Tag Archives: apple

Power post

23 Wednesday Jan 2013

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Another follow-up message relating to a favourite topic of mine: The battery life of my Apple iPhone 4S.
Lately, I’ve been able to go three to four work days between charges.
• Minimal phone calls, light web browsing using Opera with data compression, moderate texting and manual e-mail fetching.
• Not too much photography, some use of social media apps, no web-streaming audio.
• Wi-Fi and Bluetooth only when necessary.
• Mobile Internet operating on EDGE/2G.
• Screen brightness on manual, set to about 20%.
• Most app notifications deactivated.
I know that’s not the ideal setup for everyone … but I thought it would be interesting to share this information anyway, in case this happens to fit your own mobile phone usage habits.
(Heck, this isn’t always my usage pattern … just what’s been “normal” of late.)

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Mobile life on the EDGE

22 Sunday Jul 2012

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So here’s an update on my post last week about trying to extend my iPhone 4S battery life by switching mostly to 2G (EDGE) instead of using 3G.
On heavy usage, the difference is somewhat noticeable — nothing that blows my mind.
On light usage though, it’s a lot more interesting. As of 2 p.m. today, I’ve had my phone off the mains for a little over two full days and the battery shows 54% capacity remaining.

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That’s with very light photography,a few phone calls, a little bit of texting, some Internet radio streaming on my drive to work*, light web browsing using Opera Mobile as my browser.
My screen brightness is set to auto with the slider sitting above the letters gh of the word Brightness in the menu.
No video, a bit of Wi-Fi.
Not too shabby.
(*) On mobile Internet radio streaming, that’s where it shows the most noticeable change in battery usage. On my 15-minute commute to work, it typically drains 5% or 6% using 3G. On 2G, it only drains about 3%. That’s something resembling half the previous usage. Nice.

Hailing the return of slow Internet

15 Sunday Jul 2012

Posted by in Apple, Internet, iPhone, technology

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If you recall several months ago, when the iPhone 4S was new to my tech family, I lamented the loss of the ability to manually switch off 3G Internet and use EDGE (2G) instead.
Well in a case of severe catch-up, I’ve finally realized Apple corrected this omission in one of its firmware updates. Behold:

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Hooray!
I only discovered this within the last day, so I’ll report back later on whether this change will extend the battery life of my device, as is typically the case when mobiles are connected to EDGE versus 3G.
Another benefit of manually forcing your phone to use the slow lane is that in very congested environments, like Manhattan for example, there is heavy congestion on the popular 3G networks and on local WiFi, to the point where a slow but reliable EDGE connection is more useful and enjoyable than a fast but flaky mobile Internet connection.
(As proof, I can attest I was able to send texts and have crisp, clear phone conversations using Skype over T-Mobile’s 2G network in lower Manhattan last August, whereas AT&T’s 3G network was almost useless at times due to congestion.)
By the way, this post was written on my smartphone and uploaded using EDGE … Seems just dandy, thank you very much.

To-do over tethering

06 Friday Apr 2012

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If you’re having trouble with tethering and Personal Hotspot with your iPhone, don’t forget to check with your carrier.

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I noticed recently that my iPhone was no longer passing data to my devices with the Personal Hotspot function turned on.
I am subscribed to a data plan that allows for such activity and this function performed normally until the last few weeks.
After doing some online research, I tried some of the suggested tricks, including a network setting reset, to no avail.
At this point, I figured it was worth a call to Fido customer service.
The first agent confirmed to me I had a data plan that supports tethering and Personal Hotspot. He suggested there was some kind of firmware/software problem with my phone. He told me to check my OS version and to do a hard reboot of my phone before hanging up.
I was skeptical but I tried anyway. It turns out my apprehension was correct, as this did nothing to fix my problem.
I made another call to customer service. This time, I asked for the agent to make sure tethering was actually activated on my account. Lo and behold … it was not, although it should have been. The agent cheerfully rearranged my account details and voila! Tethering and Personal Hotspot were back in business.

Quick LTE test

23 Friday Mar 2012

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Took Apple’s new iPad out for a spin Thursday, to a location where Bell’s LTE mobile coverage was more reliable than at my home.
As you can from the above screen shot, it’s doing very well, thank you very much. And that’s only with signal level fluctuating between two and three bars.
Signal maps below are courtesy of Bell’s website. Blue is current LTE coverage; brown is coverage coming soon.

Central Calgary:
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Calgary metro area:
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Feature swiped?

08 Thursday Mar 2012

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A question for fellow iPhone users out there:
After upgrading to iOS 5.1, I appear to have lost the ability to swipe pages back and forward while in Safari. The only way to do that now is with the specified buttons in the lower toolbar.
Is anyone else experiencing this?

iPhone 4S battery issues: It wasn’t all in my head!

02 Wednesday Nov 2011

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According to a report from Reuters, Apple is to release a firmware patch for iOS 5 within weeks, to correct short battery life on some devices.
Glad someone at Apple HQ was listening.

My first five days using iPhone 4S

22 Saturday Oct 2011

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It’s been a week since Apple’s iPhone 4S went on sale in many countries, including Canada.
As promised, here are more of my thoughts on the device.

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iPhone 4S — Talking with Siri

19 Wednesday Oct 2011

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Because everyone else is doing, so I might as well pile in …

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iPhone 4S — Siri leads the way … as long as you’re going to the U.S.

17 Monday Oct 2011

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You’ve seen all those news stories about how Siri on iPhone 5 4S doesn’t give directions in Canada.
But it seems mapping technology will work if you tell your iPhone that you’re going to the United States.
I asked Siri to show me directions to get to Anchorage, Alaska, and she happily showed me how to get there, even offering an alternative route within Canada.
It will be awesome once Siri is able to show driving, transit and walking directions for destinations within our own country.

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