What’s Spirit?
• Spirit is an untethered jailbreak for iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch on the latest firmwares.
• Spirit is not a carrier unlock.
• If you currently are using a tethered jailbreak, you have to restore to use Spirit. Do not upgrade if you use an unlock on an iPhone 3G or 3GS. (You can, however, restore to 3.1.2 if you have SHSH blobs for that version.)

Requirements

• Any iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch on firmware 3.1.2, 3.1.3, or 3.2.
• An activated device: one not stuck on the Connect to iTunes or Emergency Call screen.
• Any version of iTunes 9 (including 9.1.1).
• Syncing with iTunes before trying this highly recommended.

Note: On iPad, all this is still sort of beta. Some packages in Cydia, not designed for iPad, might screw up your system and require you to restore. Be careful. (And no, Cydia’s appearance is not final.)

Other Stuff

• Troubleshooting: If you’re getting error code c0000005, apparently setting compatibility mode to Windows 98 or 95 allows Spirit to work.
• Source code will be available after the inevitable update.
• Thanks to BigBoss, chpwn, chronic, MuscleNerd, OPK, planetbeing, pod2g, posixninja, saurik, westbaer, and anyone else whose name I have forgotten, for various contributions.

Download Spirit for Windows
Download Spirit for MAC OS X
Link to Developer Site

First, the design is just cool. It might remind you of the Sony Ericsson Aino, which i personally think is the most beautiful mobile ever made by Sony Ericsson, so Nokia can´t fail by adopting some style elements and mixing them with the style of the Sony Ericsson Vivaz (second best from them). The Nokia N8 will come in different modern colors, which is great. Most of the new handsets come in one or two colors, and those colors aren´t really eyecatchers. So, i guess Nokia targets the younger folks who care about design.

Second, Nokia did put a 12 Megapixel camera module into that phone, which will surely find some buyers. I personally still think (and lots of tests prove it) that a less pixel camera with a bigger lense is better, but hey, size (in that case megapixels) matters. Together with the 720p video recording, this device will be great for a whole bunch of active people who almost see their whole life through a camera lense. I don´t say that the camera is bad or anything, i just think that five or eight MP would have been more than enough. Isn´t it that most of the mobile users use their cell phone cams for snapshots? So why would i need the same MPs like on dedicated camera devices. Mobiles will not replace digicams for a long time.

Third, Nokia introduces Symbian^3 with the N8. That might be the worst thing they could do. Symbian^3 should have been skipped. App developers will have a hard time coding for Symbian^3 and they can double that when Symbian^4 is finally released. Of course, Nokia would have been blamed too, if they released another 5th edition handset, so they surely needed to take that step for not falling too far behind others, but the same way 5th edition can´t compete with Android or iPhone OS, Symbian^3 will neither. By the time the N8 is released there will be a new iPhone, and lots of new Android devices, which are, if you regard the operating system, simply better than any Symbian version.

The moderate price tag is what the N8 will make a well sold phone. Half the price of an iPhone (unlocked, without contract) and still cheaper than most of the high-end Android devices. It is announced for 370 Euro, so i bet, you will be able to grab it for about 300 Euro in no time. Without contract. Unlocked. No technical hassle with rooting or jailbreaking, just out of the box. This is quite great.

If Nokia does release the N8 with a stable firmware (not like the N97) even those who are now talking about a crappy OS (after having read an article from a prototype unit, with no final firmware at all), the N8 will sell. It isn´t a phone for the tech freaks, but the tech freaks are a minority. It is a phone for the masses, and masses will buy and like it. Design and functionality of the N8 seem to be the best Nokia ever has released, so maybe that is the model that will cover the waiting time until Symbian^4 is released, which will be Nokias last chance to get “back” (they still sell most of the smartphones, don´t they?) into the smartphone market. I for myself look forward to get my hands on one, though i would never buy any Nokia phone on release again.

What about you? Do you think Nokia will do well with the N8? Are you planning to buy one?

Nokia N8 product page (link to UK version)

In total, Ovi Maps is now free on 14 different Symbian devices and it is very nice to see, that even older ones are not forgotten yet. Maybe Nokia slowly gets the point of consumer satisfaction after getting hit hard by Android and Apple.

You like your iPhone/iPod Touch? You like the AppStore and its huge amount of apps? Paid Apps? You think it costs too much to try them all? No Problem, there is an app for that. Well, not really an app, more a method to download everything for free. Directly to your iDevice, without any legal issues. A Californian Hacker Group, known (or not known until now), called RIPLA found a way to bypass the iTunes Account login, when downloading from the AppStore. It works on ANY iDevice, it does not need to be jailbroken or be modified in any way.

As original description is quite long and the Groups credits should stay intact, i will not post it, but you can download the original PDF here.

Enjoy your Apps, this is the greatest news since the announcement of the iPhone.

You have 8 icons on the launcher screen by default: Home Timeline, Public Timeline, DMs, Mentions, Profile, Trends, Nearby and Search. If you follow lists on twitter, these are shown as icons too. If a screen is not enough for all icons, a second one is generated. You can get there by swiping, like you do in the iPhone menu. The best thing is, you can place your icons the way you want. If you want, for example, all your favorite lists on the main launcher screen, you do it the same way as if you just want one icon on the main screen. You can also easily unsubscribe lists by just deleting the icon.

