And Yet Another Apple Weblog

Speaking of batteries, my iPhone has been suffering progressively worsening battery life. I’d start the day off fully charged and by supper I’d be at or getting close to 20% left. This was odd as I’d not overly taxed the phone. I’d probably use an hour or so of Talk Time, checked my email every hour or so and brought up iCal 10 or 15 times. I'd also take a trip to Twitterland via Twitterrific (now replaced by Tweetsville by the way) and maybe use a few other apps along the way but did nothing that I felt should be running the battery down that fast.

A visit to Apple’s support forums has hopefully nipped this issue in the bud. Seems that although lithium-ion batteries like the ones in iPhones and iPods don’t suffer from “memory” problems like NiCad batteries do (we all knew that) they do benefit from completing complete charging cycles. Apparently this tunes the charging circuitry so that your phone knows when it’s fully charged and when it needs charging.

That day I let my phone discharge completely, to the point that it was at 5% and would only offer me the option to make an emergency call or charge the phone. I plugged the phone into a wall outlet for 5 or 6 hours and now everything seems to be back to normal.

Here’s a link to the myriad battery charging threads in the discussions forums. Apple also posted this interesting and useful lithium-ion battery tips page as well as this iPhone specific battery tips page. I believe much if not all of this info is contained in one of my many owners manuals but who reads those things?
Er, maybe I should. Nah!

For those too lazy to click on links, here are the iPhone specific tips Apple suggests. The ones in bold and underlined were news to me:

• Minimize the use of location services
• Fetch new data less frequently
• Turn off push mail
• Auto-check fewer email accounts
• Minimize the use of third party applications
• Turn off WiFi
• Turn off Bluetooth
• Use Airplane mode in low or no coverage areas
• Adjust brightness
• Turn off EQ
• Turn off 3G

Ok, lets get real. The reason I own an iPhone is solely (almost, I do use the phone for "phoning" people occasionally) for using third party applications so that one is just ridiculous. Also, putting the phone in Airplane mode kind of defeats the purpose of having a cell phone, doesn't it?

Anyway, the tips are good and along with following the monthly charging cycle tip I'm hoping to get more out of my iPhone's battery. One more little tidbit I hadn't even thought of:

Make sure your computer is on while charging iPhone via USB. If iPhone is connected to a computer that’s turned off or is in sleep or standby mode, the iPhone battery may drain. That's

a quote straight from the iPhone Battery tip page. I knew it wouldn't charge when the computer is turned off (duh!) but didn't know about the sleep or standby mode thingy. That's some good info!

After you start a sync or backup, walk away from your Mac and just leave it alone. Don't even look at it while iTunes does this important stuff. Alright I'm being a bit facetious here but I would suggest you not mess around with iTunes during a sync. I had a really nasty iPhone freeze at the gray Apple logo that I thought I wouldn't be able to recover from. I eventually was able to start up the iPhone in "Recovery Mode" and restored it from scratch (my backup was corrupted. Nice!). Since that pleasant adventure I've been very good at just leaving iTunes and the phone to their business. They'll let me know when they've finished.

Joe Henry
AYAAW

If you're like me and just can't stand not to have 50 apps installed on your iPhone, soon enough you'll get tired of rearranging them all each time you add an app or two. This is a fairly obvious tip but get into the habit of doing it right away and you'll spend less time rearranging iPhone app screens.

I organize my apps on screens of related categories of apps. I have three screens of productivity type apps: Phone, Calculator, MyWeather Mobile, Car Care, Units, Calendar, iXpenceit, etc. The next two pages are populated with all the games I've got installed. The page after that hold apps that don't quite fit into any other category: AOL Radio, Shazam, Bible, etc. The last page is where I put those "now that we have an app store with hundreds of apps to choose from and now we don't need you anymore" Apple apps: Notes, Stocks, Weather and YouTube. Why you can't delete them I don't know but I needed to put them somewhere as they were taking up valuable screen real estate.

Okay, so that's all pretty straight forward. It took me a few tries to get things just right but now I think I've got it under control. The next thing to do, however, is to make sure you have ample space on each screen to accommodate future app store purchases. At a minimum, I'd suggest leaving 3 or 4 spaces on each screen. For me that works out to 12 more productivity type apps and about 10-12 more games. This should be enough for a while.

No doubt there will come a day when I run out of space and I'll have to add another Productivity screen or Game screen. I'm really hoping that Apple comes up with a better way to organize by that time. Perhaps an "insert blank screen here" option? That be sweet! Until then we'll just have to suffer through the hard labor that keeping our iPhone screens really is.
:)

Joe Henry
AYAAW