Anyone who’s used a jailbroken iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad, knows the reason for jailbreaking very well – to bring much more customization, personalization and freedom to your device. You gain a lot of options, features and uses that Apple otherwise deems unsafe, and so on and so forth. On a personal note, I favor jailbreak tweaks far more than jailbreak apps, the main reason being the fact that it saves me from the hassle of dealing with yet-another-user-interface. Tweaks that add a missing feature to an existing app hold much more appeal.
On the same note, last week we featured two simple Cydia tweaks that allow users to upload photos and other files from iOS’ native Photos and Mobile Safari apps. The Cydia tweaks that I’m featuring today are similar; they enhance the native Maps application. Google Maps offer a very capable package, and both these tweaks add two pieces of useful functionality to provide a more comprehensive navigation experience. Read on after the break for more details.
The tweaks in question are Speed for Maps and Compass for Maps, both coming from the developer Evan Coleman. Available on the BigBoss repository for free, the tweaks add a speedometer and a compass to iPhone’s native Maps application, respectively (see screenshot above).
While adding an excellent and useful option to Maps, both the tweaks lack in configurable options despite adding individual entries to the Extensions portion of the Settings app. For the compass, all you get is a toggle switch to enable or disable the feature, and a slider to set its transparency.
The speedometer gets a little better endowed with the ability to select the unit of speed, available options being miles/hour, feet/sec, kilometer/hour, meter/sec and knots. A toggle to turn the tweak on and off, as well as a transparency meter are also present.
When enabled, iPhone’s Maps application displays two black circles near the bottom of the screen, indicating the direction your device is facing and the speed at which you’re travelling. In my tests, the speedometer was fairly accurate and tallied 98% of the time with my vehicle’s speedometer. For compass, since it utilizes the device’s built-in compass, the tweak will work only with iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4 (as of now). Some friends of mine have had a successful run on the iPad 2 as well.
Both Speed for Maps and Compass for Maps require at least iOS 4.0 or later to work. They have also been tested with iOS 5 beta 5, but not advisable for usage since stability cannot be guaranteed for a beta release.
Evan Coleman’s latest tweaks make the Maps app only more useful and a better suited companion for an average navigation user. While they can’t replace dedicated platforms, the evolutionary trend is promising. Let us know what you think.
Also, check out our Top 50 iPhone Apps Recommendations if you’re looking for a navigation app for your iPhone.
