So, you have that shiny new iPhone 3G or iPhone 3GS, and you’ve enjoyed playing with all of the really cool new features. You now have it all spec’d out with the killer apps that makes your life easier (and perhaps more fun), and you feel confident with the pocket power you now possess.
But somehow along the way your pocket power is, well, running out of power. Yes, your iPhone has now introduced you to the Kryptonite of the iPhone (and all mobile devices for that matter) – iDrain. The iPhone, thanks to its expanded capabilities, gets used more – and this additional use over a standard cell phone leads to faster battery depletion.
But fear not. There are steps to take that will prolong the run time for your iPhone, allowing you to have your cake and look it up on the web too. While some power saving tips are common sense (don’t browse the web and/or talk all day long), some things could easily be overlooked. So, as a service to our readers, we present a list of tips to help the road warrior in all of us get the most out of an iPhone charge.
1. Turn down the screen brightness. The iPhone has a nice, bright screen, but driving that backlight takes battery power. I usually keep mine at around 25% brightness, but you can easily experiment with the settings to see what works best for you, To adjust the screen brightness, go to settings/brightness and slide the control down to a setting that is acceptable
2. Adjust your poll time to check for email less frequently. The amount of time to wait before checking for new email is adjustable, and the less often you check, the less power you will use in the process. The iPhone offers settings of 15 minutes, 30 minutes, Hourly, and Manually. I usually set it for 30 minutes, with the knowledge that I can also always pull up the email client and manually check whenever it is convenient for me. However, you can set it for what works for you. It might be good to note that a longer polling period cuts down on potentially distracting email notifications as well as saving power from the notifications themselves (especially from the vibration alert). To adjust this setting, go to settings/mail and adjust the fetch time. Now, if you use a push email service, this will not be an option for you. But it has been reported that push services end up using more power, since they keep a connection open. This may be a tradeoff for the end user to decide.
3. Turn off the WiFi. Sure, it makes browsing faster to be connected to a good WiFi data source, but it uses more power in the process. Not only that, but leaving the WiFi on continues to burn through power even when you are not actively connected to a source. My advice – turn off the radio until you are in a location that has a fast WiFi connection and plan to use it for a bit. Otherwise you are writing a tiny power check every few minutes, and cashing them out hits your battery fairly hard. To adjust, go to settings/Wi-Fi and select off.
4. Turn on Auto-Lock for the screen. The iPhone has a beautiful screen, but if you don’t have Auto-Lock on it will be happy to keep that screen shining brightly until you manually turn it off. Not only is this not battery friendly, but it could lead to unexpected calls to Timbuktu thanks to a little accidental screen contact. You can adjust how long the phone will wait before Auto-locking, but the shorter the duration the greater the battery savings (and potentially the more secure the iPhone is, especially if you select an easy to remember but quick to type passcode while you are at it). To adjust this, go to settings/general and select a value for Auto-Lock.
5. Turn off the Equalizer. If you listen to music a lot, this one may be helpful. By turning off the equalizer you can save power over the entire listening session, and depending on the type of music you listen to this could be beneficial over time… Apple has suggested this for the iPod for some time now. To adjust this, go to settings/iPod and turn off the EQ.
6. Pack more juice. Just because you are on the road does not mean that you can’t have a backup power source for your iPhone. Several third party solutions are available that give you an easily pocketable power up to keep you running. For example, the 3GJuice gives you an additional 1800 mAh battery that will charge up your phone to 100% in relatively short time.
7. Take advantage of the commute time. Keep a mobile charger in the car, and plug up the phone when out for lunch or getting to a meeting location. Make it very convenient, and the action soon becomes habit, giving you a battery boost when you get to your destination. The same thing goes for keeping an extra USB cable handy when you are working – most devices now have USB ports, and installing iTunes is not required to charge the iPhone from a port.
8. Kill the vibrate. A vibration alert requires a physical process to drive it, and as you would expect this takes a chunk of power to make it happen. You can save some power by being judicious with its use. You can find this (strangely enough) at settings/sound.
9. Turn off Bluetooth. Let’s be honest, Bluetooth is great when it is in use. Wireless headsets are sweet, no doubt about it. But that connection requires an active radio to be on and listening for the headset to connect in and that requires power. By turning off the Bluetooth radio when not in use for extended periods of time you can save a little juice. This can be found at settings/general/bluetooth.
10. Update the phone often. Apple engineers are always working hard to tweak their flagship product to provide the best user experience, and these tweaks come to us through updates via iTunes. (For example, the latest 3.x update is already in beta and expected out soon.) So, if you typically do not sync via a desktop iTunes make it a point to do it on occasion and check for a new iPhone update – you may save power by doing so.
