Best iPhone Hacks

Every day people are finding more and more ingenious ways of widening their reliance on their iPhone, not always with permission from Apple. With those hardworking few striving towards making their device do crazier and crazier things, it’s incredibly difficult to resist trying out some of the hacks released to the internet. With that said, there are more than a few to choose from and it’s pretty daunting to somebody new to the whole thing, so we at AKAScope have taken it upon ourselves to list, in no particular order, sixteen of the very best iPhone hacks you’ll come across.

#15 – SMS Remote Car Start

Tired of using keys to get your motor running? Perhaps you’re worried about safety and want to be able to put a password in to block would-be thieves from stealing your beloved car? While it’s not the sort of thing you are likely to be able to set up in ten minutes, there’s an iPhone hack out there that will allow you to start your car by text message, from where ever you are in the world.

Created by Will O’ Brien, this hack uses a few pieces of code and an old jailbroken iPhone, as well as a few other readily available bits and pieces. For more information, including schematics, you can real Will’s instructions on his website. Similar hacks are being used to remotely lock doors using Siri and for the ability to remotely open your garage door.

#14 – Solar Panel Charger

It’s a beautiful day; the birds are singing, the bees are buzzing and you’d like nothing more than to lie down in the grass and listen to your iPhone music collection. But what’s this? The battery is low and your perfect day could be coming to an end before it even began.

Thankfully, you brought your home-made solar charger with you and you’ll be able to lie back in the sunshine and relax. It’s not all that difficult to make and, if you’re really creative, you can modify the instructions to power more meaty applications.

#13 – Motion Sensor Emails

If you live in a particularly crime-ridden area, you’d be forgiven for wanting to know that your family, your home and your possessions are safe when you leave the house. The obvious thing to do is to set up a security camera, but short of watching for 24/7 that’s not going to do a great deal to help ease your mind (although opportunity to watch the neighbourhood cats do their thing will quadruple).

How about going one step further? Every time there’s motion on the camera, you’ll receive a message on your iPhone and you can rush from work and save the day, possibly from a burglar or even more possibly from a piece of rubbish floating in the wind. You have to love paranoia.

#12 – Robot Rock Band

Loving robots and Harmonix’s Rock Band separately can be fairly enjoyable, but it just can’t beat the experience of combining the two. Somebody made a little robot to play Rock Band on the iPhone and that’s pretty damn awesome. Now if only they can make robots to play the console game with me, I won’t need to continue my quest to go outside and meet people.

#11 – Water Level tests

Sure, you could set a reminder to yourself, something along the lines of “water plants” and it’d take all of a few seconds, but what’s the point in going for the simple route? In one of my favourite examples of over-complication, Chris Styles put together a device for measuring the water level for his Christmas tree. When the water dropped below a certain level, a message was sent to his iPhone letting him know it was time to top things up.

It’s green fingers for the 21st century, and you have to love it.

#10 – QWERTY Number Row

This is a little pedestrian compared to some of the more mouth watering stuff above, but it’s more than a little bit useful. Having to switch between ABC and numbers isn’t all that difficult, until you start typing more than usual and you realise just how annoying it is. Adding that extra bar isn’t too hard and makes everybody’s life that more easier but you need to jailbreak your iPhone if it’s something you want to apply.

You can see an older guide here, although I strongly suggest checking out the comment section for hints and tips for more recent iOS versions.

#9 – Trumpet Amp

This one isn’t so much an iPhone hack as it is a trumpet hack (a field in which little progress is made and yet they’re always tooting their own horns – thank you).Christopher Locke decided that he didn’t want any old electronic dock and took to making his own take on the device using instruments designed solely for amplification.

Sure, it doesn’t sound as pristine as the latest $1000 stereo system, but it’s a hell of a talking point and has a great deal less impact on your electricity bill. Christopher has a selection for sale on his website and if you have some spare cash and want to buy something unusual, here’s your chance.

#8 – 3G Unrestrictor

There are limitations with what you can do while out and about with your iPhone. Using your 3G comes in handy for certain things, but for other things it’s nothing but a hassle. This is where the 3G Unrestrictor comes in, tricking your phone into thinking that the 3G internet is a wi-fi connection, letting you use things like Facetime without the need to be connected to a router.

#7 – Tethering

On the other hand, iPhone tethering allows you to use the internet connection on your phone with other devices such as laptops or iPod Touch. Using something like MyWi, you can turn your iPhone into a portable router. It’s a nice alternative to a wireless dongle and it might just save you a few pennies as well.

#6 – QuickDo

QuickDo allows you to start applications using certain gestures. Whether you slide quickly in a certain direction or tap for a certain amount of time will let your iPhone know which app you’d like to run. If you’re looking for one of those things that will probably save you very little time but will take ages to set up (and you’ll feel like a pro once you’ve got it down), this is the one for you.

#5 – Emulators

The idea of playing Final Fantasy VII on an iPhone, no matter how terrible the touch controls might be, is a pretty fantastic idea. With plenty of guides and download links on the net, setting up an emulator is as easy as hitting Google and taking your pick, but playing retro games on the go (and for free) is probably the hack that has gotten the most attention from the gaming community.

If you can name a console or computer system from the last 30 or so years, there’s probably someone working on getting you your favourite games on the iPhone.

#4 – Spring Flash

Spring Flash might not be the most exciting thing in the world, but it’s worth the time to install just in case. Imagine there’s a power cut, pitch black darkness. Spring Flash let’s you shake your iPhone to power up the flash to use as a makeshift flash light.

Other possible uses include hailing alien ships, blinding potential attackers and warning incoming ships of dangerous rocks – the iPhone light is just THAT powerful.

#3 – Syncing your iPhone to multiple computers

Multitunes is a cool new app for jailbroken iPhones which allows you to have more than one library on your device. For those of you that love everything perfectly organized, this might seem like something you could use to separate certain genres of songs.

It also has the advantage of letting you sync your iPhone no matter where you are. So long as each individual computer is synced to a certain library, you won’t be limited by only having access on a single computer.

#2 – LockInfo

Somewhere at Apple, somebody is sitting, head in hand, trying to work out why on earth nobody in their R&D department had thought something like this could be useful.LockInfo offers info on the lock screen, opposed to nothing. It means that you can check if you have missed calls, voice messages, the weather, Twitter, RSS feeds and other services without unlocking your iPhone.

It might only save a few seconds every time you check, but it makes a world of difference.

#1 – qTwitter

What’s better than being able to access Twitter? Being able to access Twitter quickly, of course. qTwitter offers a series of features designed to speed up your social networking experience, hyping itself as the most efficient way of updating Facebook and Twitter. That might sound like something of an oxymoron, but the developers of qTwitter think differently.

Set up in seconds, sliding down from the top of the screen gives you access to an easy-to-use interface where you just type and go, so you’re never too far away from discovering what the most important people in your life had for breakfast.

Bonus -  Times Square Video Screen Hack

This turned out to be a promotion for the film Limitless and not a true iPhone hack. Despite that, it makes this list because of the sheer reaction people had to it. From analysis of the video footage itself to people trying to work out exactly how it could be done, it was an idea that people wanted to be a reality. It might not have been an actual thing, but it was enough to become one of the best known iPhone hacks going – even if it wasn’t.

It’s also famous for the record amount of time it took for somebody to suggest using such a device to broadcast pornography to unsuspecting innocents – 6.3 seconds.