iPhone 3GS Battery Problem

On 02.22.10, In Technology, By AC Slater

Within the past couple weeks I’ve started to notice that the battery on my iPhone 3GS has been draining awfully fast for no reason. Prior to this latest issue, I’ve never had any problem with battery life. I charge my phone every night as I’ve done with every phone I’ve ever had whether it was completely dead or not, it’s just the most convenient time to charge it, plus it’s my alarm clock so I would hate for it to die over night. I know the iPhone’s are not known for their incredible battery life to begin with, but I’ve never had a problem before and could pull out at least 2 full days without a charge and moderate use, but over the past couple weeks I have been barely able to pull off 1 day on a single charge and I have no clue why.

I haven’t done anything different to the phone, I don’t recall installing any apps that would have caused this, yes my phone is Jailbroken, but I don’t run apps in the background, I pretty much only Jailbroke it so that I could use Lock Calendar to put my recent events on the lock screen (I hate having to click into the calendar to see what I have coming up). Sure I have Wifi, 3G and Push Notifications turned on, but I always have, so it’s nothing different. I even went so far as to restore the phone Saturday afternoon hoping that maybe it was just some glitch with the phone and a restore would fix the issue.

Before I did the restore though I had to make sure that the latest firmware version 3.1.3 had the ability to be Jailbroken and everything I read said that while it is able to be Jailbroken, if you don’t need to update the iPhone Dev Team recommended not updating. Now this is where I was torn, the release notes for 3.1.3 say that they address an issue with the battery meter going all funky and displaying the wrong percentage and not telling you exactly how much battery is really left. Now I’m not sure if this means that since the battery meter itself is going crazy that the phone bases it’s actual battery level on the meter, so if the meter says I only have 5% battery left, when in fact the phone has 80%, it will still shut off due to the information it’s receiving from the meter itself. And I also read that if you haven’t stored some hash information with Cydia you may not be able to jailbreak your phone in the future. So seeing as how my Cydia would crash on opening due to a corrupt repo download one day, I couldn’t have Cydia store that information for me, so I decided that was a good enough reason to restore to 3.1.2, for at least the time being.

Later I did some reading on how the 3.1.3. upgrade was working for everyone and I discovered that a lot of people were seeing slow downs and even worse battery life. I know that not everyone will have the same experience and these may not have all been 3GS experiences, but it was enough to keep me from upgrading to 3.1.3, but if this battery issue continues I feel like I’ll have no choice as it’s absolutely ridiculous that I unplug my phone at 5PM with 92% charge and by 8PM of almost no use it’s already at 50%. I have no desire to carry around my charger whenever I go out in hopes that I’ll have an outlet to plug my phone into, I already leave it charging at work, but this is really getting ridiculous.

Is anyone else experiencing similar issues? Did the update to 3.1.3 fix the issue? Are there any other fixes out there that I can try without having to update? I’ve already tried turning wifi off, but what’s the point of having a 3G phone if I need to turn the 3G off in order for the phone to function for a single day? I love my iPhone, but this is absolutely unacceptable.

Update: Phone is currently plugged in, I went to a few websites and the phone is now at 85%… I unplugged it and plugged it back in at it instantly jumped back up to 100%. Leave it to the Jesus phone to rise from the dead… seriously 3.1.3 might be in my immediate future despite the possible risks, this is ridiculous.

Update 2 (2/22/10): Looks like the culprit may be using an Exchange server to sync a Calendar. I don’t use Exchange for contacts or mail so those could also be the problem, but when I turn off my Google Calendar Sync Account (which uses exchange) the battery life seems to go back to what it was before. It’s only been about an hour, but so far it seems to be a huge improvement. (I think I spoke too soon). The only problem with this though is that I need that Calendar as it’s the one me and my girlfriend share so I have been using it for all of my appointments instead of the one native to the phone. So if anyone has a solution, please let me know.

Update 3 (2/23/10): The above account is everything that was happening yesterday, but after a full night plugged into the wall the phone seems to be alright this morning. I unplugged it from the wall at around 6am and it’s now 7:25am and I still have 100% battery. Wifi is turned on, 3G is turned on, the only thing that is not turned on is the Exchange Server connection to Google Calendar. I want to see how the battery does today without it on and I’ll turn it on later to see if that then causes the battery to drain. I just hope I didn’t jinx myself by posting this… we’ll see how it goes.

