5 Simple methods to help preserve your iPhone 4S battery life

The iPhone 4S is already generating praise for its relatively well performing battery but everyone who has got their hands on the iPhone 4S already knows that more is never good enough. Even as manufactures introduce better performing batteries, technicians are already developing the next generation of battery intensive applications. Hence, to make the best of the battery you have, you need to make some small efficiency focused changes to the iPhone setup. This does not mean that we ought to choose one extreme and shut down all external applications found on the iPhone, but rather make small changes to get the best user experience without having to charge the phone every few minutes.

 

1. Turn-off unnecessary connections: Whenever possible, disable unnecessary connections such as Bluetooth, GPS and Wi-Fi. If you are at work and you have your own PC, then you would not exactly need these connections because you will be able to access these features via PC. The best times to use these connections are when you are on the move or you do not have access to a PC (and internet).

2. Adjust Brightness: when you are at home or at the office, turn down the screen brightness. This needlessly drains your battery. Activate the brightness when you are heading outside but remember to turn it off when you are inside.

3. Disable 3G: Unless you need fast connection speeds, turn off the 3G because this takes a significant toll on the iPhone’s battery.

4. Notification settings: Adjust your synchronisation and notification settings because the constant updates can quickly wear down even the toughest battery. The best thing to do would be to manually refresh unessential apps.

 5. Careful of the multi-tasking: Sometimes you might use your iPhone for music, movies, social networking and general communication. If you have any important work, then tone down on the multi-tasking and focus on one simple set of applications.(via planetiphones)

Siri GUI, Dictation And Voice Commands Now Fully Working On iPhone 4 And iPod touch 4G

The developers and hackers from the iPhone jailbreaking community sure are a talented bunch of people. Despite reports of Siri being incompatible with older iOS devices because of them “not having suitable hardware”, these folks took up the challenge of making Siri work on these devices and, if today’s news is anything to go by, they have successfully completed that challenge.
Yesterday, we published a step-by-step guide on how to install Siri’s GUI on iPhone 4 and iPod touch 4G but that was, as you may remember, GUI only. Today, we’ve received news that Siri now works 100% on the iPhone 4 and iPod touch 4G, with its GUI working smoothly and Apple servers accepting and processing voice input.

The news comes from 9to5Mac – a blog dedicated to covering all things Apple – in a post where they announce that they have, in collaboration with developer Steven Troughton-Smith, managed to get Siri working with all of its features on older iOS devices such as the iPhone 4 and iPod touch 4G.
From 9to5Mac:

On the iPhone 4S launch date just a couple of weeks ago, we broke the news that developer Steven Troughton-Smith had successfully ported the Siri user-interface and some of the underlying code from the iPhone 4S onto the iPhone 4. The port was functional except for the most important part: talking to Apple’s servers. Now, Troughton-Smith has followed up with Chpwn to get the server fully working on an iPhone 4 and iPod touch.

Troughton-Smith is the same developer who first got Siri’s GUI working on the iPhone 4, which we talked about earlier this month. After “following up” with developer chpwn, he has managed to trick Apple’s servers into accepting voice input from Siri on officially unsupported devices. This only became possible after iPhone Dev-Team managed to jailbreak iPhone 4S from which Troughton-Smith was able to extract necessary files to make Siri work.
Sadly and, yet, understandably, Troughton-Smith refuses to distribute these files which are required to make Siri work on iPhone 4 and iPod touch 4G as doing so would be illegal. Besides this, setting Siri up on iPhone 4/iPod touch 4G takes about 20 steps and requires a “validation token” that has to be taken live from an iPhone 4S.
Still, there is hope for those of you who are interested in making Siri work on their iPhone 4 or iPod touch 4G as Troughton-Smith states, after being asked if he sees Siri coming to Cydia in the form of a tweak, “I have no doubts that others will package this up and distribute it quasi-illegally, or try and sell it to people. I am only interested in the technology and making it work”. (via Redmondpie)

