Category Archives: iPhone 4S
Apple Engineers Reportedly Looking Into Poor iPhone 4S Battery Life
There are three things that are guaranteed in life: death, taxes, and a new iPhone suffering poor battery life.
Reports of less than stellar iPhone 4S battery life have been circulating for the last couple of weeks now, with early adopters once again acting like guinea pigs for those clever enough to hold of buying the latest and greatest tech toys.
We at Redmond Pie clearly aren’t all the bright either – one team member even queued up at stupid o’clock to get his iPhone 4S. *cough* It was me! *cough*.
Owners of the iPhone 4S have been tweeting, posting to Facebook and generally telling anyone who will listen that their new smartphone is chewing through battery power quicker than their old iPhone, and not just a little bit quicker.
According to one Guardian reader, their iPhone was working its way through 10% of battery every hour, even when just in standby.
My battery life was extremely poor – 10% drop in standby every hour. I noticed that the usage figure was roughly half that of standby, even when the phone was not being used, so I assumed something was crashing or running in the background. I switched off all the new features including Siri and location services, but it was still really poor. I also tried setting up a clean phone with no apps but it is still really poor.
That’s a story that has been echoed the web-over, though this particular one gets a little more interesting.
iPhone 4S battery concerns and tips for better performance
Since the iPhone 4S was released, several customers have reported sub-optimal battery performance.
Not only in standby time (Apple’s iPhone specs comparison chart notes that the 4S offers 200 hours of standby time, while previous models offered 300), but in daily use as well. The UK’s Guardian newspaper reports that some users have been directly contacted by Apple engineers (!) who are trying to suss out the issue.
Today, Erick Schonfeld reports his experience at Tech Crunch. Despite moderate use during an 8-hour work day — about two-and-a-half hours of Internet and email and roughly 30 minutes of calls — his iPhone’s battery had died. If the iPhone saw hands-on activity for about three hours, according to Erick’s anecdotal observation, it spent about 5 hours sitting idle.
As Erick notes, the phone was “…constantly bleeping with notifications and emails. And that may very well be the problem.” Often a “resting” iPhone is in fact doing something, and it’s possible that very frequent notification alerts can contribute to battery drain. Per the Guardian story, problematic contacts may also be to blame (see Chris Breen story below).
While we wait and see if anything official will come from Apple on this apparently widespread problem, here are a few general tips you can use for preserving battery life on an iOS device. You won’t suddenly run 12-hour days after trying these things out, but every bit helps, right?
10 cool things you can do with Wolfram Alpha and Siri
Steve Sande and I have been collaborating on “Talking to Siri,” an ebook that just recently hit the Kindle store.
It’s a how-to that will help you get the most done with your Siri intelligent assistant. We’re sharing some of our favorite tips with TUAW readers.
Today, we’re looking at Siri’s Wolfram Alpha integration. You can force Siri to use Wolfram by prefixing your request with “Wolfram.” For example, you might say, “Wolfram, what is the square root of 2?” or “Wolfram, graph x-squared plus three.”
But there’s a lot more that you can do with Wolfram than just math. Here are ten of our favorite Wolfram searches. These highlight the flexibility of this amazing information resource.
- Roll a Random Number. Say “Wolfram, random number.” Wolfram returns a random value between 0 and 1000.
- Look up nature facts. Say, “Wolfram, what is the scientific name of a mountain lion?” It’s Puma concolor. Rabbits are Leporidae, and Peacocks, Galliformes.
- Check upcoming holidays. Say,
This ‘iPhone for Steve’ Rear Panel Mod for iPhone 4S / 4 Is The Best Steve Jobs Tribute Ever
By now you have seen the image below of Steve Jobs inside of the Apple logo that has spread like wild fire since his death.
And to honor the great man, an Apple fan has created a mod which gives tribute to Steve Jobs on the backplate of the iPhone 4/4S.
You’ve probably seen other posts on Redmond Pie showing off mods for the iPhone 4, but now we have a new one. What was created here is a backplate for the iPhone 4/4S that looks like it should have come stock on the iPhone 4S and would perfectly fit the iPhone for(Steve) nickname that was given after Steve’s death.
You can see in the images below that it looks great just perfect! The backplate depicts the above image along with Steve Jobs’ name and the years he spent on this Earth. This is a great tribute to a man who affected us all in a great way.
Love or hate Apple or Steve Jobs, you should appreciate this tribute.
International unlocked iPhone 4S sales begin today
It’s a happy day all over the world today, with a second wave of international iPhone 4S sales starting up.
Even better, all of the phones that are going on sale today are unlocked, unlike American compatriots. Who says America is the land of the free?
So where can you pick one up? The new countries are Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Mexico, Netherlands, Norway, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.
Just visit your favorite carrier and you’re free to sign up and begin using your new iPhone 4S.
The pricing on the unlocked iPhones is a bit steep. In Spain, for example, the 16 GB model goes for a cool €600 — about $850. The 32 and 64 GB models are €700 and €800 respectively. This is a bit more than the unlocked pricing for Canada, which is running between CD$650 and CS$850 depending on which model you purchase. Things are even more expensive in Italy, as you can see in the screenshot at the top of this post.
