A few of you may be familiar with the Nintendo DS feature called Picto-chat, which was basically a way to message your friends over Wi-Fi. In Picto-chat you could not only type out messages, but you could also draw them and draw pictures to go with them. A new jailbreak tweak dubbed Grafiti by iOS developer Ian Pappas is now live in Cydia that accomplishes something similar on iOS devices through text messaging.
Grafiti is ultimately made to resemble an international keyboard in iOS. It is only available in the stock Messages application and the keyboard is toggled by tapping on the international keyboard button, which brings up a prompt letting you pick from all the international keyboards you have enabled – including Grafiti:
Grafiti includes drawing tools that you can use to your advantage to draw messages or pictures and send to your friends. It includes an option to choose the weight of your strokes, the color of your strokes (via RGB sliders), the ability to clear your drawing, and undo/redo controls. When you finish drawing your picture, you need to tap on the done button. You can return to one of iOS' native keyboards at any time by tapping on the international keyboard button and selecting a keyboard.
When you finish a drawing and tap on the done button, you will be sending an image file to the receiver. Since the tweak makes an image out of your drawing, any phone or iOS device capable of reading image files can render the drawing you make. Grafiti also works with both the stock messaging and Apple’s iMessage. Unfortunately, the tweak is not capable of running on the iPad – only the iPod touch and iPhone. Although iPad users can't run this tweak on their devices, any images you send to them through iMessage can still be seen on the iPad since iMessage is capable of sending and receiving pictures.
The tweak is pretty a pretty neat mod for the Messages application, but don’t try it in other messaging clients like biteSMS because it won’t work. If you’ve ever wanted to draw instead of type, this tweak looks great and will be a fun addition to the messaging experience.
UPDATE: Ian has informed me that a new release is out with bug fixes and support for biteSMS.
Name: Grafiti
Price: 99¢
Version: 1.0.0
Requirements: iPhone or iPod touch, iOS 5
Repo: BigBoss
Developer: Ian Pappas
Editor's Rating: 4/5
Sources: Ian Pappas
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