How to make your data allowance last longer with Onavo

Posted by nkbish0p at 21:22 0

Tweet With most iPhone price plans or contracts now offering "capped" data plans as opposed to the unlimited ones previously offered, it can be very frustrating not being able to use the data services on your phone when you reach your limit, or having to pay for extra data. Today's app allows your data allowance to last for up to 80% longer, and like most of my favourite apps, it's also totally free.

 

The first thing to notice about Onavo is its awesome icon. Totally random, yet in my opinion very cool and nice looking. But that's irrelevant, so onto what the app actually does. Once installed on your device, Onavo prompts you to install a new "profile" onto your phone. Once this is done, all of the data you use on your phone over a mobile internet connection (not WiFi) is routed through Onavos servers and compressed. This has two big benefits. Firstly, it means that the speed of your data connection should improve substantially and secondly each thing requiring data that you do on your phone will use less data than before. This means you will be able to use more of the data features on your phone that you would be able to without the app, without going over your monthly limit. This could also be very useful when abroad, where some carriers charge you per megabyte used. Using this app would use less megabytes and result in smaller charges.

A nice feature of the app is that you install it, set it up and forgot about it and it just works. Setting up is easy, you just need to install the profile when prompted and hit the "turn savings on" button. Once this is done, even when the app is quit all of your data will still go through Onavos servers and be compressed.

The app also offers a statistics section, which is great if you enjoy looking at statistics or would like to know where most of your data allowance is going. It also lets you know how much less data you have used by using the app than you would have used if you had not.

Unfortunately the app does not compress YouTube videos or other live streams though the developers say that they are working on this and it may be provided in a future update.

The app is totally free, so probably worth a shot even if you think you don't need its awesome features.

Had a go with this app? Let me know in the comments below!

Grooveshark - A music streaming service for iOS

Posted by nkbish0p at 20:43 0

Tweet

One of the features many people wish to be added to iOS is the ability to stream music. For those unfamiliar with this, streaming music is when rather than keeping music files on your iPhone, they are stored externally and you listen to them over the internet. This has two great advantages; firstly you don't have to buy any of your music as streaming legally allows you to listen to whatever you like, provided somebody has uploaded it. Secondly, it frees up space on your iDevice as you don't need to keep any music files on your device.

I'll start by saying that there are tonnes of ways to stream music to your iPhone and the most popular option is Spotify. However, I'm not going to be reviewing Spotify, rather, I am going to be reviewing what I consider to be the best alternative, Grooveshark.

Before you try the app, I suggest you try the website. It's great. Unlike Spotify you don't need to download any software (great if you are using a computer that isn't your own) and you also don't need to make an account (great if you can't be bothered with things like that).

But this review is for the iOS app for Grooveshark so i'll get back to that. Firstly, it is important to note that bizarrely the app is available in Cydia only and not the official App Store due to Apple having rejected it. So before you try it out you will need to jailbreak your device. Don't let this put you off however, Grooveshark is one of the best designed Cydia applications I have ever seen and looks nicer than many of the apps available in the "real" App Store.

 

The app comes with a 14 day (or 50 song) trial. This is great, if, like me you aren't really sure if you need a streaming client for your iPhone. After the trial, the service costs $9 per month (abut £5.50 today, which is £4.50 cheaper per month than Spotify).

I tested it out by searching for some pretty obscure music and the app didn't let me down (though if you do have an issue with finding something, please let me know!). The app also lets you download songs to your phone for offline listening, which is great if you are going somewhere without adequate coverage and don't wish to lose access to your music.

There are the half-standard sharing options including Facebook and Twitter if you wish to let other people know what you are listening to. You can also set "favourite" tracks and see the most listened to tracks. You can also make playlists.

Sound quality is better than I expected, though it may not be enough to please audiophiles and can be adjusted between high and low bitrate in the app settings.

In summary, if you want to try streaming music on your phone, this is a great place to start. The 14 day trial should be a long enough period to get a feel for the service and after this period the monthly subscription of less than £6 makes this service great value for money. For a jailbreak app the quality is far beyond average and I would not let the fact that this app is Cydia only put you off!

9/10

Thanks for reading!

Jailbreak information for iOS 4.3.3 added

Posted by nkbish0p at 22:17 0

Tweet The jailbreak information for the latest iOS firmware, iOS 4.3.3 has been added to the jailbreak page. The method of how to complete the jailbreak can also be seen in this post here.

Thanks for reading.

My (current) favourite iOS twitter client

Posted by nkbish0p at 15:56 0

Tweet Firstly, sorry for the lack of posts recently, due to impending exams I may post less frequently across this month but normal service will return in June.


If you use twitter, you are probably already aware that there are a wealth of "clients" that you can use in order to access your twitter account. Compared to Facebook, for which pretty much everybody seems to use the same default Facebook application, on twitter many people prefer to use applications other than the default official Twitter client. Personally I tend to change between clients on iOS quite frequently but at the moment I am settled with a great new Twitter app, Tweetbot.

Tweetbot
£1.19
get it here

 

The first thing that drew me to Tweetbot was its fantastic interface. It looks brilliant compared to most of the other twitter clients that either use the default iOS style theme or try and create their own style which mostly ends up looking pretty much horrendous (referring to Tweetdeck in particular). Tweetbot has a simple and clean layout that is a refreshing change for the somewhat stale appearance of iOS after 4 iterations. For me to consider an app to be great it must be wasy to use and have a fantastic appearance and in my opinion Tweetbot ticks both of these boxes.

Secondly, Tweetbot adds (or makes easier to utilise) features that are missing from other twitter clients, or that are present but much less obvious or easy to use. For example, if you flick your finger to the left whilst holding down on a tweet Tweetbot will show tweets related to the one selected such as replies to that particular tweet. I think this is a great way to access this feature and not all Twitter clients even include this functionality. Flicking to the right in the same way shows the conversation preceding the tweet selected.

Tweetbot also includes a translate feature which is useful if you want to understand users posting in a foreign language, which can be fairly common when reading top trending tweets.

Apart from this, Tweetbot offers the standard set of features associated with Twitter applications including support for multiple twitter accounts. One neat feature is the ability to set one of your "lists" as a default timeline, which is an uncommon feature in iOS twitter apps.

Unfortunately there are several things that Tweetbot does not support but mostly these things don't concern me (though they may concern you). Primarily, Tweetbot does not support push notifications which may seem silly for a non-free twitter client. This would be a deal breaker for me, but if you install "Boxcar", a free application from the app store this will enable twitter push notifications.

The app also does not support a landscape keyboard which I didn't even notice until I read it in the reviews. I very rarely bother using  the portrait keyboard as I much prefer the landscape one but for those of you that prefer a landscape keyboard this is being added in the next app update. "Twitlonger" style services are also not supported, this being down to the choice of the developers and this functionality seems unlikely to be added in in the future.

In summary this app is by far my favourite Twitter client and has taken the place of Echofon and the official Twitter app for me on my iPhone. I can understand that paying for a twitter app that doesn't offer a whole lot more functionality than the free alternatives may cause some people to look elsewhere and this has been reflected in my rating. If you don't mind spending a little cash though, I highly recommend giving this app a try!

7/10