Sync

FreeSync Allows You to Use Your iPhone While Syncing With iTunes

Jeff Benjamin ∙ February 9, 2011

If the story sounds familiar, that's because it is. You want to be able to use your iPhone while synching with iTunes, so what do you do?

You jailbreak your iPhone, and install one of two tweaks: Synchronicity or FreeSync. Both tweaks do a good job at allowing you chug away at your iPhonely duties while syncing with iTunes, and both are similarly priced.

With that in mind, which jailbreak tweak should you go with? We've already covered Synchronicity -- a tweak that made it into our Top 10 Jailbreak Apps for 2010 list -- so lets look at the flipside of the coin with FreeSync...

iPhone Hardware and Accessories from Macworld Expo

Alex Heath ∙ Updated November 12, 2018

The Macworld Expo is a giant technology conference that takes place once a year in California. Unlike the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Macworld is totally focused on everything Apple. The entire conference is devoted to Macs, iPhones, iPads, iPods, hardware, accessories, etc. Journalists and Apple pundits meet at Macworld to discuss the state of Apple's technology and speculate about what is to come.

Hardware is a huge part of Macworld, with more and more attention increasingly being given to iOS hardware and accessories. The guys over at Mac Life posted a great gallery of some iOS hardware/accessories that stood out at Macworld this year. Here are a couple highlights from their findings...

Where is Wi-Fi Sync 2.0 for iPhone?

Guest Author ∙ Updated April 2, 2018

Back in the fall of 2010, we were promised a beta of the new version of Wi-Fi Sync by December. Here we are in 2011, and still the awesome wireless iTunes syncing app is nowhere to be seen.

In a few recent tweets, the developer has announced that the app is still in development and should be available in two to three weeks. He also mentioned what some of these awesome features are, and from what I can tell, it will definitely be worth the wait...

The 10 Best App Store Apps of 2010

Alex Heath ∙ Updated February 21, 2018

The App Store has never been a very quiet place. 2010 was no exception; thousands upon thousands of new apps were submitted to the App Store. Most of them aren't worth mentioning, but there have been some exceptional apps that have risen to the forefront of what the App Store has had to offer throughout the year 2010.

We've covered a lot of App Store apps this year on iDB, with the goal of keeping our readers in the know.

Now, we’d like to take some time to reflect on our favorite App Store apps of 2010. Being included on this list doesn’t necessarily mean the app was released in 2010, it just means that it was amongst our most utilized of this year. Drumroll, please…

Synchronicity 2.0 Released, Better Than Ever

Alex Heath ∙ December 29, 2010

Synchronicity is a popular jailbreak mod that allows you to use your iPhone while it's syncing with iTunes. Instead of being stuck with a lock screen while your iPhone is syncing with your computer, Synchronicity allows you to run apps, make calls, etc. Basically anything is fair game, except for the iPod app (to prevent data corruption with iTunes).

This mod has been a favorite of ours since it was released back in August; it even made it pretty far up our "Top 10 Jailbreak Apps for 2010" list. If you don't have Synchronicity, you should.

Synchronicity was recently updated to 2.0 status. The mod was already super lightweight and unobtrusive, but 2.0 makes it even better with a design tweak and some enhancements...

Wi-Fi Sync 2.0 Coming Soon, Promises Syncing Over 3G

Alex Heath ∙ Updated January 24, 2016

Wi-Fi Sync is a $9.99 app in Cydia that syncs your iOS device over wi-fi with iTunes. You can read more about the app here. A couple of months ago the developer of Wi-Fi sync tweeted that he was working on Wi-Fi Sync 2.0, which would include wireless syncing over 3G and VPN. Yesterday he announced the beta signup for Wi-Fi Sync 2.0. I can't wait to get my hands on it...

The Most Overpriced iPhone Dock Ever

Guest Author ∙ September 7, 2010

I once bought a pair of retro Air Jordan that were strikingly ugly but nonetheless a one of kind product. I thought by owning these I was cool. Needless to say I was 16 years old.