By following these tips and using a little control in the iPhone usage, you should find that getting through a typical day (or two) without a dead battery is not difficult at all. The most important thing to remember is that you are on a limited amount of power reserve when using any mobile device, and weighing your usage goes a long ways to having your device handy and charged when you need it most.
Does your phone run out of juice too quickly between charges? Do your battery bars drop like a credit-crunched housing market? You may sometimes curse your mobile for its lack of staying power, but a few simple changes in how you use it could boost battery performance and cut down on your charging…
1. Close unnecessary applications
It’s easy to leave power-sapping applications, such as a music player, running in the background, particularly on a smartphone where there are plenty of functions you can flick between. It’s usually straightforward to check which applications are open, and to close ones that aren’t needed.
2. Switch off Bluetooth
You may think it’s less hassle to leave it on, but Bluetooth nibbles away at your battery power. So whether you use Bluetooth for a handsfree headset, transferring music or images, or one of many other Bluetooth applications, the rule is the same: when you’re not using it, go into the menu system and turn it off.
3. Unplug the Wi-Fi
Similarly, if your phone is one of those high-end handsets with Wi-Fi connectivity, don’t leave it running in the background – it will devour power.
4. Dim the screen
Whenever the screen’s on, battery power is being used up. Adjusting your phone’s out-of-the-box display settings can save power. Dim the brightness level to the lowest you need, and change your backlight-on and screen timeout to the minimum settings you require. You can find the display adjustment or power saver options in your phone’s settings menu.
5. Don’t fiddle
The more you have the screen on, the more battery power is consumed. So don’t keep checking for messages or missed calls, looking at your phone clock, checking out old messages, looking at pics or generally fiddling with the phone – it may pass the time, but you’re also sucking away your battery life.
6. Turn off 3G
Although 3G adds extra multimedia functionality, mobiles use more power maintaining connections and making calls on a 3G network than on 2G/2.5G GSM networks. If your 3G phone has the option in its network settings menu, you could temporarily switch from automatic network selection (or 3G/UMTS option) to an appropriate GSM option and extend your battery life significantly. Switch back when you want a faster data connection, or want to use other 3G functions.
7. Watch out for poor signal strength
The poorer the signal strength, the more power your phone will expend trying to connect to the network. While you can’t control network coverage in your area, try to avoid keeping your phone on standby somewhere where signal strength is known to be non-existent or very poor, such as in a basement, on the Underground/Metro, or even in a room in your home where you get bad reception.
8. Manage your music
When it comes to playing music, some mobiles are more power-hungry than others, but all will use up extra battery life. When playing tunes, be aware that you’re reducing your calling and standby time – and if you’re interrupted and have to take your earphones out, make sure you stop the music.
9. Switch to flight mode
In some situations where you want to listen to tunes or play games but don’t need the phone connected – travelling on the Underground/Metro, when you’re out of network coverage, or perhaps at night – you can save power by switching to ‘flight mode’. This automatically turns off the mobile phone’s radio transceiver and Bluetooth, reducing power consumption, but allowing you to use other functions. This means, though, you can’t make or take calls or receive texts, so remember to turn it back to ‘normal’ mode when you need to.
10. Reduce mobile internet browsing
Avoid unnecessarily long bouts of random mobile internet browsing; while it may be reducing your boredom levels, using a data connection will also be draining your battery.
11. Limit email checking
It’s great to stay connected with email on your mobile, but you could be unnecessarily eating up your battery life. With most mobile email apps, you can set how frequently your phone checks for new messages – but every data connection that takes place when your phone checks for email uses up a little more power. Think about how often you genuinely need to check for emails, and adjust your settings accordingly.
12. Know where your GPS is at
If you have a mobile with a GPS receiver built in for on-board satellite navigation, be careful that you don’t leave it active when you don’t need it. Also, be aware that using GPS-based satnav applications on your phone can rapidly reduce your juice, so use prudently.
Many of us may think that iPhone is very beautiful and powerful. However, how many of us have actually used its full potential? Do you know all of the tips and tricks of your iPhone? If you don’t, I am sure the following Ultimate List of iPhone Tips and Tricks will help you a lot.
1) Get URL Hints
In Safari, you can press and hold any links in order to see the URL and site name of the link.
2) Dismiss Keyboard Suggested Word
To dismiss the keyboard suggested spelling of a word, you can tap on anywhere of the screen. You do not have to press “x” button at the end of the word.
3) Scroll to the Top of the Page
When you are using iPhone applications, you can automatically scroll to the top of the page by tapping on the “top bar”, which has the time, service bars and the battery information. In Safari, this will also brings up the URL address bar as well.
4) Different Domain Suffix
Hold down the “.com” button, you can see a popup comes up with “.net, .edu and .org” buttons. Slide your finger from them and then release your finger to choose.
5) Domain Resolution
When typing a URL in Safari, you don’t have to type the “www” or the “.com”. For exmaple, you can type “GGiPhone” in the URL box in order to view “GGiPhone.com”.
