If you're familiar with Android apps like CellFinder, you've got a good idea for what this is -- and the name "Signal" is a pretty accurate representation, too. Basically,
iPhone Dev Team member planetbeing has thrown together a neat little app that shows you signal strengths of your phone's connections to nearby cell towers along with their position relative to you (if the positions can be determined), an especially welcome utility considering that you can't access Apple's old "field test mode" in iOS 4. Our favorite part, though, has to be planetbeing's desire to turn this from mere information into entertainment -- and to hopefully take the edge off your pain and deep-set resentment over the signal strength and call dropping issues in your
iPhone 4 -- by adding a mode where your goal is to get the signal to drop completely, at which point you'll hear the voice of Spock announce a Vulcan death grip. Who knew an engineering defect could be so much fun? If you're jailbroken -- or you're willing to jailbreak -- you can score Signal in Cydia for a five-spot. Follow the break for video of the app in action.
[Thanks, Pytey]
posted August 9th 2010 2:55PM
Funny appi wish i could do this but i dont know anyone with at&t
kinda makes me want and iP4 lol
hahahah hilarious. but that said it reminds me that I should totally gladly give away five small ones in order to thank planetbeing for being awesome and giving us ultrasn0w!
and also what looks like a pretty fun app lol.
Who knew just holding your iphone4 could be so entertaining. See, jobs knew what he was doing all along.
I bought this app mostly as a thanks to the jailbreak team. It's got some bugs, like the current location not always being accurate, but the towers always seem to be marked in the right location. What would make this a killer app is if the app collected info on the user's phone type (3G, 3GS, 4) current position (GPS, inside/outside), all the towers around them and their signal strength; then share all that info with all users within the app or on a webpage. With enough data, we could create a real-time "coverage" map.
One funny note, I have several towers nearby but my phone will often connect to a tower about a half a mile away because it has a better signal. I wonder why? Better line-of-sight?
@bernardino I thought with the iPhone 4 it's supposed to connect to the tower that has the most bandwidth available rather than the closest tower.
Seems like a cool enough app, but 5 bucks is a little steep for something that would normally be 99 cents or even free on the app store. I know the developer put a lot of blood sweat and tears into his or her precious app, but I just don't see that much value in it.
Speaking of which, I've noticed that more and more cydia apps are not free. Not only are they not free, but the paid apps are really expensive!
I'll wait patiently until someone else comes out with the same thing, except free.
I bought it as a donation of sorts to the jailbreak team... also bought some other stuff from cydia. They don't do it for the money, but it's great to see them keep doing it. I love my jailbroken iP4!
This exact app, called Antennas I believe, is free on Android.
Just FYI...
@MRCUR You beat me to it!
Yup yup Antennas...free...Android...check!!