I’m looking for the simplest code in order to implement a small popup (NOT a full screen modal popup or alert view). I just need it to display some basic text inside the popup, then exit it when I click away. The popup in the EleMints app is a good example.

UIPopoverController does this, but it’s limited to iPad only. If you need this on iPhone, just implement a custom UIView subclass. Then when you want to show your popover, instantiate the subclass and add it to your view, maybe with some animation.