While the iOS 5 banner system is nice, we just can’t help ourselves but to find even this great notification method to get in the way of our phone usage. It’s pretty annoying when you’re playing a good iPhone game or watching a video and then a banner comes up in your face and starts eating up your pixels until it goes away. Fortunately, iOS developer Ron Melkhior has been able to reduce the size of iOS 5’s notification banners to half of the original size with a new free jailbreak tweak dubbed SmallBanners.
As shown by the comparative screenshots above, the banner is literally a normal iOS 5 banner cut in half. While the idea is a good one, it would have been nicer if the developer took the time to round off the corners of the banner so that it matches Apple’s design instead of simply slicing the banner in half. The good news, on the other hand, is that the banner uses less pixels, by cutting out the name of the application from the banner and reducing the size of the application icon, ultimately allowing you to play games and watch videos with less pixels dedicated to the banners.
Since all the design does is cut out the name of the application, the smaller banner is still fully capable of getting the notification’s point across as it still shows the notification preview and still shows the application icon of the application where the notification stems from. That being said, the smaller notification banners won’t decrease the quality of iOS’ ability to notify you of new events.
SmallBanners doesn’t have any options to configure and it requires iOS 5 to install since no older versions of iOS support the banner notifications introduced in iOS 5. SmallBanners won’t affect any other notification functions of iOS such as the icon badges or Notification Center/lock screen notifications as it was created only for the banner notifications. If your limited pixels are precious to you, then give this a try and see if it helps make the notifications less intrusive.
Name: SmallBanners
Price: FREE
Version: 1.0.0
Requirements: iOS 5
Repo: BigBoss
Developer: Ron Melkhior
Editor's Rating: 3/5
Sources: Ron Melkhior
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