I just tried one of the coolest new jailbreak tweaks that I’ve tested in a while. It’s called Heads Up Display Mode, and it allows you to mirror your iPhone’s screens so that it reflects an accurate image in your car’s windshield.
After installing the tweak, simply head over to Activator’s preferences and assign Heads Up Display Mode to an Activator gesture. Once invoked, the iPhone’s screen will mirror so that it will accurately reflect your screen on a reflective surface.
The reflective surface could be anything, a mirror even, but the most obvious application is your car’s windshield. As you might have guessed, I couldn’t wait to go out to my car and try this out.
Once I got into my car, I simply invoked Heads Up Display Mode, placed the iPhone in a good spot on my dash, and I was instantly able to see the iPhone’s screen reflected in the windshield. Obviously this was a quick test, and I didn’t have the most ideal mounting surface and/or setup. But I was impressed by how well it worked.
Granted, my car was parked in the garage, so the lighting was very kind to the HUD. In direct sunlight or even in daylight, the results might differ significantly. You may find that you’ll need to max your iPhone’s brightness while using the tweak.
I’m going to continue to play around with Heads Up Display Mode and see what I find. If nothing else, it’s an awesome proof of concept that such a thing could work given the proper setup, mounting surface, brightness, lighting conditions, etc.
Some popular GPS manufactures already implement similar tech into their devices, allowing users to project GPS information right on the windshield. But having a full handheld computer displaying on the screen is quite a bit more exciting than a GPS.
What do you think?