News

Keyboard tweaks designed for jailbroken iOS devices can increase efficiency and make typing on the virtual keyboard easier. Examples such as The Quick Brown Fox, AltKeyboard and SwipeSelection all have their own unique enhancements to the iOS keyboard. Now PredictiveKeyboard adds a popular Android keyboard feature to the list.

Once installed, the tweak adds a fifth row of keys to the pop-up virtual keyboard in all iOS applications. These keys adapt to predict words, which can be entered with one tap just like any other key. The best part about PredictiveKeyboard is that the tweak will learn new words and suggest the most commonly used words to speed up typing on your device.

Developers keep discovering more and more new features in the iOS 7 beta everyday. Here are few new discoveries since Apple released the third beta on July 8th.

Previously iOS users could only make video calls while using FaceTime, but Apple has added the ability to have audio-only voice chats when using the video conferencing feature. To make an audio call using FaceTime, just locate and tap the person's name you want to contact, then tap the new telephone icon to place the call. You will be able to perform other tasks like muting the microphone or switching to a video chat once the call is connected.

Rovio Entertainment is following up its popular Star Wars mobile game and toy line with Angry Birds Star Wars 2 on September 19th. ABSW2 will feature over 30 playable characters, and Hasbro-created "telepods" that interact with the game. A telepod is a physical toy that represents a playable character within the Angry Birds universe. Players can unlock the characters in the game by individually purchasing the toys, and using their device's built-in camera to activate them. Rovio's new telepods are a lot like Activision's very popular Skylanders toys, which are used with the various Skylanders console video games.

NFC-based video games are becoming so popular that even Disney has taken a crack at them with its planned Disney Infinity series. Disney Infinity is set to launch a few months ahead of Activision's newest Skylanders game SWAP Force on August 18th. It will be interesting to see how consumers respond with so many NFC-based video games / toys being released around the same time. These games can be very pricey after purchasing both the starter sets and individual characters. A Skylanders starter set retails for around $70, and each individual toy costs around $10 to $14. It is unknown at this time how much the individual Angry Birds telepods will set you back.

Jailbreakers who downloaded Square Enix's new game Deus Ex: The Fall on Thursday found a nasty little surprise, the action-based RPG would not let them fire their guns! Deus Ex is not the first app to block jailbreakers, DirectTV and a few others games also don't support jailbroken devices. However, Deus Ex is $7 to download, and Square Enix gave no indication that the game would not support the 7 million jailbroken iPhones and iPads floating around the world.

Of course, the jailbreak community responded quickly by releasing a fix called xCon to the ModMyI repo in Cydia, but not before Square Enix felt the backlash. On Friday, the Japanese video game developer issued this statement through Eurogamer:

While iOS gaming fans can download Infinity Blade II free for a limited time, other news related to the franchise is not so positive. According to MacRumors, Chair Co-Founder and Creative Director Donald Mustard officially confirmed that Infinity Blade Dungeons has been abandoned.

The highly anticipated prequel to the Infinity Blade universe garnered rave reviews when previewed last year. Unfortunately, after first delaying the game then putting the project on hold, Epic Games had to cancel the project after the studio working on the game closed.