Hidden iPhone feature gives appearance of native apps to iPhone webapps

Posted by John on November 2nd, 2008 at 03:49am Comments

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As it is, Apple is notorious for sneaking undocumented features into their software updates. Therefore it’s not too surprising that a new undocumented feature appeared with iPhone firmware v2.1 update.

According to Clancy, a reader of AppleInsider, iPhone firmware v2.1 has introduced a feature that doesn’t seem to have much use for, but is nevertheless rather interesting due to how it’s possible to implement it.

Apparently, it is possible to open iPhone webapps in fullscreen mode, making them look like actual native applications. Clancy has even written a program that illustrates that.

If you will point your Safari browser over to http://webapp.net.free.fr/Demo/Index.html you will see a standard looking webapp with a browser location window. However, if you will tap on + at the bottom of the Safari screen, select “Add to Home Screen” and save the app to your Home Screen, whenever you will access it it will appear as a regular native program, without any apparent traces of Safari elements.

While it’s pretty cool, it’s unclear what this option could be used for and why Apple did not publicize it. The bad thing is that some malicious hackers could probably learn how to use it to their advantage, if they will be able to come up with some code that could add malicious pages as supposed native appps on your iPhone — then you won’t be able to see the URL of the page and could potentially be tricked into visiting malicious sites and possibly be duped into providing your personal information or your logins/passwords to what you will think is a regular iPhone app, not an online website.

Thanks to Gizmodo

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4. Apple iPhone Safari browser memory exhaustion remote Denial of Service vulnerability discovered
5. iWebKit: iPhone websites / webapps creator free download

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Filed Under: Apple News+ News+ iPhone 3G+ iPhone Hacks+ iPhone News+ iPhone Programs+ iPhone Websites

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