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Apple Announces the iPad

On 01.27.10, In Technology, By AC Slater

Steve Jobs took the stage today and announced Apple’s new Tablet computer, the iPad. Despite the ridiculous name, I was still interested in seeing what this thing could do, but after awhile became sadly disappointed. Now, I should have known that the rumors floating around regarding the features that would be built into this thing would be highly exaggerated, but essentially what we were shown is a glorified iPod Touch with optional 3G internet connection.

The iPad uses a variation of the iPhone OS, so those familiar with how the iPhone acts and responds will be at home using this thing, but it doesn’t seem to add anything remarkable to the OS. It will run all iPhone apps out of the box in either a 1:1 pixel mode or you can double the size and run a larger, albeit low res, version of the app. Obviously there will be apps in the future that will work natively with the iPad’s resolution and screen size, but for right now the majority of the apps are just going to be iPhone/iPod Touch apps. So as I said it’s essentially a larger scale iPod Touch/iPhone… I’m not terribly impressed.

I won’t go into all the specs of the iPad here since you can find them on every major news site out there, but there are a few things I’ll comment on. The lack of a camera, at all whether front or back, is a little disappointing. I would have thought at least a front facing camera for video chatting, etc. would have made it, but there is absolutely no camera on the device. The fact that it’s not widescreen is a little off putting as well as movies will not fill up the whole screen. I also don’t like the aesthetics of the unit in the fact that the screen doesn’t go anywhere near the edge of the bezel. I know it’s kind of a nit-picky thing to comment on, but it’s a little weird looking.

Now I will say that the price points aren’t terrible, but you have to add another $130 to the base price if you want the ability to get 3G service to the unit. What is cool is that the 3G service doesn’t come with a contract and the plans start at $15/mo for 250MB or $30/mo for unlimited, and the 3G is unlocked for worldwide use for any carrier that uses Micro SIM cards.

So I don’t know, it’s kind of cool, but it’s not as revolutionary as I was expecting it to be and I can’t see myself picking one of these things up in the near future. I was most looking forward to the announcement of a new iPhone OS, but that didn’t happen so naturally I’m a little disappointed overall.

So what do you guys think of the iPad? Are you going to pick one up? Do you see this knocking out the kindle in terms of e-books? Is this the saving grace that print media has been looking for?

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Will You Square Up?

On 12.03.09, In Technology, By AC Slater

I had heard about this start up a while ago, but then it sort of died out and I hadn’t heard anything, that was until this week. Square, as it’s known, is a way for people to accept credit cards (and I’m assuming debit cards) as a form of payment and when I say people, I mean anyone with a compatible wireless device. And by portable device I mean cell phone or really any device with a headphone jack. The hardware plugs into the headphone jack of any device it reads the credit card and turns that into tones that are then sent through the audio jack and decoded by the Square software, then all authentication is done on the Square server and sent back to the device.

The company came about when Jim McKelvey was trying to sell a piece of his artwork, but couldn’t complete the sale because he couldn’t accept credit cards. He brought this idea to Twitter creator Jack Dorsey and Square was born. The idea is simple, since pretty much everyone has a cell phone why not give those devices the ability to accept payments of all forms. The hardware add-on is extremely small and since it uses the headphone jack to send data, there is only need to manufacture one device with one connector which will work on all mobile phones (unless of course your phone doesn’t have a headphone jack which is kind of weird, but possible none the less). The only thing missing from your device is software and currently the iPhone and iPod Touch are the only devices to have supported software, but the groundwork is there for any device to eventually use this technology.

One of the coolest features, I think, is the e-receipt system. If you’ve ever been to the Apple store you’ve seen those guys walking around with the wireless devices that have the ability to check you out from anywhere in the store, this is essentially the same idea, but it can be done much cheaper and anyone can do it. Think about it, a wireless credit card reader costs anywhere from $700+, where as an iPod Touch would only set you back $250 or so. So back to these e-receipts, basically there’s no paper after a transaction. An e-receipt is sent directly to your e-mail address indicating how much you spent, where you spent it, your signature, contact information of the restaurant (or business) and even a map of where the purchase was made. I hate receipts so this is pretty outstanding to me.

