Apple has done amazing things to bring the iPhone’s native apps inline with the latest design trends, but the Phone app is starting to show its age. In fact, it hasn’t received any aesthetic facelifts in quite a while, which is why the jailbreak community often tries to make its own improvements.
A new jailbreak tweak called Novus by iOS developer nicho1asdev is one such improvement, as it modernizes the iPhone’s Phone app so that it actually looks and feels like it belongs on a current version of iOS.
So what do you get with Novus? As you’ll notice right off the bat, the tweak eliminates the tab-based interface of yore and replaces it with a more unified user interface where everything you need is right in front of you at first glance.
The interface combines your recent calls list toward the middle with your favorite contacts at the top and a search bar at the bottom that you can pull up on you reveal your full contact list. In the navigation bar are two different buttons including a voicemail button to check missed messages and a phone button that summons the dial pad.
Novus fully-supports 3D Touch/Haptic Touch on supported options, such as your contacts. When you do this, you will get contact methods suggested for you based on what you’ve saved for that contact, such as calling them, FaceTiming them or texting/iMessaging them. If you’ve saved third-party contact methods using other apps, those may be suggested instead.
Novus doesn’t come with any options to configure, so it’s one of those ‘what you see is what you get’ tweaks, and we’re fine with that. The developer has clearly put thought into the features they think you’ll use the most and incorporated them into a do-it-all interface that doesn’t have the archaic tab-based interface that we’ve been looking at for more than a decade.
If you’re interested in giving Novus a try for yourself, then it’s available for $2.49 from the Havoc repository via your favorite package manager app. If you already own BigSurCenter, then the developer gives you 20% off Novus, which knocks the price down to $2.00. The tweak supports jailbroken iOS 12, 13, 14, 15, and 16 devices.
Do you plan to upgrade your iPhone’s native Phone app with the new Novus jailbreak tweak? Let us know in the comments section down below.