6) Take Screenshots Anytime
You can take any screenshots at anytime easily on your iPhone. First of all, press and hold the “Home” button and then click the “Sleep” button once. The screen will flash white and the screenshot will be stored in your camera roll immediately.
7) Save Images in Safari
When you are browsing any web pages on Safari. You simply touch the image and hold your finger until a menu show up, select Save Image.The downloaded image is located under your Photo / Camera Roll.
8 ) Inserting a Period
When you are typing on you iPhone, simply double tapping the “Space Bar” button at the end of a sentence, it will automatically insert a period followed by a space. It saves you a lot of time instead of pressing “124″ to get the numbers and symbols page where the period located in.
9) Alternative Way to Navigate Screens
You can tab the bottom right or left corner to switch between different screens instead of swiping your finger across the screen.
10) Alternate Characters
Hold down a letter on the keyboard, you can see popup comes up with various versions of the character.
11) Move Dock Icons
Just press and hold any icons on the screen, then drag them while they are shaking. You can put any 4 icons on your dock (grey bar at the bottom of your iPhone).
12) Fit-to-page Column, word and Picture
When browsing web pages on Safari, you can double tap on a column, word or picture to fit it’s width to your iPhone’s screen.
13) Select Icon for Bookmarked Webpage
When you are browsing a web page on Safari and add its icon to your home screen by pressing the “+” button and select “Add to Home Screen”. The icon is a screenshot of the page you were on. You can have a different icon by zooming in a particular item on the page. It can be the website’s logo or any picture.
14) Scrolling with Two Fingers
Some web pages contains separate text boxes with their own scroll bars. If you are trying to move around in one, you can scroll it with two fingers instead of one. That will let you scroll just inside the box and not affect the position of the entire page.
15) Maximize Battery Life
There is a separate sensor situated right above the earpiece, that detects ambient light. The iPhone uses this sensor only once per session, just as you unlock the handset. But if you cover the sensor as you unlock the phone, you will trikc the handset into thinking it’s in a dark room, and it will power down the screen brightness. You can Also turn off Bluetooth and WiFi if you don’t expect to use them for a while. You can also set email fetch time to “Hourly” or “Manually”, and turn the “Push” off in order to save energy.
16) Reset Your iPhone
Press and hold the “Home” Button and the “Sleep” Button to Reset your iPhone. A white light will flash, the screen will shut off and then turn back on. Please keep holding both buttons until the screen turns back on.
17) Insert Punctuation Quickly
To enter any punctuations while using iPhone keyboard, you can press and hold the “123″ button and slide your finger over to any punctuation button. And then the punctuation will be inserted after you have released the button.
18) Get a Bigger Keyboard
When you are using the on-screen keyboard on Safari, you can rotate the iPhone horizontally before tapping on the address bar, the Safari window will switch to horizontal mode. Now you can have a much larger keyboard, making data entry a little easier.
19) Changing iPod Icons
By the default, the buttons at the bottom of the iPod scren are “Playlists”, “Artists”, “Songs”, “Videos”, and “More”. You can change them by pressing the “More” button, and then tap on the “Edit” button in the upper left corner. A Configure screen will appear with icons for “Albums”, “Podcasts”, “Audiobooks”, “Genres”, “Composers”, “Compilations”, “Playlists”, “Artists”, “Songs”, and “Videos”. To substitute one of these icons for one that appears at the bottom of the iPod screen, just tap and hold on the icon you prefer and drag it over the icon you want to replace. Tap on Done when you’re finished.
20) Make a Call from Safari
If you find any phone numbers in Safari you would like to call, you do not need to jump to the phone component. Just tap on the number, and the iPhone will dial it for you immediately.
If you would like to silence an incoming call, just press the sleep/wake button on the top of the phone. If, instead, you would like to send the call directly to your voicemail, press this button twice.
Entering Pauses To Automated Number Series Dialing.
A lot of times you want to automate dialing a series of numbers. We do this all the time for calling cards, extensions, etc. For example, I have a telecom number at work and I want to dial the main number, wait a second or two and then dial the passcode for me. On my blackberry it was an X to insert a pause, but on iPhone it is a comma. Here is how it looks in my contact: 18005555555,,1234567. The two commas created a long enough pause for me to make this work for me.
Avoiding 411 charges
Instead of calling regular 411 to get information (and an extra charge on your phone bill), Google by voice by calling 1-800-GOOG-411 to get a street address or phone number. Some Lifehacker readers say GOOG 411 works better than others; if you haven’t tried it, here’s a YouTube clip (courtesy of Google) on how to give it a try
Avoid Calls from certain People using silent ringtone
Do you have people calling you that you want to ignore? Create a silent ringtone and make a contact for them and set the ringtone to silent.
