iPhone’s and iPod Touch’s are very open devices. Jailbreaking helps eliminate that from the “don’t” list. There are dozens upon dozens of really interesting and cool jailbroken mods, hacks, and apps in Cydia. We are going to cover just 5 (actually, 6) of what we think are the must-have’s.

The first one is called SBSettings, which is available for free in Cydia. It allows you to turn things on and off, such as 3G, bluetooth, and more. There’s also toggles for volume, brightness, and other things. SBSettings can also turn on or off various MobileSubstrate extensions, battery percentage, numeric GSM, and a whole lot more. This should be the first thing that every jailbreaker installs first.

The next app is called Cycorder. This is available for free in Cydia. If you’re on a iPhone 3GS or a iPod Touch, then skip this one. This is for the 2G and 3G iPhone’s only. It let’s you record high-quality video using your phone’s camera. The frame rate of the video will be that of the camera. Audio quality is excellent. The file sizes can be large, but the video retains a lot of its quality. If you’re looking for a free alternative to those dinky “video recorders” that are starting to pop up in the App Store, then this is definitely for you. It’s actually better than all those.

LockInfo is just amazing. [We're actually doing a giveaway of 3 copies of LockInfo over here, so check that out.] There’s a 14-day (2-week) trial in Cydia. After that, this is $4.99, but it’s well worth it. This isn’t really useful to people on iPod Touch’s, but if you’re on an iPhone, then this is just awesome. LockInfo let’s you look at a bunch of different information on your lockscreen, such as unread mail, missed calls, Twitter, RSS feeds, and more. It can also let you view/delete emails, as well as viewing RSS post excerpts, all on your lockscreen! There’s also an option that let’s you stick LockInfo onto your homescreen.

Next up is Backgrounder and Kirikae, both of which are available for free in Cydia. Backgrounder allows you to simply background apps on your iPhone or iPod Touch, thus allowing for simple multitasking. Kirikae is an extension for Backgrounder (made by the same developer) that allows you to switch between your backgrounded apps for an even greater multitasking experience. There’s several ways in which you can bring up the list of backgrounded apps. Wepersonally like holding the home button for a longer period of time to bring up the list. Tapping on an app will background whatever you’re in, and switch to whatever you tapped on. You can also close an app by tapping on the “x” to the right of the app. Background plus Kirikae is THE ultimate multitasking solution for ANY mobile device. We personally like this solution more than ProSwitcher, as Kirikae just seems more practical, as you can see more backgrounded apps at once and what not. You can also add apps to a “Favorites” menu and a bunch of other things.

Finally, we have qTweeter. There’s a trial for this in Cydia, and then it’s $4.99 after that. It may sound a bit much for something like this, but this is pretty neat to have for anyone who uses Twitter and/or Facebook. qTweeter allows you to post to Twitter and/or Facebook from any app with the status bar (if you’re playing a game that doesn’t have the status bar, you can use Backgrounder and Kirikae to bring up Kirikae’s backgrounded app list, and then slide down on the status bar to bring up qTweeter). You basically just slide down on the status bar to bring qTweeter down. You can also post pictures for TwitPic, and even videos (included those of you who are on the 2G or 3G iPhone using Cycorder). It can even post whatever you’re listening to from the iPod, whatever you’re browsing in Safari, and several other things.

Oh, wait, we have one more: Install0us (the one with the zero, not the ‘o’).

As we don’t support piracy, we do support trying applications before buying them. Install0us makes this easy. You can browse various websites to download the full version of apps from, and can download and install them from right within the app. Again, use this to try apps before you buy them. You can also use Install0us to download various types of files, such as ZIPs, and others.

So there you go! If you have something that you think would be cool up here, leave it in the comments below.

Again, we’re holding a contest for people to win 1 of 3 LockInfo licenses. You can find out about this here. The contest ends on Friday, February 5.