Sunday, February 28, 2010

Got Battery/Charging Problems?

Sometimes battery life issues are actually due to settings. Here are a few tips and tricks to dramatically increase the battery life of your iPhone. If you have jailbroken your phone, research an application installed through Cydia called 'SBSETTINGS'. This program will allow you to easily enable/disable any of this settings with a simple swipe across the title bar, no matter what you are doing or using your phone for. Some of these options might require an additional plugin for SBSETTINGS, but they are all extremely useful, especially if you wish to enable/disable these features with tremendous ease!

* Turn Off PUSH Turning off PUSH will dramatically increase the battery life of your phone. While it is a great feature for some, most people don't need the features of PUSH necessarily. If you only use PUSH for email, we recommend that you disable push but enable fetching to checking your email every 15-30-60 minutes. SETTINGS > MAIL, CONTACTS, CALENDAR > FETCH. While 'fetch' uses less power to update, the more times your phone refreshes in a day, the quicker your power can be used up, but it is significantly less than utilizing FETCH.

* Turn Off BlueTooth Turning off BLUETOOTH will also help increase the battery life of your phone. If you don't use bluetooth frequently, turn it off when not in use. If you don't consistently use a bluetooth headset, we recommend that you disable this in your iPhone settings. SETTINGS > GENERAL > BLUETOOTH > OFF.

* Turn Off Wifi Turning off WI-FI will help increase the battery life of your phone because your phone will #1 Stop looking for new WI-FI connections if not connected, and #2 have your phone utilize 3G instead. While it might be slower to use 3G/EDGE, your phone uses less power to use these than wifi.

* Turn Off 3G 3G is a wonderful feature and increases your speed exponentially at times when perusing the internet. However, to utilize this faster network, your phone requires more power usage for such usage. If you disable 3G you can dramatically increase the life of your battery, which is great for times when you battery life is low and you need to preserve as much charge as possible. SETTINGS > GENERAL > NETWORK > ENABLE 3G > OFF. Note: Some T-Mobile users do not have 3G access in your home location. If you do not, you should disable this feature.

* If your battery life still is less than acceptable, we can replace your battery with an original battery. As of yet, there are no 'better' batteries out there than what was designed for the phone, i.e. I can't 'upgrade' your battery until someone designs a better one. If you happen to find one let me know!

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

2G Speaker Fix

You got the original iPhone? Is that speaker just not as loud as it used to be?

Take a needle and pick out the residue out of the tiny holes in the bottom of the phone! honestly you can't cause much damage on the speaker-side of the phone with the needle, and only the middle 10 holes or so will actually effect what you can/cannot hear!

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

What's the difference between the different iPhones?

So, you don't have an iPhone, or do, but don't know exactly what that entails...




In basic form, a 2G iPhone is the "1st Gen" iPhone, released almost three years ago, that accesses the EDGE network, available to AT&T and T-Mobile (if unlocked). It can be easily identified by looking at the back, where it will be a soft silver color with a black plastic piece at the bottom. There are 4, 8, and 16Gb versions, however, 90% of the phones out there are 8Gb versions. Key function differences are no MMS (unless jailbroken and enabled), and no GPS.




The iPhone 3G is the common iPhone, and is still sold by AT&T and apple for $100 with a 2Yr Contract. Basically mechanically they are comepltely different, but hold the same components. What does that mean? There is no hardware difference as in faster processor, or more memory, etc, but it was completely redesigned so that a few key things such as repair-ability and antenna usage could be improved, except that the phone can now utilize GPS. There are 8 & 16Gb versions, but you can't get the 16Gb anymore (so that the 3GS sells). Most iPhoen 3Gs will be balck in color, but occasionally you will find a white one available, only in the 16Gb model. While by default you cannot do some of the controls that the iPhone 3GS does, if you jailbreak there are ways to make it happen (such as video, and voice controls). Disadvantages of the 3G (and 3GS) is due to the 3G requirements for the network, your battery life will suck in comparison to the 2G, if you upgraded. However, if you are running low on battery life, you can disable 3G and just use edge... will increase the battery time left exponentially!




The 3GS is a little re uncommon, and comes in 16 and 32Gb models. The biggest features people want/use on the iphone 3GS is the video mode, the enhanced GPS (connects to more satellites for better triangulation), and Voice Controls. Some find the headset controls handy too that work with the iPod and some streaming music players. The hardware on the 3GS is enhanced, basically, a faster processor and more available memory to the device to use for running processes (less crashes). Also, Apple improved some minor details for obtaining back some of the wifi losses between the 2G and 3G.




Sure, there are more differences than that, but I just wanted to write an overview so that you can identify differences and maybe choose better which iPhone you get. Feel free to ask questions!