One of the pitfalls of Apple iOS is the lack of a good notification system. By notification system, I mean a panel where one can view all their notifications in a consolidated panel, much like the notification panel of Android OS.
Instead, we have a system that, with every pushed notification, you get a popup alert, a sound and a badge on the application icon which presents itself as a useless system once you dismiss the popup alert. Once the popup is gone, the risk of forgetting the notification opens up.
LockInfo, by David Ashman, picks up where Apple slacks by providing us with a very useful notification panel that can be set as your lockscreen, your first Springboard page and/or a panel activated by Activator (known as InfoShade). The latter provides Android-like functionality with a panel available from any screen, whether from within an open app or not…
LockInfo’s Plugins API allows users to extend functionality to provide even more information on the notification panel. It currently ships with 5 stock plugins so you can customize panel with the information you want:
- Mail – Display email notifications.
- Calendar – Display calendar event notifications.
- SMS – Display SMS notifications.
- Phone – Display missed call and voice mail notifications.
- Push Notifications – Display all pushed notifications from apps that support push notifications.
In addition to the stock plugins, there are a few other plugins available in the Cydia Store to provide more information with more on the way.
LockInfo is packed with options and is fully configurable via the device’s Settings.app and has support for Retina display (iPhone 4 only), status bar icons and screen rotation as provided by SBRotator and LSRotator.
The developer works very hard and has a very frequent release cycle for his beta testers. While average users should use the stable release, anyone is welcome to add the developer’s beta repo (http://iphone.ashman.com/beta) to Cydia to access the beta versions.
LockInfo is a commercial app available in the Cydia Store that comes with a price tag of $4.99, a free 14 day trial and licenses for up to 3 devices.
Personally, this is one of my favorite jailbreak apps and one of five reasons I jailbreak my devices. What about you? On the fence about buying LockInfo? Do you use LockInfo? What do you think about it?