I also like the different verification methods that Square looks to incorporate into the software. If you have a Square account (I’m assuming you don’t need one to actually make a purchase, but I’m not sure) you can assign a picture to your account and it will act as another verification when you make a purchase. The device will bring up a photo of you asking the cashier to verify that the person in the picture is the person making the payment. With the amount of plastic being used these days I always feel a little safer with a few extra verifications methods.

I’m not sure when Square will launch to the public, there are currently only a few places in the San Francisco area that are utilizing it, but I have signed up to get more info when it becomes available so I’ll be sure to let you know. I would imagine that the hardware and software would be free or close to free and the transaction fees would be the only form of payment, but I’m not sure. I know I read an article a few months ago that said the cost to make the hardware itself is next to nothing since there’s basically nothing to it.

Have any of you read about this thing? What are your thoughts… Could you see yourself using this in the future? Do you think businesses will start to embrace it and we’ll start to see waitresses carrying around iPhones instead of having to take your credit card up to a cash register? That would actually be pretty sweet considering waitresses at bars can get pretty bogged down when trying to run your credit card to pay your bill.

Square

Update: Added video after the jump

Update 12/9/09: While in Paris this morning Jack Dorsey announced that Square will be given away for FREE! And that they expect to start rolling it out to the iPhone and iPod Touch in March 2010 [cnn.com]

(more…)

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How To Enable MMS On iPhone Without Upgrading to 3.1

On 09.25.09, In Technology, By AC Slater

I know there are lots of people out there that don’t want to update their iPhone to 3.1 due to some random battery issues or maybe because your phone is jailbroken and you don’t want to lose all that fun stuff, but now you’re left in the dark when it comes to MMS since Apple requires you to update to 3.1 in order to get the carrier file update needed to enable picture messaging. Well I have a solution for you, well a Mac solution anyways (Update: Found some PC instructions, they are below, use at your own risk as I can’t test them). Remember, I’m not responsible for this breaking your phone, so proceed with caution. I just did these exact steps to my iPhone 3GS and everything works fine, but that’s not to say that it will yield the same results for everyone, so I’m just warning you. And I’m not sure if it will work on the iPhone 3G and Original iPhone or not, as I don’t have one to test on. Also, I wouldn’t suggest trying this if your phone is unlocked for a different carrier other than AT&T. I figured that would be common sense, but just in case some idiot wanders over here thinking this will work with another carrier, it won’t.

Update: I found PC instructions to allow iTunes to recognize .ipcc carrier files. Can’t test them since I don’t have a PC, but for those that want to try, they are below.

It’s actually very simple and takes about 10 seconds to do, total. Remember, these are Mac instructions, not PC (the IPCC Carrier file will work on a PC, but you’ll have to figure out how to allow iTunes to let you install it)

1. Download the latest AT&T Carrier File 5.5 HERE or HERE
2a. For Mac: Open “Terminal” and type the following exactly:
defaults write com.apple.iTunes carrier-testing -bool TRUE
2b. For PC: Go To START Menu and then “Run” (Windows Key + R on the keyboard) and type cmd <press enter>, type the following exactly:
“C:\Program Files\iTunes\iTunes.exe” /setPrefInt carrier-testing 1
3. Open iTunes with iPhone connected
4a. on Mac: Hold the OPTION key and click Update in iTunes
4b. on PC: Hold the SHIFT key and Click Check for Updates in iTunes
5. Browse to the ATT_US.ipcc file you downloaded above and select it (it’ll take about 2 seconds).
6. On iPhone Goto Settings and Turn Airplane Mode ON then turn it OFF. This is just so the phone leaves the network and reconnects.

You should now be able to send and receive MMS messages on your iPhone without having to update to iPhone OS 3.1. And if for some reason the Airplane mode switch doesn’t work, try restarting your phone. Enjoy!