Related articles

• Siri Gets Around - Now (Almost) Available on iPhone 4 and iPod Touch 4G (cosbysweaters.com)
• Apple's Siri Speaks Also on iPhone 4, iPod Touch 4G (pcworld.com)
• Siri hacked to fully run on the iPhone 4 and iPod touch, iPhone 4S vs iPhone 4 Siri showdown video (interview) (9to5mac.com)
• Siri hack on iPhone 4, iPod Touch can now chat with Apple's servers (venturebeat.com)
• Black Mirror unites iPhone's Siri to mind control (electronista.com)
• Siri Ported To iPhone 4 and iPod Touch 4G (techcrunch.com)
• Siri hacked to work on iPhone 4 and iPod touch 4G (gizmag.com)
• Jailbroken iPhone 4 and iPod Touch Run Limited Siri [Iphone 4s] (gizmodo.com)
• How To Get Siri GUI On iPhone 4 And iPod Touch 4G Right Now (Guide) (netwidz.com)
• Why Siri doesn't like older iPhones (news.cnet.com)

“Siri, Will You Marry Me?”

Apple’s latest big thing is undoubtedly Siri, the digital assistant locked deep inside the new iPhone 4S. As soon as people began getting their hands on the iPhone 4S and, more specifically, Siri, they started to ask her (or him) increasingly random questions, just to see what the response was.

This led to more than a few blog posts and videos doing the rounds, showing off just what happened when you asked Siri where you could hide a dead body, or asked it to tell you a joke. It was all (mildly) amusing, and we all giggled. Now, two weeks since the initial launch of the iPhone 4S, we thought all that silliness was behind us, but alas, it seems we aren’t quite as safe as we thought.
Now we have a new video which is an interesting riff on the old ‘Siri, will you marry me?’ question.
The video follows a group of friends who are asking Siri some comedic questions, except they get more than they bargained for, way lot more actually.
Now, before you watch this video, let me add this. Yes, it’s entertaining, and yes, we have to commend the people behind it for putting together a nice little video. That said, we’ve no idea whether anyone else has managed to make Siri do what it did in the aforementioned video, and to be honest, we’re not even sure whether this is legit in the first place.
That said, it’s worth watching, so long as you’ve nothing more important to do with the next 120 seconds of your life.
Oh, and make sure you watch to the very end!
Now we’ve all sat and watched yet another video about Siri’s often off answers to questions, can we, as the internet as a whole, please make a pact? Moving forward, can we all agree to stop with the Siri videos showing the same thing, over and over? Yes we know Siri has some canned responses to some interesting questions, and yes it was funny the first 143 times we saw them. But we’ve seen them now, we laughed and we cried.
But really, are there not more interesting, and hopefully useful things we can use Siri for? (via Redmondpie)

Apple iOS Gmail App Plagued with Problems, Pulled by Google

Just hours after releasing a Gmail app for the iPad, Google has pulled the app from the App Store due to a notification bug.
After multiple sources complained of an error message stating “no valid ‘aps-environment’ error entitlement,” when they first launched the app, Google tweeted that the app has since been removed. The company went on to say they are working on correcting the problem, though users who have already installed the app can continue to use it.
The app, which has been present on the Android system since it first launched, was supposed to bring iOS users the full Gmail experience, incorporating push notifications, thread conversations and full account search, among other features.
The iPad version of the app featured split screen view, though Google decided to place navigation access under the main message list. The app was meant to bring Gmail to bother iPads and iPhones, yet users can still access their email via POP3, as well as Microsoft Exchange.
For more information on what the Gmail app would have brought iOS users, check out our sister site, Brighthand (via tabletpcreview)

Apple Retail Stores To Allow Self Checkout For Purchases Via iOS App

If you’ve ever set foot in an Apple Store, the chances are you’ve experienced the hugely irritating situation of knowing exactly what you want to buy – often having it in your sweaty little hands at the time – but being unable to get hold of a store employee to ring it up for you.

It’s a situation exacerbated by the sheer volume of customers Apple Stores seem to attract, and they obviously couldn’t employee enough people to avoid a situation we’ve all experienced.
It appears Apple’s solution may be to not actually use retail employees at all, at least not for low-value items, sounds great doesn’t it?
MacRumors has got hold of information that suggests Apple Stores will soon allow purchasers to check themselves out, using the iPhone app that is currently in the App Store.
Once updated, the app will allow users to pay for shelf-stocked items using their iTunes account, and then simply walk out, product in hand.
Self checkout is nothing new, with supermarkets in particular allowing shoppers to bag their own groceries and pay at a machine. The move from tomatoes and apples (go on laugh, it was funny) to speaker docks and cables is perhaps a logical one, though we’d still feel a little uneasy about it if we were in charge of an Apple Store!