The Settings screen. You have a lot of options to customize the behaviour of Tweets. First thing is the Font Size. On lowest level you can see 4-5 tweets on a page where you can only see 2 if you chose the biggest setting.

Next point is the Retweet Style. After the official introduction of Retweets, which was not the variant users have been using before, App Designer had to do something. So you can decide which way you want to retweet. Either the classical way (with comment, as your own tweet) or the official way like you do on the web version of Twitter. It is a general setting, so you can´t decide from case to case which style you want which is a bit sad.

The option Name Display is self describing, either lets you display the username or the name the user put in the Name field.

“Avatar Touch opens” has a lot of options of what should happen if you touch someones avatar. You chose if you want to see his Timeline, his Profile, his Followers, his Followings, his mentions (where he was mentioned), his Favorites or his lists. Again it is a prechosen option, selecting those by a long press on an avatar would have been better.

The function “Open to launcher“, if activated, always takes you to the launcher screen, no matter where you have left the app. If it is deactivated you start where you have left.

There is also a “Screen Rotation” setting. There are 3 options: “always”, “never” and “Compose and Web only”. Always does not really fit as the important launcher screen always is in portrait mode. That´s kind of unlogical and should be fixed, in my opinion.

Autoload Replies can be turned on and off. I don´t get the point of it but it is present there. Save Photos can be activated too, which means, if i tweet a photo it is automatically saved to the library.

The two Theme Options are just cool. First, there is a black Theme (which was taken out on my favorite client echofon) and second, you can use the themes based on time. If you want a light one through the day and a dark one in the night, you simply set which time is night and you get the right theme based on that.

The next settings are for external services, you can set your account details for Instapaper and ReadItLater to collect your links. For Image Hosts you can chose between Twitpic and yFrog. Also the url shortener can be chosen, you can use Trim.ly, U.nu, Kl.am, Is.gd and Idek.net. Why bit.ly isn´t there (best would be with account settings) is a mystery, i just hope it will be there in a future version.

The last two options are not really options. There is Manual which shows you how to use Tweets, and there is Support request where you can directly contact the Tweets team.

The timeline navigation is rather simple. By touching someones avatar you get where you decided you want to in the settings, on long press you can follow / unfollow the user, check the profile or send him a DM. Links are opnened in an internal browser. If you click on a Twitpic link, the Twitpic page gets loaded instead of downloading the image, like other clients do. If you long press a tweet with reply you see the original tweet. That´s quite nice but it would be better to see the whole conversation (if there are more replies). Short press on a tweet shows the options Email, Favorite, Translate, Retweet and Reply. That´s well done as everything happens directly in the timeline.

When composing a tweet you have the options Shrink tweet, Add Photo, Shrink urls, @dd user. Shrink Tweet shortens the input text by deleting letters (ths instead of this for example). Strange option, but it is there. The others are self describing.

Before the video, here my final statement: Tweets is a well thought twitter client with smaller points which aren´t perfect but could be in no time if the developper wants to. The handling and the menu transitions are great, great enough to stand in one line with the “big” ones. I will use Tweets a few more days and then, as it looks now, ban echofon from my iPhoone. The price of $ 2.99 is worth what you get. Definitely Tweets is not just another twitter client but a real alternative to Tweetie and Co.

Download YouTube 2.4.4 Installation file

As mentioned, the feature list is huge. But that alone doesn´t automatically make a good app. The app must work the way we want it to. That´s what Nightstand Weather Clock does and it does it very well. The menu and options are well structured, the look and behaviour is what you expect from being a menu on the iPhone. Nothing you can do wrong there but a lot you can customize easily. Never wake up again by a alarm tone that causes a heart attack instead of pleasing your ears in that most sad moment of the day. Wake up happily with the tune of your liking and check the weather directly from bed.

The features:

Alarms:

Sleep Timer:

Clock and Weather:

Wallpaper and Display:

No matter if used on the desk in your office or at the side of your bed, Nightstand Weather Clock makes your phone an eye-catcher. Especially the slideshow- and weather-feature makes it worth looking at it. If you use it together with a LayBag you will have a perfect nightstand alarm clock. The price of $ 0,99 is very low compared to what you get there.

Download Nightstand Weather Clock (iTunes Link)

I really hope, that Skype fixes that. I like clients that are doing ONE job, but do it good. I don´t need Nimbuzz or Fring, which have several services included, if i only want to use Skype. From what you can read around the web, the client does its job quite well, you can use your Skype credits and stuff, so quite a client i would like to use on the N97 which it was promised for…

Did you already try the Skype app on your 5th or 3rd Edition Device? What do you think about it?

To download (free of course) just point your mobile browser to http://www.skype.com/m.

Shortly after making the whole code of the most popular smartphone OS opensource, @Symbian started a twitter campaign to give away even more. Yesterday they started with giving away 2GB Flash Drives with the whole source code of Symbian on it, but what will it be today? Just give them a shout with hashtag #symbiangives to find out. A grand total of prizes worth $ 5.500 will be given away until February 19th, for full details just visit their giveaway site.

I think most people can´t imagine what a huuuuge thing it is to make a whole OS open source. People can do with it what they want, port it to devices they want, change it the way they want. I just hope that the mobile device manufacturers take the chance to make the best mobile OS ever and don´t try to cripple it down to nothing.