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iPhone 1st Gen (2G) + 3.0 OS + Cingular Blue

On 06.18.09, In Technology, By AC Slater

UPDATE: I figured out how to get the EDGE network back up and running on my unlocked 1st Gen unlocked iPhone running 3.0 os using a AT&T Wireless aka Cingular Blue Sim. I was able to update a carrier file that was supposed to unlock tethering on the 3G iPhone and change the apn settings to the cingular blue settings I used on a plist file before, then just emailed myself the file, clicked it on the iPhone (using wifi of course) and then installed it, and BAM! EDGE network works perfectly again. Still doesn’t fix youtube though, that’s another issue. Here’s the file I used

I’m probably one of very few people that still have an old AT&T Wireless aka Cingular Blue plan these days and because of this I now have to use unlocked phones. I won’t have to do this much longer as my iPhone 3G S should be here tomorrow if the Apple website ever tells me the damn thing shipped (as I was typing this I got the confirmation email)…. Anyways, when the original iPhone came out 2 years ago I bought an 8gb version once the price dropped and the iPhone Dev Team figured out a way to unlock it.

So I’ve been using an unlocked iPhone 2G (as people like to call them) for a couple years now and with each firmware release I have to wait until the dev team figures out if the update is going to break the unlock and/or the jailbreak. So the iPhone 3.0 OS was released yesterday (or last week if you grabbed the Gold Master release of it off a torrent site) and with it came the waiting game. I decided to hold off with the GM (gold master) release and just wait for the official version only because I had no idea if I could update and keep my unlock or if there was going to be anything different between the two versions and I really only wanted to update once. I was at work yesterday when the official version was released so I obviously couldn’t update right away so I turned to the forums to see if anyone with a 2G unlocked iPhone had updated there phone and what their results were, which actually confused me more.

Some people were reporting that when they updated their phones to 3.0 it retained the unlock but the phone was stuck at the “Emergency calls only” screen. However they could still make calls to any number and receive calls, they just couldn’t get past that activation screen. Then there were other people that updated and everything was fine, it retained the unlock and the activation. So I was a little worried that the phone would be stuck at the activation screen, but I decided to do it anyways and eventually people figured out what they were doing differently to get different results.

Apparently if you unlocked/jailbroken the phone with the pwnage software for the Mac you would retain the unlock and the activation, the only thing that supposedly wouldn’t work was YouTube and everyone was having a problem with this. If you unlocked/jailbroken with quickpwn or winpwn then your phone would remain unlocked but not activated. To get arround the 2nd scenario you needed to find a 2.2 or 2.2.1 firmware that was created with pwnage, reflash your phone using iTunes 8.1 then update iTunes to 8.2 and reflash with 3.0.

My phone was original unlocked/jailbroken using pwnage on my mac so I figured I was good and went ahead with the update. I used Mac OSX Leopard, iTunes 8.2, and did the option + update method which is where you download the update separately from iTunes and then when you option click the update button in iTunes it asks you where the firmware file is and you find it manually, instead of having it download and install right from Apple and iTunes. I’ve read that it doesn’t matter though if you do this method or the iTunes method to update if you used pwnage, it will still remain unlocked and jailbroken. I also disconnected the computer from the internet just in case it tried to access the activation servers or something that people had talked about.

The update went smoothly, took about 15 minutes to go all the way through and restart. When the phone fired back up it remained unlocked and activated so I could still make phone calls and receive text messages, however the EDGE network would not work. Now I know exactly why this is, but since the phone is no longer jailbroken I cannot access the file system in order to edit the plist file I need to in order to set the network settings to the mMode servers. So that’s kind of a bummer. The internet and everything still works over Wi-Fi, but nothing over EDGE.

The other thing I’ve noticed today is that the battery is being drained ridiculously fast. I don’t know if it was because the push notifications were turned on or if it’s because the phone keeps trying to access the EDGE network and can’t or if it’s something else entirely. The phone has been off the charger since 6 am this morning, it’s now almost noon and I’m at less than half battery. I have gone in, turned off Push, turned off mail checking, and anything else that I can think of that would try to ping a server while on EDGE so hopefully the battery lasts me until 4pm when I get home today.

So that was my experience with updating my unlocked 1st Generation iPhone 2G to the iPhone 3.0 OS. Honestly I wish I hadn’t updated at this point, but there’s no reason to go through the hassle of downgrading it back to 2.2 or 2.2.1 since my iPhone 3G S will be here tomorrow and activated legitimately on AT&T. I did record the whole process with my VadoHD, but it’s pretty straight forward and I don’t think anyone needs video proof that this method works perfectly fine, but if you really want the video let me know and I can edit it down and upload it.

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