More expensive items, such as Macs, iPhones and iPads will need to be fetched from the store room still, which will obviously still require the help of an assistant, but anything you see on the shelf will be available for self-checkout.
Items that require fetching will still be purchasable using the iPhone app, according to the MacRumors’ source, with the retail employee simply checking your emailed receipt and retrieving your new item from the back. It may not be self-checkout, but it will certainly help to speed things up nicely.
Anything that makes our stays in an Apple Store shorter gets the thumbs up from us here at Redmond Pie – the longer we spend in there, the more we invariably spend – but the whole idea of allowing customers to check themselves out still concerns us every-so-slightly.
Clearly Apple has more faith in the human race than we do, but then with billions of dollars in the bank, they can probably afford to!(via Redmondpie)

Apple Acquires C3 Technologies To Add Realistic-Looking 3D Maps To iPhone

Apple appears to still be in the market to revamp iOS Maps and get away from Google’s back-end. With the recent purchase of 3D Mapping company C3 Technologies, they may just do that!

Currently, iOS uses an Apple-built Google Maps application. What that means is; Apple does not own the data used by the application, but instead has created a shell that houses Google’s product. Without their own home-grown map application Apple is limited by the service that they can provide to their end users. This creates a dependency on Google by Apple, and with Google being a direct competitor with the Android operating system, it seems that maybe the time is coming for that dependency to be cut.
With the purchase of C3 Technologies, Apple now has three companies under their name working on creating a new Maps application that will be solely their own. As you may remember Apple purchased Placebase in 2009 and last year they purchased Poly9. Poly9 is also a 3D mapping company, and shows that Apple is more than serious about creating this new feature. C3 Technologies uses a declassified government missile guidance method to render detail of buildings, trees, and even smaller objects, which in turn could be used to compete with Google’s Street View.

As I stated before, this creates an advantage for Apple to sever the proverbial umbilical cord and continue being the independent giant that they are. I know that before I decided to switch to an iPhone 4, I used Google’s navigation within Maps to get directions anywhere within my car. I have always been impressed by Google’s Maps application and I really look forward to seeing what Apple is going to bring to the table. We saw recently saw that Nokia has brought their maps HTML5 application to other devices via the web browser, which was another move to bring an improved mapping experience to tons of users out there.
To give you an idea how awesome C3 is, check out the videos we’ve embedded below:
I believe that we won’t see the new iOS Maps until the next generation of iOS at least, so I wouldn’t hold down my breath just yet. We will do our best to keep you all updated as we get more info regarding this. This may be enough of a reason for Apple to opt for a larger screen in their next generation iPhone so that the maps are better readable while driving.
If you’re interesting in seeing how C3 Technologies comes up with these jaw dropping maps, then you should definitely check out this video:
(via 9to5mac)

Apple to Lose Control of Tablet Market by 2014, Says Analyst

A new analyst report claims that Apple will lose its domination of the tabletsphere by 2014-15 to Android, and that Microsoft will see some gain.
According to a prediction from analyst Jack Gold, of J. Gold Associates, Apple will lose its overwhelming control of the consumer tablet market within the next three years, with Android tablets acquiring a majority share of the market as the number of vendors and devices increase to overpower the iPad. Though, Gold feels the iPad will continue to hold the largest share of the enterprise market where specialized features built into some Android tablets will take longer to gain share.
Gold also predicted that Microsoft will occupy closer to 10 percent of the consumer tablet market by the same 2014 timeframe, thanks to Windows 8 and its tablet-friendly aspects, as well as the “regular” desktop interface option. Current rumors suggest we won’t be seeing a tablet running this OS until sometime in late 2012. Though the analyst also noted that Microsoft will lose out to iOS and Android, which he believes will control 30 and 50 percent, respectively, of the consumer tabletsphere.
In addition, Gold expects Microsoft will occupy about 15 percent of the enterprise table space, as it continues maintain its popularity among business customers. RIM’s QNX, however, will have around 10 percent, while iOS will be the winner with 40 percent, followed by Android with 30 percent, says Gold.
Source: eWeek