SkankPhone



SkankPhone is a part of Apple's internal debug utilities suite. It can be defined as a SpringBoard alternative. Instead of dividing the iPhone OS functions such as Phone, Safari, etc. into standalone applications, Apple developers combined many functionalities into one app. SkankPhone has a integrated phone, web browser, music player and SMS editor. Pressing Home Button reveals a toolbar with 5 shortcuts to other SP sections: Phone, Web, SMS, Music and Setup. In Alpine 1A420 prototype firmware it also had a built-in Operator screen.

SkankPhone was a notable part of Non-UI firmwares from versions 1.0 to 5.1. It's last appearance was on prototypes running 5.1. Versions 6.0 and above no longer feature SkankPhone, for unknown reasons.

Certain versions of SkankPhone have minor differences when compared to one another. Some have a "Quit" button in the right bottom corner, whilst other have an "About Device" button there. Interestingly enough, newer versions of SkankPhone feature a "More Other" button even though there is no "Other" button present.

SkankPhone can coexist with SpringBoard. When the SkankPhone.app is linked into /Applications/SkankPhone.app, it shows up in SB and can be launched (if you have 1.x firmware). During launch, SkankPhone kills SpringBoard.

SkankPhone is likely based off of Acorn OS P2 "system", due to it's interface similarities.

Technical
SkankPhone does not depend on SpringBoard, SkankPhone can live with or without it. It is not like a regular UIKit application, in this way, it is not linked with UIKit and uses it's own custom framework. SkankPhone's framework located in it's application bundle named SkankKit, this is small UIKit replacement. SkankPhone is launched by a daemon. Somewhere in this process SkankPhone unloads SpringBoard's daemon, this kills SpringBoard while giving SpringBoard no way to respawn.

App File Structure
_CodeSignature _internal_Default.png                com.apple.SkankPhone.plist _internal_icon.png                   config.plist _internal_SkankPhone.png             Info.plist CodeResources                        PkgInfo SkankPhone