Touch My iPhone highlights a new iPhone dock that may earn bonus points for creativity but puts my old tennis shoes to shame. The iRetrophone Skyliner mimics your grandmother's old stationary phone (the handset on the dock actually works) and offers the following description...

How to Wirelessly Back Up Your iPhone Photos

Guest Author ∙ August 31, 2010

Depending on how you charge your iPhone you may or may not regularly backup your photos. Having to perform a hard reset could erase priceless pictures if you happen to charge your phone the old fashioned way via wall connector.

That problem is now gone thanks to an article by LifeHacker that shows you how to wirelessly sync your photos. The only catch is that you'll need a jailbroken iPhone, which shouldn't be an issue for most of you...

Jailbreak App Lets You Use Your iPhone While It’s Syncing With iTunes

Guest Author ∙ Updated June 14, 2018

The jailbreak community is always exciting. There's always a new application in development soon to be released to an unsuspecting public. Today, Synchronicity takes the throne. It allows you to use your iPhone while it's currently synchronizing with iTunes. I'm not sure why Apple disables us by disallowing usage of devices during a sync. Personally, I think Apple should allow this function by default.

How to Sync Shared Google Calendars With Your iPhone

Sébastien Page ∙ July 28, 2010

My fiancee Tina just got her first iPhone today and one of the first few things we wanted to do was to sync our shared Google calendars to each other's iPhone. I thought that since we already share our Google calendars "online", it would automatically sync both our calendars on our iPhone by setting up Google Sync. It didn't. Turns out it was just a tiny bit more complicated than this.

Here are instructions to sync shared Google calendars between iPhones:

How to Sync Your iPhone Notes with Your Gmail Account

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated March 27, 2018

You probably already know you can sync your Google emails, calendars and contacts with your iPhone using Google Sync. But do you know you can also sync your iPhone notes with your Gmail account?

The only requirement for being able to sync your notes with Gmail is that your iPhone be updated to iOS 4. When you set up your Gmail account on your iPhone, you will now have the option to sync your notes.

If you have several Gmail account set up on your iPhone, you will be able to sync your notes to specific accounts. In the top left corner of the Notes.app, a new button will appear letting you choose what account you want to sync with.

One downside to this is that it's a one-way sync, which means that you can only sync your notes from your iPhone to your Gmail account. You can't sync from Gmail notes to your iPhone.

How to Fix iOS 4 Exchange Sync Problems

Sébastien Page ∙ June 30, 2010

After updating to iOS 4, you might have encountered issues when syncing your Microsoft Exchange account. I know I did. Immediately after setting up Google Sync on my iPhone iOS 4, the sync took forever to complete. I ended up deleting and adding the account several times but it didn't really fix the issue as it would still take forever to sync new contacts or new events in the calendar.

According to this Apple Support ticket, I am not the only one. Here are the symptoms: immediately after updating to iOS 4, some users may notice that Exchange ActiveSync Mail, Contacts, or Calendars do not sync, or sync very slowly. In addition, some Exchange Server administrators may notice their servers running slowly.

Here is the fix offered by Apple:

To work around this issue, users should install a configuration profile from Apple that increases the amount of time the iOS 4 device will wait for the Exchange Server to respond to its sync requests. For best results, the profile should be installed on as many iOS 4 devices at your company as possible.

To install the profile:

Use Safari on your iOS 4 device to download the configuration profile. It may be easiest to read this article with your iPhone or iPod touch and tap the download link there, but you may also email the attachment to another email account on your iOS 4 device, and tap the attachment to open it. Tap Install to install the profile, and enter your passcode if prompted. A warning message will appear because the profile is not signed. Tap Install Now. Tap Done to complete the installation, then power off your device and power it back on. Wait for your Exchange data to finish syncing.

After installation, the profile will be listed under Settings > General > Profile.

Have you had this issue? If so, did this fix work for you?