brave [little] meme

Reduce iPhone 3GS Battery Drain

For the past few days I have been struggling with my iPhone 3GS’s battery draining at what seemed an unusually high rate. By mid-day, only four hours after unplugging it from its overnight charge, the iPhone was already approaching 50% with minimal use.

Enabling the battery percentage meter (Settings > General > Usage) highlighted the problem further: the iPhone seemed to be draining rapidly even on standby.

Trawling the interwebs brought about this solution: turn off Push for any Exchange email accounts you may have. I have an Exchange email account enabled for Calendars, and sometimes email. Switching it to hourly Fetch has left my iPhone’s battery at 61% after 6.5 hours of reasonable use, including playing some pretty GPU-intensive 3D Games (F.A.S.T), repeatedly using the camera, and spending some time painting in Brushes. All in all, a serious improvement over yesterday’s pitiful performance.

Rumors of a possible iPhone OS 3.0 bug related to this feature abound, so we’ll have to see if Apple addresses the issue with the next bugfix release. Give it a try if this applies to you. Your mileage may vary.

iPhone 3GS - First hands-on impressions

Let’s get one thing out of the way: it’s fast. So fast in fact, that previously tedious task switching between apps like Mail and Safari now feel almost like true multitasking.

Within Safari itself, pages load at a very close approximation of desktop browser speeds. Pages loaded with Javascript and containing multiple images load in an instant, and switching between pages feels considerably quicker.

Yes, the VGA video camera’s very cool, the autofocus stills camera is a great improvement over the iPhone 3G’s, and the compass offers amazing future possibilities with regards to augmented reality, but that’s all gravy.

For me, it’s the the improved fuidity of the entire user experience that really marks the device. The 3GS’s new hardware has smoothed out all those small but cumulatively annoying glitches and hang-ups of the iPhone’s UI into one silky, unobtrusive experience.

It would seem to me that in the 3GS the iPhone’s refined UI has finally found a worthy home - one capable of providing it with all the muscle it needs to flow as it should. While the iPhone 3G is a great device in itself, it sometimes struggles to catch up to its user’s activities. This, it would seem, is no longer the case.

Some may think me crazy for shelling out full-price for the device, but I don’t really care. If I have to throw money at technology, what better than to throw it at what has become my most used personal gadget.

Dear O2 (and Apple): Thanks for Nothing.

Consider this an open letter to O2, the UK’s exclusive iPhone carrier, and by association Apple, a company who needs no introduction.

As a long-time O2 customer and long-time iPhone user, I would like to express my deepest disappointment in the way the company plans to treat me, and many others like me, with regards to the upcoming iPhone 3GS upgrade path. Or rather, the lack thereof.

You see O2, I was more than willing to sign my life over to you for another eighteen months, during which time you would have unfailingly collected my hard-earned money for the simple privilege of upgrading to the latest iPhone incarnation. I have after all been with you for over two years, and am well into the twelfth month of my current contract.

Was it too much to expect to have a clear upgrade path to adding a shiny new ‘S’ to my iPhone 3G? But no, that would be too simple, too common sense. Fact is, even your friendly customer service representative could barely keep a straight face when delivering the blow that is your strategy for the new handset.

So I have to buy out my contract, you say? To give you, my current carrier, six months worth of monthly fees, at once, plus the full cost of the new handset, for the simple privilege of signing up another 18-month contract with you? The hell you say.

Thankfully, your friendly minimum-wage phone drone was also human. In not so many words, he hinted that this little scheme of yours may well be temporary, a way to catch the blind, drooling hordes of early adopters who lose all perception of common sense at the sight of a new Apple logo. In time, and not long at that, I have the feeling you will suddenly clear a sensible upgrade path to the rest of us loyal customers.

So here it is, O2: I’m onto you. I see your hand, and call it. I will tinker with the shiny new iPhone OS update, and watch the privileged few rush to your stores on launch day as I did myself a year ago, almost to the day. But this time, I will not be joining the hordes. This time, I’m not giving you one damn penny more than you deserve. 

So let’s see who breaks first. I may be too weak to give up my iPhone, too much of an Apple fanboy, and too dependent on the damn thing’s versatility. But I am prepared to wait my contract out for a full six months, and I am betting you fold before that time is up. Either way, you can count on one thing: the day your iPhone exclusivity lapses, I will ditch you like a bad date. 

So thanks, O2. Thanks for nothing.

[ Want to make your voice heard? Sign this petition to tell O2 just how you feel. Requires a Twitter account. ]