Jailbreak Only: Sparrow Push Enables Much-Wanted Push Notifications
by Ammaar Reshi
March 19, 2012
Earlier last week, the much anticipated email app, Sparrow hit the App Store. We reviewed it and absolutely loved it, however, there was one very important feature that prevented the app from being complete: push notifications.
Apparently just before launch, Apple removed Sparrow's push notification ability due it "abusing" a VOIP-only API that would constantly run in the background. Without this, the native Mail app had an edge over Sparrow, despite Sparrow's vast feature set. All that changes with the new jailbreak tweak: Sparrow Push.
From the tweak's description:
iPhone Jailbreak tweak for the popular iPhone app Sparrow, which enables eMail push notification when the app is in the background making Sparrow a real replacement for the stock Mail application.IpuIpu, the mind responsible for the tweak also made an effort to preserve battery life. After all, we would prefer having a phone with no notifications than one that can't last five minutes with them. IpuIpu had this to say about the battery conservation features in the tweak:
Sparrow Push uses a very efficient implementation using the same APIs that VoIP apps like Skype use. Since there is an additional, permanent internet connection and Sparrow becomes active everytime there is activity in the email account, there will be a higher battery usage, but it should be comparable to what Apple Mail’s exchange push implementation is.Best of all, the developer has even more features planned for a future update. Next, he plans to add Notification Center integration and "mailto:" link integration -- a very important feature. The good news is the tweak is available for free in Cydia via the BigBoss Repo, so you have no reason not to grab it. If you haven't jailbroken your phone, tell us if you think it is worth doing so now now.
