| By Adam Dachis How to Make Your iPhone (or Other iOS Device) More Like Android
If you don't want to go all the way and install Android on your iOS device, you still have plenty of ways to bring the best features of Android to iOS. Jailbreaking will really let you go all the way, but it's definitely not required. Whatever your situation, here are the many ways of making your iOS device look and act more like Android. Note: If you haven't jailbroken your phone but you want to (or this post convinces you that you should), be sure to check out our always up-to-date guide to jailbreaking your iOS device. Lock Screen Widgets
An Unobtrusive Notifications Bar
MobileNotifier handles notifications similarly to the way Android does—by keeping them in an always-accessible drawer and by notifying you without interruption so you can continue doing what you're doing. When you receive a text message, for example, a little bar will pop up top to let you know that you've received a notification. You can leave it up there for as long as you need and dismiss it (or act on it) whenever you want. To see all of your notifications (or to clear them), you just need to double tap the home button and you'll see your notifications drawer (as well as multi-tasking mode). If you'd like to set up MobileNotifier (and you should), follow our instructions here. Getting Google Apps
Enabling Google Sync
Google Sync for iOS will let you push your contacts, calendars, and mail to your iOS device and it's really easy to set up. It's almost identical to setting up MobileMe, except it uses the Microsoft Exchange protocol. Google Sync requires iOS 3.0 or higher, but iOS 4.0 or higher will let you add multiple Exchange accounts (so you'll want to make sure you've upgraded if you need multiple Exchange accounts on your device). If you want to get Google Sync set up, Google has some step-by-step instructions to get you started. Once you have it up and running, you'll have your Google data pushed and syncing over-the-air to your iOS device just like you would with Android. Enabling the Wi-Fi Hotspot
Better Voice Recognition
Turn-by-Turn Navigation
The Finishing Touches Illustration by Sam Spratt.As vain and trivial as it is, one of my favorite parts about the Gingerbread release of Android is the effect you get when you turn off the phone. It looks like an old CRT television turning off, which is significantly more fun than the screen simply cutting to black. It's strange to see Apple forgo the opportunity to smoothly animate between every state of iOS, but they've somehow neglected this one. Fortunately, if you jailbreak, you can install this effect very easily. To get the effect, simply search Cydia for Got any other great ways to make your iOS device look and act more like Android? Let's hear 'em in the comments. You can follow Adam Dachis, the author of this post, on Twitter and Facebook. If you'd like to contact him, Twitter is the most effective means of doing so.
| March 7th, 2011 Top Stories |
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