Is the battery life of your new iPhone 3G disappointing you? Try these three tips to increase it’s daily usage before having to recharge. I went from getting about a days worth of moderate usage to two days easily only doing the first two tips – the third is for when you need to squeeze a little extra juice out while away from a wall outlet or USB port. 1. Turn off PUSH
Turning off PUSH support will go a long way to improving battery life.
Decide how often you really need to check for email (I can live with every 30 minutes) and set it to Fetch accordingly.
You just have to launch the Mail application and it will check for email anyways if that time frame isn’t good enough but at least it won’t be checking in the background all the time, slowly killing the battery.
You’ll find this setting in the Settings menu under ‘Fetch New Data’.
2. Turn off Location Services
Also known as ‘the GPS’ setting on the iPhone, it’s turned on by default. Turning it off is probably the single most battery saving thing you can do short of not using your iPhone.
This doesn’t mean that Google Maps will stop working. It just means that when off, Location Services isn’t powering the GPS and looking for a location. If you launch Google Maps or any other location aware application, the iPhone will turn on Location Services.
Keep in mind, once turned on by one of these apps, it won’t turn back off by itself when the app is closed so you may have to keep turning this off.
This setting is located in the Settings/General area.
3. Turn off 3G
Desperate to keep that phone alive a little longer? Simply switch off your 3G to gain a few more precious minutes of juice. Of course, surfing will be slower since you’ll be using the Edge network instead, but this tip is really meant if you need to get a few more minutes of life for a voice call before the iPhone shuts down.
Depending on where you live/work, this may simply be a better option anyways if your 3G reception is spotty.
You’ll find this option under the Settings/General/Network option.
A few people have been asking me about car chargers for the iPhone 3G so I thought I’d post a quick note about what I’m using.
First of all, be careful what you plug your shiny new iPhone into! Plenty of things are meant for iPods only and can actually fry your iPhone. Many iPod accessories do work with iPhones but unless you want to try out the warranty replacement program, do a quick google search about whatever device you are hoping is compatible. You’ve been warned!
Secondly, many old iPod accessories (and some 1st gen iPhone ones) use firewire as their method of powering/charging. Apple switched to USB power fairly recently so this is why many of these older devices won’t work with a newer iPod or iPhone. You will most likely get some variation on this message “This accessory is not compatible with your iPhone”.
You should be able to use any USB based car charging device – basically it’s a cigarette adaptor that has a USB port on the end. These tend to come with many gadgets these days – one came with a kit for my Nintendo DS, another with my GPS, etc. Simply plug in the USB cable that came with your iPhone 3G and you should be good to go. I didn’t want to have to lug that cable around so I simply picked up the Griffin PowerJolt (version 2) on my last trip to the Apple Store for $20. It comes with the USB plug and a black USB to Dock cable.
The ring around the USB port lights up green when powered.
and red when charging.
and here it’s connected in the car to my iPhone which is sporting my new green Speck PixelSkin cover and sitting in my Palm ‘Universal PDA holder’ which previously held my Treo 650.
So far so good…it completely charged my iPhone while driving home tonight.
Update: The PowerJolt works fine with my iPhone 3GS.
Thanks to a tip from Kevin, I went to the Park Royal Mall Future Shop location to check out the renovations that are almost complete.
It looks like some Future Shop locations are getting the Apple Store within-a-store treatment:
This is part of an expanded deal between Apple and Best Buy (Future Shop’s parent company) and has been going on for awhile now in the US and in some Canadian Best Buy stores.
It’s interesting to note that this mini-store-within-the-store is right at the mall entrance of the newly renovated Future Shop within a fairly upscale mall in West Vancouver…a pretty high profile location for Apple’s products. There was even an ‘Apple Specialist’ on hand to help answer questions. It also appears that Future Shop’s renovations have also changed their customer service counter (for computer returns/repairs) into a wannabe Genius Bar (not pictured).
Update: They didn’t just get an Apple Store, they also got a full makeover! I was invited to their re-opening event and got to roam around taking photos. Seems they are trying to position the Future Shop brand as the higher end store over Best Buy (think The Bay and Zellers – same company, different product lines and target market). I actually thought it was the other way around. Derek has an excellent writeup of the event and store changes. Here’s some photos from the event:
The iPhone 3G and the Apple App Store has been out for a few weeks now so I figured it would be a good time to talk about what I’ve got on my iPhone and hopefully show you a few things you might want to check out yourself.
