can help you. Teaching how to use the OSX term is way beyond the scope of this guide.

1. Download and extract iRecovery. This is a console app to be run in terminal. Extract it with finder.
2. Copy libusb-0.1.4.dylib to /usr/local/lib and chmod both iRecovery and the dylib to 755 using chmod 755 /usr/local/lib/libusb-0.1.4.dylib and chmod 755 iRecovery.
3. In terminal, run iRecovery -s
4. At the iRecovery prompt, type: fsboot
5. Wait, iPhone should boot. If not, type fsboot a second time.
6. ctrl-c or close the term. You are done with iRecovery.

Here is a more detailed set of instructions by Max:

1) Download iRecovery
2) Place both files on the Desktop
3) Open terminal and type ‘cd ~/Desktop’
4) Run command ‘chmod 777 libusb-0.1.4.dylib’
5) Run command ‘chmod 777 iRecovery’
6) Run command ‘defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE’
7) Run command ‘killall Finder’
8) Navigate Macintosh HD > usr > local > lib
9) Copy the file libusb-0.1.4.dylib into that folder
10) Open a new terminal
11) Drag-and-drop the iRecovery file into the Terminal so that you get a shortcut to it.
12) Append ‘-s’ to the end.
13) Run command ‘fsboot’ (i had to do it twice)
14) If the phone starts up locket once again, just run through steps 10-13 again.
15) When done, open terminal again and type ‘defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles FALSE’
16) Then run ‘killall Finder’ once again and your done!

Step 5) Run through the quickpwn guides for your operating system. Depending on which OS you have, you will need to click next a few times and your iPhone should be reset. At this point, you should continue through quickpwn to finish the jailbreak of your iPhone.

At this point, you should have a working iPhone although your baseband will still be upgraded. This is the best we can do at this point. Good luck.

As many of you know, Apple had a keynote today to announce iPhone’s next update. The list of new features are pretty impressive… if you have never jailbroken before. A list of new features can be seen at Gizmodo.

Let’s go over each feature and see how you can get it now.

iRealSMS 2.0.8 introduced a new feature called QuickSend to the iPhone – after being the inventor of QuickReply it is only logical for iRealSMS to come up first with an equally simple and slim in memory solution for sending SMS from any app. QuickSend also includes the ability to QuickCall your contacts simply by typing their [...]

The CydiaStore is open for business. There is currently only one package that you can purchase in it. I have captured the purchase process so you can all see how it works.

Cydia store packages are going to be in blue writing. when you click on one, your install button says “purchase” instead of “install”.

See the install process of the first app with screenshots.

We have updated ToneFXs to version 1.5. It is a free update for currently registered users. Not much has changed on the surface. It is under the hood where a lot of work has been done.  We had to make some major changes behind the scenes to serve as the foundation for version 2.0. These [...]

I finally brought Torrentula to Firmware Version 2.x, with the help of Mark Peterson. It’s a GUI for the command line Tool “Enhanced cTorrent” with a lot of other Features! Developers: Albert Schulz and Mark Peterson Special Thanks to: Marcel N. and Sven S. for the Graphics Features: Download you .torrent Files right to your [...]

It pleases me to announce that iSpoof 2.0 now lets you make unlimited FREE calls! You don’t even need to sign up for an account or fill out any forms. What’s the catch? When making free calls, iSpoof will play a short nine-second advertisement before your call is connected. iSpoof currently supports free calls to the US/Canada, certain parts of Europe and many other international destinations. We also have access numbers in 40+ countries so a person from France could call someone in Hawaii for free using iSpoof (if so inclined.)