Dashboard X adds widgets to jailbroken iOS devices
Widgets on iOS is a topic with a colorful history. It's not just that Apple hasn't baked it into the OS, it has actively denied huge app releases for including something that looks like a widget experience, despite previously having accepted – and then pulled – apps that outright try to provide it. What Apple and its team of ridiculously badly trained app reviewers will and will not allow is however of very little consequence to the jailbreak side off iOS. That is why Dashboard X, a new tweak available for $2 in the Cydia app store for jailbroken iOS devices, goes right ahead and gives iOS a widget system that should prove once and for all that widgets have a place even on iOS.
Dashboard X installs on your jailbroken iOS device (iPad, iPhone, iPod touch) and acts as a back end for using both already existing (jailbreak) widgets meant for the notification menu and special widgets on the home screen. You hold down an icon to enter iOS' normal edit mode with shaking icons, and then hold down again to enter DashboardX's interface. From there you can choose between the widgets installed on your device, and these can then be moved around the home screen.
The widgets generally look good and actually have a rather similar overall theme to them from what I've seen, which is actually a step up from Android's 42 billion different widget styles. The selection is rather limited though, and on the iPad at least there are issues with switching orientation as the widgets basically live in a separate layer that doesn't care where app icons are. On the iPhone it seems a bit more straight forward, but I'd say that regardless of device these widgets do perhaps live best in a screen of their own.
[iDownloadblog]