First though, an annoyance I have about the App Store and it’s downloads: the icons keep moving around!
I prefer to organize my iPhone’s homescreen(s) around either tasks or app type. So I have a couple of pages reserved for web shortcuts/favorites, one just for social media stuff (Facebook, Twitter, etc) and one for games. Unfortunately, every time you download a new app or upgrade an existing one, it shuffles the deck which I find really annoying. Scrolling through six pages of apps just isn’t the kind of experience we’re used to getting from Apple so I’m hopeful they will tweak this in an upcoming firmware release.
Anyways, on to the apps! There are simply too many to cover them all off so here’s three apps that I actually seem to be using:
Urban Spoon
This is an app based on a restaurant review website. It has a couple of clever features that really benefit from the iPhone. Unfortunately, at least right now, it’s also probably the crashiest app I have and seems to cause a full reboot one out of every three launches. Hopefully this will be addressed soon.
First thing that happens when you launch it, it checks to see where you are using the GPS function or you can simply choose your city from the list. They have a fairly comprehensive list of cities supported. In the case below, I chose Vancouver. It then gives you a more localized list of areas within that city, type of food and cost of food using multiple dollar signs. This is presented just like a slot machine. You can choose to lock in a specific ‘reel’ like I did with Gastown and then if you shake the iPhone (or press the shake button) it will actually choose a random location, food type or cost and then display the resulting restaurant below. The slot machine reel spinning animation is a nice touch.
If you click on that chosen restaurant, it will give you more information about the place including a clickable phone number that will actually dial the restaurant for you, a clickable address that will launch Google Maps and a ‘More Info’ button with reviews for that place from the website.
Exposure
A decent app for directly viewing you and your friend’s Flickr photos. I just have the free one so I get ads and they don’t bother me. It can be a little slow but that could just be the 3G network and not the app.
You can view all your photos, comments and details just like you can on Flickr. Sometimes I want to see things at the source so I use Mobile Flickr as it’s very fast on the iPhone.
You can view images at full screen and it also works nicely in landscape mode too which not all apps do.
There is also a somewhat cool/creepy ‘nearby’ option that will find photos taken near your current location.
Solitaire Top 3
Everybody needs a decent Solitaire game and there are a bunch on the App Store. This one is a game you have to buy (for only $3.99) but is one of the few worth paying for. It’s an updated version to one I used on Installer before and is a very solid version not unlike what ships with Windows – except you can use your fingers to move the cards around.
It features three different games: Klondike, Freecell and Spider. I’m an old school Klondike player so can’t really speak to the other games…I’ll try them at some point but I keep going back to Klondike when I’ve got some time to kill.
Apps I’m waiting for:
a decent Flickr uploader (maybe even one from Flickr themselves!): I really miss SendPics from Erica Sudan. I haven’t come across any app that properly sends iPhone images to Flickr with the EXIF data intact and the image size correct – GPS location data would be great too. Hopefully Erica already has an official version in the App Store approval queue
a video app that lets you record video with the iPhone. A number of these were available on Installer before…where are they now?
PhotoBooth – Apple should port this to the iPhone
There are probably more but I can’t think of any at the moment….post in the comments what you’d like to see on the App Store.
Bonus Video review: Shazam
Shazam is similar to an app that was on Installer before that was kind of cool called Listen but takes it to the next level with the built in iTunes purchase links. Very slick. Here’s Buzz showing how Shazam works:
One last annoyance
I wish the App Store application on the iPhone had a better mechanism for browsing/sorting through the apps. Sure there is a RSS feed of new releases (although not officially from Apple), but I prefer to browse and grab in the same place while on the go. I go through the store at least every other day looking for new apps to check out and it’s a pain to do it on the phone itself since they keep ‘featuring’ the same apps and there isn’t a ‘sort by release date’ option like in iTunes. Again – this is an inconsistent experience from Apple that I’m hopeful they will rectify.
