The Introduction

A problem with many people who own an iPod Touch or iPad is maintaining an active WiFi connection. While you may have an active WiFi connection in familiar places such as your home, when you go-out-and-about many people complain about manually having to find a reliable WiFi network. Wouldn’t it be nice if your iPod Touch or iPad could act more like an iPhone, in the sense that if there is a valid signal, the iPod Touch or iPad would automatically connect to a WiFi network?

The Problem

The main problem, of course, with finding WiFi wherever you go is running into encrypted WiFi networks. There is currently no timely way to, essentially, hack into an encrypted WiFi network without the help of your laptop. Otherwise, if this was possible, one could maintain an active WiFi connection in any populated area. While connecting to encrypted WiFi networks is definitely out of the question we return to having to find an Open WiFi Network.

In Apple’s stock WiFi settings you are required to go into the settings.app, look to see if there is any Open Wifi connections and then, if possible, proceed to manually connecting to one. What Apple doesn’t tell you about their pre-configured WiFi settings is that they reduce the number of WiFi networks shown if they are not within a certain range. While this range restriction is meant for quality control, by using 3rd party WiFi scanners like WiFiFoFum, one is able to almost always connect to otherwise hidden WiFi networks.

The Solution(s)

So does that mean using a 3rd party WiFi scanner like WiFiFoFum will solve your problem? Yes and No. 3rd party WiFi scanners will solve the problem of not being able to view all available WiFi networks, but this still leaves you with a lot of manual labor. Wouldn’t it be nice if your iPod Touch or iPad could automatically search for Open Wifi networks without any effort on your end?

Well, thanks to two Cydia tweaks we can essentially solve all the problems explained so far. This will:

• Automatically connect you to all available WiFi network
• Save you a lot of manual labor and time
• Help save on unnecessary data usage (yes, this is helpful for iPhone users and iPad 3G users as well)

Introducing AW-Open & WiFi Booster

Recently two tweaks have been released into Cydia that has made automating the WiFi connection process a reality. These two tweaks are AW-Open (Free) and WiFi Booster (Paid).

AW-Open is a free tweak that will automatically connect you to any available Wifi Networks. It features an extremely pleasing iOS 5 styled GUI and works like a charm.

WiFi Booster is a commercial tweak costing $1.99 from the Cydia Store that will get rid of Apple’s default WiFi limitations and will allow you to connect to any available WiFi connection (if there is enough range). Thus, often times, WiFi Booster can substantially increase the number of WiFi networks you can connect to.

By reading the two tweaks descriptions you can hopefully see how these two tweaks work so well together. AW-Open allows your iDevice to act more like an iPhone (automatically connecting you to a network if a viable connection is available), while WiFi Booster significantly boosts the number of networks you can connect to. Thus, Pairing these two tweaks together will give you a much more pleasant experience while using your iDevice for only $1.99!

So what are you waiting for? Simply download AW-Open and WiFi Booster to your iDevice and start experiencing an automated WiFi revolution.

Leave any feedback/questions in the comments section below. I look forward to your thoughts on this powerful tweak combination.