iPhone 4S Battery Life

A quick search of the internet reveals no shortage of people expressing dismay with the battery life of their new iPhone 4S devices running iOS 5.  I too have joined the fray and expressed some frustrations with the lack of battery life of the 4S.

My iPhone 4 had tremendous battery life.  My typical iPhone day starts when I take it off my bed side charger between 7 and 8am and ends around midnight.  My iPhone 4 would typically be around 70% with normal usage at the end of the day.  The only times I really ran my batter down to the 30% range was when traveling and off WiFi and uploading a lot of pictures using spotty 3G service.  Otherwise the battery life was outstanding.

My 4S however is usually around 25% when I end a normal day - a huge drop in performance and no where near what Apple promised.  If I have any variables now to my normal daily schedule my battery buffer is only 25% before I run out of power.  

One of the things I've always held of my Android friends is that my iPhone battery lasted a long time and they all would agree the iPhone had the better battery, that is until the 4S.

I've invested fair bit of time trying to figure this out but have determined there isn't anything I can do.  I've experimented with all sorts of configurations and with no luck.  So here's what I suggest you do if you too have a 4S and the battery life is disappointing.

1. Stop wasting time on it.  Just use the phone and stop tweaking the settings in a futile attempt to resolve the problem.  There are too many variables and current evidence suggests it isn't your issue anyway.  You probably have it configured fine, just like you are probably holding it fine too.
2. You are not alone, if you do find someone who posts their 4S has the same battery performance as their old 4 did please let me know.
3. For most of us the battery does last the entire day and for me that lets me get my stuff done.  It is just frustrating that compared to what we had before the latest and greatest appears to be under performing.
4. Turning things off will eventually turn the iPhone into an iPod.  I'm going to use the phone and the features I bought it for and until this gets fixed keep a charger handy.
5. My iPad is also running iOS 5 and while it's battery life appears affected too it is not as great.  Typically I can get several hours of use out of my iPad on the previous iOS version and only drop around 15%.  Now I'm dropping around 30% but the iPad holds it battery life better when in standby then the iPhone does.

While I don't like this I intend to be patient and wait this one out, with a charger close by.  My guess is the engineers at Apple, who are much smarter than I am, will figure something out and resolve this problem soon enough for us all to go back to bragging to our Android friends that we again have superior battery life and superior devices.  Until then welcome to the bleeding edge of technology.

OneNote comes to the iPhone

One of the cool things about technology is when it makes our life easy. More often than not, numerous things seem to make technology more of a hurdle then a helpful time saver. I have often proposed a communistic approach to technology to ensure the best for everyone as opposed to needless competition based solely on profit goals that slow down development but that is another discussion for another blog post.

Today however, the stars aligned and things really started to gel. As you know last year, I took the plunge and joined the dark side in getting an iPhone. While the iPhone provides numerous integration and data synchronization tools to help keep my life in order one thing that is obviously missing are Microsoft Office tools. One tool I use all the time is OneNote. OneNote automatically stores its files in the cloud using Windows Live SkyDrive allowing it to automatically update from wherever I open it. It is very productive when you can open OneNote in the office and make some changes and then open the same program at home and see those changes and then make more knowing the next day they will automatically show up at the office. This is why God made the cloud.

I have searched many times looking for OneNote on the iPhone and today it appeared. Microsoft has released OneNote for the iPhone that functions just like the desktop client. It opens the files from the cloud allowing you to make notes and update notes via the iPhone.

It is free for the time being in the App store however, I can see Microsoft starting to charge for this soon enough. If you use OneNote, this is a must-have app. I also hope this shows Microsoft’s commitment to bringing the power and benefits of the Office desktop suite of clients to more mobile platforms like the iPhone.

Disclaimers:

1. Sorry Android users, nothing for you yet. 
2. There is a bug when you login to your Windows Live account. You may get a 400 error. That’s ok, just keep trying and you will eventually get logged in. Once logged in it works great. They are working on the bug but it is easy to overcome.

iPhone Transition

You are no doubt as surprised as I am that I now have an iPhone. Not only do I have one but my wife also has one. Both these statements are hard for a lifelong Microsoft guy to type. Holding multiple certifications from said Microsoft I have always been in their corner. I’ve always said Microsoft can do anything and why learn multiple platforms if I can stick with the one I’ve known the longest.

Well, those thoughts, they be a ‘changin’. Not only have I taken the iPhone and iPad plunge but I’ve also abandoned Microsoft’s virtualization efforts through Hyper-V. That change in thinking is probably a whole other blog post so for this one I’ll try to just stick to the iPhone transition.

For my wife this is her first smartphone and she is loving it! We have already been playing around with Face Time and she is enjoying have the internet in her pocket along with all the other obvious smartphone advantageous.

For me there have been a few paradigm shifts that I have had to deal with. The first is the lack of ring profiles. On a Windows phone, you can set profiles that change ring and other notification settings based on your schedule or other rules. This is possible because in the Windows realm you have full access to the phone settings while Apple restricts such access to these settings on the iPhone. This could be one reason why the iPhone works so much better than any Windows phone I’ve ever had but I digress.

To get around this I have learned to modify how the iPhone notifies me of things and it doesn’t take that much to remember to use the silent switch. So far so good on this change.

The next shift is in the display. On a Windows phone, you can see your voicemails, emails, texts, missed calls, calendar, tasks, the weather, and much more all on a single screen just by turning the phone on. With the iPhone, you don’t get any of that until you unlock the phone. Even then, often times you have to open an app to see the total number of messages or details. The iPhone does tell you on the lock screen if you have new items but to see the full picture you have to unlock it. This is taking a bit longer to get used to but since the phone is so fast and responsive I don’t mind clicking the apps to get the information because I don’t have to wait for it nor do I have to wait to jump from one app to the other.

The final sift, at least as of now, is the lack of status lights. On Windows phones there is usually a colored LED that lets you know the phone is charging or lets you know if you have emails, texts, voicemails, missed calls, etc. So without even turning the phone on you knew something was waiting for you. The iPhone has no such lights so you have to turn it on to even find out if there is anything for you. This also isn’t that big of a deal since the iPhone responds so quickly and doesn’t require any waiting for anything – unlike my previous Windows phones.

Overall, I’m finding it easy to make the iPhone work for me, and hard as it is to admit I’m enjoying it a bit.