As you may have noticed, I really like Crumpler’s products. I just found out that a store that sells nothing but Crumpler products just opened in downtown Vancouver (corner of Richards & Cordova).
Check them out in person or online if you’re looking for a cool new messenger bag or backpack – especially for your laptop or camera gear as they have shapes and colours to fit just about anything you’d want to carry. They also have cool, Crumpler branded shopping bags, purses, wallets and even camera straps.
Here’s what it looked like in today’s edition of 24hrs (PDF link):
and a photo of the real thing:
Here’s a link to Buzz’ blog post about it.
I still think it’s cool to get a mention in ‘the paper’ (especially about hacking the iPhone in mainstream media) and in the great company of Boris, Nick and Rebecca to name a few.
It’s great that Buzz is writing about lots of people and events in the local tech scene.
I got to thinking today about how much ‘memory’ I carry around all day.
Here’s the breakdown:
in my pocket: 16gb iPhone 3G
on my keychain: 8gb USB drive
in my wallet: 2gb ‘Micro Vault Tiny’
So I generally carry 26 gigabytes of data and don’t really even notice it.
This doesn’t include stuff in my messenger bag which sometimes includes my 80gb laptop, my 4gb microSD card in my Nintendo DS (shssh!), my 8gb Zune (for now at least) and my 1gb iPod Shuffle plus some of the other cards/drives in the photo above. My DSLR camera bag usually has anywhere from 4-10gb of memory cards as well.
I’ve wanted a fisheye lens forever…and really like my Lomo Fisheye camera. Super wide angles and fisheyes are fun to play around with…just not $800 kinds of fun (the cost of a real fisheye lens).
So when I stumbled across this lens adapter for a measely $37 + shipping (from this eBay store – just troll through the lens section for your camera type), I figured I’d try it out.
So far, I’m in love! You can also detach the main part of the lens and it leaves you with an awesome macro lens…slightly better than the macro lenses I also have…so it’s really two lenses in one…or three if you zoom the fisheye in a little for a super wide-angle lens.
Here’s a few shots I took with it attached to my Nikon 18-55mm lens:
The iPhone Dev Team just released their Pwnage tool for the 2.0 firmware (Mac only at this point). You may also need some bootloaders to create the customized restore file you’ll need in order to get your 1st gen iPhone onto the new firmware.
The updated 2.0 firmware will give your old iPhone all the features of the 3G model except for the GPS and 3G data speed. The big thing is you get access to the App Store and all it’s application goodness.
The process I went through to upgrade my wife’s iPhone (hence the pink case) from 1.1.3 was this:
do a sync on the iPhone before doing anything which will backup all the settings, contacts, photos, etc.
you’ll need to download the 2.0 restore firmware from Apple. Do this by launching iTunes with the iPhone connected and it should offer a software update for 2.0 – choose download only and it will download the correct version to your /user/library/iTunes/iPhone Software Updates folder.
get the bootloaders linked above (3.9 + 4.6)
run the Pwnage tool and select the iPhone (non-3G) option
follow the onscreen instructions…if it doesn’t find the correct *.ipsw file, it should offer to switch to expert mode to allow you to browse for it – the same applies for the bootloaders
let it create the custom restore firmware which it should drop onto your desktop
the Pwnage tool then failed for me – probably because I used Zphone previously to unlock the phone – don’t worry…
close Pwnage and go back to iTunes
with the iPhone connected, command+click the Restore option in iTunes which will allow you to browse to a specific firmware version to restore from – choose the custom one you created with the Pwnage tool
It should take awhile to restore and verify the firmware….you may see a pineapple on the iPhone instead of the Apple logo
it should then upgrade the baseband and bootloader like in the photo
the iPhone will reboot and you should be unlocked with the 2.0 firmware installed including the App Store icon and Cyndia which seems to be an update/alternate to Installer
If you run into any problems, check the comments on the Dev Team’s post.
One last point – I noticed that when I upgraded the iPhone to 2.0 (both the 1st gen and my new 3G), the carrier name is still what it was set to previously via Make it Mine which is cool. It must be stored in the backup file iTunes uses.
(version 2) on my last trip to the Apple Store for $20. It comes with the USB plug and a black USB to Dock cable.