Trick Automated Phone Bots into Thinking your Phone is Dead.
If you are roaming and visual voicemail is unavailable, you can call your own phone number and get your voicemail the old fashioned way.
Enter your 10-digit wireless number
Interrupt your personal greeting by pressing the “*” key
Enter your voice mail password
Use the standard keys to manage your messages. (7 to delete, 33 to skip to the end, etc)
Avoid Roaming Charges While Traveling
to avoid roaming charges, set your phone to “unconditional call forwarding” that way, your phone will NOT ring while you are roaming (calls go STRAIGHT to voicemail). to do that, follow these instructions:
# On your phone, dial *#62# and click Send.
# Phone number of your voicemail will be displayed.
# Write down the number (including +1)
# Dial **21*+1xxxyyyzzzz*11# and hit Send. +1xxxyyyzzzz is the number you wrote down previously to forward your calls automatically to your voice mail.
# Dial *#21# to verify that the new settings are active.
# When no longer desired, dial ##002# to reset back to normal.
Copying voicemail messages to your computer
If you want to save that favorite voicemail message to your PC so you can save it for all time, follow these steps.
First, if you haven’t already, jailbreak your iPhone 2.0 (here’s the Windows method). This will install an OpenSSH server on your device that lets you transfer files from it to your computer.
On the iPhone, under Settings->Wi-Fi, select the network you have joined to view connection details. Write down the phone’s IP address.
Using your FTP program, connect to the device’s IP address with username root and password alpine (unless you’ve changed your password). You’ll need to use SFTP (secure FTP), not plain FTP.
Once you’re connected to the device, browse to/private/var/mobile/Library/Voicemail/ to view the list of VM files. They’re saved as .AMR files, which QuickTime can play. Transfer them to your computer and you’re done.
Create Speed dial icons for your screen using Qlink
A very nice person created a web site that lets you associate a phone number with a web page so that you can create a Homepage bookmark that dials a number. Click here for instructions.
Using Favorites to Create a Speed Dial List
Most people have figured this one out, but I recently talked to two people lately who hadn’t put it all together. You can set up your phone so that pressing the home button twice (In Settings/General/Home Button/Phone Favorites) brings up your contact list Favorites list. This makes dialing a number simply pressing the home button twice and then selecting one of your favorites in the list.
Reordering Favorites in Phone on iPhone
Favorites are usually displayed in the order they’re added to the Favorites list. But they can be reordered in whatever way you want. It’s as easy as drag and drop.
In the Favorites screen, press Edit.
Tap the three-line icon and hold it.
The favorite you’ve selected will become active (when active, it appears to be slightly above the other favorites).
Drag the favorite to the position in the list you want it to have and let it go.
Click “done” in the top left and your favorites will be reordered.
Secret Service Numbers
*3001#12345#*and then tap Call. This enters you into field mode. Field mode reveals many of the inner settings of your iPhone, specifically up-to-date network and cell information.
*#06# Displays your IMEI. No need to tap Call. IMEI is the unique identifier for your cell phone hardware. Together with your SIM information it identifies you to the provider network.
*777# and tap Call. Account balance for prepaid iPhone.
*225# and tap Call. Bill Balance. (Postpaid only)
*646# and tap Call. Check minutes. (Postpaid only)
*#21# and tap Call. Discover the settings for your call forwarding. You’ll see whether you have voice, data, fax, sms, sync, async, packet access, and pad access call forwarding enabled or disabled.
*#30# and tap Call. This displays whether you have enabled or disabled the presentation of the calling line, presumably the number of the party placing the call.
*#76# and tap Call. Check whether the connected line presentation is enabled or not. State whether the connected line presentation is enabled or disabled. Presumably similar to the calling line presentation.
*#43# and tap Call. Determine if call waiting is enabled. Displays call waiting status for voice, data, fax, sms, sync data, async data, packet access and pad access. Each item is either enabled or disabled.
*#61# and tap Call. Check the number for unanswered calls. Show the number for voice call forwarding when a call is unanswered. Also show the options for data, fax, sms, sync, async, packet access and pad access.
*#62# and tap Call. Check the number for call forwarding if no service is available. Just like the previous, except for no-service rather than no-answer situations.
*#67# and tap Call. Check the number for call forwarding when the iPhone is busy.
If you want a dock for your iPhone but don’t want to shell out $49 for it, then you should checkout the do-it-yourself video of making a iPhone dock using binder clips after the jump.
In the video, gizak, a reader of LifeHacker is making the dock for an iPhone 3G, but it should work for the 1st generation iPhone and most iPod models. He makes quite a sturdy looking iPhone dock using assortment of short, medium and large binder clips.
If you like doing things on your own, you might also want to checkout DIY: iPhone Document Scanner that acts as a stand for your iPhone so that its built-in camera can be used to take snapshots of the documents underneath.
