When Apple released the iPhone 5 three months ago, jailbreak hackers were sent back to the grindstone. Like a new version of iOS, new Apple hardware almost always kills the current jailbreak. It’s a ruthless game of cat and mouse.
Has the iPhone 5 been jailbroken? Sort of. A picture of what looked like a jailbroken iPhone 5 spread like wildfire several months ago, but that’s only part of the story. An iPhone 5 jailbreak is being worked on, and good progress is being made. For jailbreakers, now is the time to have hope.
3-D printing: It’s just like knitting, right, only more high-tech? No? OK, fine. At least I tried.
But you know what really is high-tech and just like knitting? These iPhone cases, which are 3-D printed in the shape of knitting. Try to spoil that one for me, you grumpy old sourpuss you. Just try…
It’s been almost a month since Apple began shipping the iPhone 5, and we’re still waiting for some of the biggest apps to be updated for its larger 4-inch display. Fortunately, as of today, eBay and Skype are not longer on that list.
Monolith's new wood skins for the iPhone 5 are every bit as good as the replacement backs they made for the iPhone 4... and that's saying something.
I like my iPhones in wood. Part of it’s to satisfy my Danish mid-century pretensions, but as I’ve said before, there’s something perfect about making a smartphone after wood. Wood implies an intimacy that metal or plastic doesn’t — that it was hand-crafted with you in mind — which makes it a natural (but not practical) material for a smartphone, which is the gadget with which most of us have our most personal relationships.
Back when I had an iPhone 4S, I replaced the glass back of my device with a replacement teak back by Monolith and never looked back. Not only was it more practical and more unique than the iPhone 4S’s easily shattered glass back, but it felt just sublime in the hand.
When the iPhone 5 came out, I was eager to know from Monolith whether they’d be doing replacement wood backs for Apple’s latest handsets. The response I got was a disappointment: while it was possible to replace the back of the iPhone 4/4S by just popping out two screws, it was impossible to replace the iPhone 5 ‘s back plate in the same way. The best Monolith could do, they said, was adhesives. My heart sank. Surely, wood stickers you slap on the back of your iPhone 5 would just suck.
They don’t. Defying both my expectations and experiences with similar products, Monolith’s wood iPhone 5 skins are every bit as amazing as their wood iPhone 4 backs. They’re beautifully made, wonderfully packaged, easy to apply, feel rich and luscious to the touch and are so thin as to make you have a hard time believing they can shave a tree this thin.
It looks like Apple’s iPhone 5 supply is finally catching up with demand. Last week shipping times for all iPhone 5 models from Apple’s website were listed as 3-4 weeks, but that’s now improved to 2-3 weeks.
While iPhone 5 supply at Apple Stores across the country has been fairly solid, Apple has limited the amount of stock available online. Shorter shipping times for online orders means that Apple is more confident that they are able to meet the overall demand for the iPhone 5.
Our friend Chris over at Braeburn Acoustics had a couple of new iPhone 5s laying about their shop, so they thought, “hey, what would it look like if you made a Fraken-iPhone 5 by smashing together a white iPhone 5 with a black one?”
The results are what you see in the picture above. The white antenna band on the black display face looks pretty awesome, but we wouldn’t recommend doing your own experimental surgeries on the iPhone 5 unless you’re a highly skilled mad scientist.
We think the design of the iPhone 5 is pretty stinkin’ gorgeous. Only problem is that its anodized aluminium casing has a tendency to scratch up very easy.
Once you’ve accrued a few scratches on your iPhone 5 you might mourn the loss of its brand new look, or you could just scratch it up even more to make it look totally awesome. It sounds counterintuitive, but that’s what one YouTube user did and the results are pretty awesome.
Take a look at the video below to see the result –
The iPhone 5 is less than two months old, and Apple is already preparing to build its successor.
Following the supply problems Apple has faced with the iPhone 5, the Cupertino company is reportedly woking to ensure that it is better prepared for the iPhone 5S by trialling production way ahead of the handset’s public release. According to one Chinese newspaper, it will begin production of up to 100,000 iPhone 5S units this December.
When you order an iPhone 5 from Apple’s website the current shipment timeline is 3-4 weeks. Foxconn’s chairman Terry Gou recently said that they’re having a hardtime keeping up with the demand because the iPhone 5 is the most complex gadget they’ve ever assembled.
It doesn’t sound like Apple is able to catch up with the demand for the iPhone 5 in a timely manner, but one analyst at BTIG Research says that supply of the iPhone 5 is “almost in balance.”
It seems to me that the least vulnerable part of your iPhone 5 is the rear panel: The glass windows at the top and the bottom are tucked away, and the rest is aluminum, which might scratch or dent but it will never shatter (unless you freeze it in nitrogen first).
But if you think covering the tough rear panel with a thick plywood coating is a good idea, then the SkateBack might be just what you’re looking for. It’s a candy-colored cover refashioned from old skateboard decks.
