Would You Jailbreak iPhone for a 5 Row Keyboard?
9:38 pm, February 25th, 2009, Lonnie Lazar
The software keyboard on the iPhone has been seen as a dealbreaker for some consumers from the very beginning.
For example, when I interviewed blogger/developer Erica Sadun for a MacLife piece when the original iPhone came out, she told me under no circumstance could she take a phone without a tactile QWERTY keyboard seriously as a tool for business.
Many others have complained at various times about the inexact science/art of using the iPhone’s touchscreen keyboard and I must admit, as much as I love my iPhone, I avoid using it for tasks that require a lot of typing.
Now, however, there’s a simple little jailbreak app that takes a least some of the pain out of using the soft keyboard by adding a 5th row, giving users access to numbers without requiring navigation to a sub-menu. Access to symbols is easier, too — just hit the “shift” key and the numbers turn to symbols.
Say what you will about jailbreaking the iPhone, the “outlaw” development community keeps coming up with solutions that many an iPhone user has pined for since Apple’s first smartphone came to market in the summer of 2007.
Via Gizmodo
Posted by Lonnie Lazar in News | Comment on this article
“Say what you will about jailbreaking the iPhone,”
The only thing I have to say about it, is if they can get it to that jail breaking is just as easy as syncing a new update to the iPhone and it works right away after every Apple update, then I just might start doing it.
But when I know that it could be weeks before the newest update for iPhones is broken and my wife is screaming at me about some new update which I can’t have because I want my iPhone jail breaked, that just isn’t going to work.
So why not jail break hers too? Right, and tell her she can’t download and install the newest update? You aren’t married if you even think of asking a question like that. Or you won’t be for very long.
OlsonBW, on February 26th, 2009 at 7:17 am
@OlsonBW: the last few jailbreaks have appeared the same day that Apple released the firmware update.
OP: That row of keys is fine and all, but what I really want is period and comma keys… I’m a big fan of ellipses, and using commas to turn what would otherwise be several sentences into one run on sentence… question mark and single and double quotes would be nice too, seriously, who types “^” more often than “?” anyway?
nak, on February 26th, 2009 at 2:53 pm
There are many reasons why to jailbreak your iphone other than a 5 row keyboard. The apps are much better on cydia and installer. Plan and simple.
Helen Grinth, on February 28th, 2009 at 9:22 pm