Thursday, June 25, 2009

Tips on How to Preserve iPhone Battery Life

There are few things that we could do to preserve battery life on iPhone.

  1. Mail Settings
    1. Turn off Push Email if you don’t use it
    2. Fetching email manually instead of getting it on specific interval will help with your battery life.
  2. Location Settings
    1. Turn off Location Service. Switch it On only when you need it, eg when using Maps (GPS).
    2. The application will ask you whether you allow for it to turn on Location Service and use your location.
  3. Brightness
    1. 30% of brightness usually sufficient for different type of light.
    2. Set Auto Brightness to “On”. This will allow iPhone light sensor to adjust brightness automatically.

How long the battery life can stay? It depends on your usage. GPS / Location service are power hunger processing, you may find your battery run out quickly if you use those features. Playing IPod especially videos will also drains your battery quickly.

Hope tips above will help to preserve battery life on your iPhone.

Related story:

Battery Life of iPhone 3G after installing OS 3.0

iPhone OS 3.0 Review and Features

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Battery Life of iPhone 3G after Installing OS 3.0

After installing OS 3.0 on iPhone 3G’s battery runs out around 20% faster than it used to be. I used to be able to use my mobile for 2-3 days before recharging it. Now I have to charge it every single day.

I have iPhone 3G Push Notification turned on all the time. It seems to be the cause of the battery runs out so quickly. Apple introduces this Push Notification to prevent applications running as background process. The thought was by stopping application running on background, they would be able to conserve battery life and preserve performance of the iPhone devices.

Well, that’s not seems to be the case, the battery runs out lots quicker with Push Notification turned on. Currently, I have two Push Notification Applications that I use often are HeyWay and Trapster.

Check this out on Best Free iPhone 3G Applications 

So, if you wandering why Battery Life of iPhone 3G after Installing OS 3.0 seems to run out quicker, well, yes it is.

UPDATE: I turned of Location Service under General Settings, it seems to help a bit. Battery life can now last for 1.5 day at least.

Related Story:

Preserve iPhone battery life

Best Free iPhone 3G / 3GS Applications

Monday, June 22, 2009

iPhone OS 3.0 review and features

Just finished downloading and installing iPhone OS 3.0 update. The installation went smoothly, better than what I was expecting. Few friend found the installation didn’t go smoothly, the iPhone OS 3.0 stuck on installation. They would need to close the iTunes and relaunched it. Then the installation continue. So, if you find the installation stuck and a message comes up, you could try to pick OK, close iTunes and relaunched it.

It took me less than 40 minutes to sync my iPhone (for backup purpose), download the OS, install it and sync back again. 

Updated: Battery life seems to be shorter after I installed OS 3.0. Full story http://a-jason.blogspot.com/2009/06/battery-life-of-iphone-3g-after.html

iPhone 3.0 OS Copy and Paste – Finally we got copy and paste feature, it’s pretty neat, you would are able to copy certain section of webpage in Safari and paste it onto your email. Play video below for demo.

Landscape Keyboard – Email application now can now be read in Landscape orientation.

SMS Enhancement – You could now delete individual SMS in a conversation and forward SMS.

Push notification – You would be able to receive a notification from your application providers. One application that I’ve been using is HeyWay it allows me to send my location to my friend and also receive location notification from my friend. The application doesn’t to run, the notification will push in anyway, just like an SMS.

HeyWay iPhone push notification

heyway_5

Spotlight Search – Put a word onto the spotlight search and it will find all contacts, emails, applications and songs on your iPhone… cool cool…

Tethering – Use your iPhone as 3G modem. You would be able to connect your laptop to your iPhone through Bluetooth and access internet over iPhone 3G.

Find My Phone – Register with MobileMe, you would be able to track location of your iPhone. Just in case you lose your mobile after a big night. You would be able to send message to the iPhone and checks it location.

MMS – MMS is now a feature of iPhone

Ready for Turn by Turn GPS

Related story:

Turn by Turn GPS for iPhone

Battery Life of iPhone 3G after installing OS 3.0

iPhone OS 3.0 review and features. All these features available for both iPhone 3G and 3GS.

Friday, June 19, 2009

Turn by Turn GPS for IPhone 3G

Turn by turn GPS for IPhone – IPhone is now ready for turn by turn GPS. Tomtomtom-iphone-app tom GPS for IPhone 3G will be one of the provider for this feature. Tom tom will provide offline map through ITunes and user would be able to download required maps.

Tom Tom will also provide IPhone car kit.

Related story:

IPhone OS 3.0 Review and Features

Checkout the full information of Turn by turn GPS for IPhone 3G on http://iphone.tomtom.com/

Thursday, June 18, 2009

Silverlight 2 TextBlock disappeared after being set to invisible

If you find your Silverlight TextBlock disappear after you set it to invisible. You may want to check its opacity property.

The case was to make TextBlock control visible and collapse based on certain condition. For some strange reason the TextBlock didn’t appear after I set the visibility back to visible. As I was using MVVM (Model View View Model) pattern, the TextBlock’s visibility was bound to view model object visibility property. I checked the control visibility property, it showed visible. Then I found the opacity was zero, I didn’t set the opacity to zero, but I guess when I dynamically attach the textbox to the parent with opacity 0, for some reason it follows previous opacity value of parent. Even tough, the parent already has opacity value of 1.0.

Yeap once again on cutting edge. So, if you find same situation Silverlight 2 TextBlock dissapearing, You may want to check its opacity.