iPhone Tips & Tricks: Regain Reduced Battery life & Improve Edge speeds
One of the most interesting thing of a revolutionary gadget like the iPhone is that there is always someone out there in the blogosphere figuring out a trick or two to make it work better. In this article I write about an iPhone trick for all those who have hacked their iPhone and are observing reduced battery life and the other is an iPhone tip by none other than the iPhone hacking genius Natetrue on how to get better speeds of the EDGE network. I am sure the last one would have got all you iPhone owners interested so read after the jump for more details.
Observing reduced Battery Life after Installing Third-Party iPhone Hacks or Applications?
If you are still on firmware 1.0.2 and have installed those cool third-party iPhone applications but are observing reduced battery life then here is some good news. Michael Johnston over at iPhoneAlley has identified the culprit (application) which could be draining your iPhone's battery life.
The iPhone application which could be causing the issue is OpenSSH in case you have it installed on your iPhone, the tool which allows remote login to your iPhone from a computer. Michael also has a logical explanation for it, he says "The problem is, SSH requires that a listener called SSHD constantly runs, waiting for a remote login attempt. This in turn drains your battery."
Hmm, so now that you know the culprit your first reaction would be to uninstall it from your iPhone, maybe that is not required as there is a cleaner solution to this problem. The solution is to disable SSH which can be achieve using a simple tool called Services. Assuming that you have already installed Installer.app and OpenSSH on your iPhone all you need to do is download Community Sources in case not already done, then under Utilities in Installer.app, install Services. After you have waited for the iPhone to reload the homescreen and see the Services icon tap to launch Services and simply toggle SSH off.
Once SSH is turned off using the above instructions you should no longer observe the reduced battery life.
[via iPhoneAlley]
Want to better Edge speeds?
You might have already figured this out or known about it but when I read about this iPhone tip over at Natetrue's blog I found it quite interesting and thought I should share it with you folks. Just prior to the iPhone launch David Pogue in his review on the iPhone had declared the iPhone has a black plastic part on its back. "That's where the antenna is," he said and he went on to give the reason saying "Cellphone signals have a hard time going through metal, which is why this one piece is made of plastic."
The iPhone tip that will help you improve your Edge speeds revolves around this black plastic part where the antenna is placed. NateTrue has observed that if you take your hand off the antenna i.e. bottom part of the iPhone then you would observe not only an obvious improvement when you have low signal strength but even with a full signal one should see a 25% increase in Edge speeds. So it is not just metal cellphone signals have a hard time going through its also your hand.
In fact he goes on to add that your hand must remain three-quarter inches away from that antenna otherwise you exceed FCC limits for radio exposure.
These are both interesting iPhone tips, it would be great to find out how well they worked for you in the comments below.
[via Natetrue's blog]
You might also be interested in these iPhone Tips & Tricks:
Fix for iPhone's low ringer volume
iPhone's Recovery Mode, free space on your iPhone & more
Finger Tips, better photos, quick scrolling in Safari and lots more
Stream Music, Videos and Movies from iTunes Library to your iPhone for Free
Kill the GSM Buzz, Prevent iPhone Deaths, Check for Dead Pixels and more
Upload photos from your iPhone to Flickr
Anyone solved yet how to enable TV Out without having to upgrade to 1.1.1. ?
Posted by: Andre Bianchi | October 03, 2007 at 03:21 PM
Interesting regarding the antenna. I've been under the impression that the entire back was the antenna [and why not... it's metal! ..though you'd have to have some shock/surge protection built into it then]
The reason I thought this, is that I would notice that in places of poor cell reception I could place my phone on a metal object, and the signal strength would improve massively.
So would this also mean that an Iphone sitting flat on a table is going to have poorer reception than one that is propped up a little bit?
Posted by: Sam Weiss | October 03, 2007 at 07:26 PM
what about casing? I did observe a lot of drainage due to SSH.. perhaps this will fix it! thanks for the info
Posted by: eddie-o | October 03, 2007 at 08:16 PM
Interesting...Thanks for the tip...I was always uninstalling it and reinstalling it when needed.
It seems more of a software glitch too...After the update to 1.1.1 the battery life gave more juice and play time, maybe that's because with 1.1.1 you can't do anything with the eye~phone except check the weather and stock giving it more stand~bye and pocket time.
After going back to 1.0.1 I noticed my mail app crashing and going bonkers. After ssh into the machine and purging everything in the mail app folder it seems to have rest the mail pref bringing things back to normal in that dept.
Love the turn edge off feature...
Posted by: Louis Rivas | October 04, 2007 at 08:49 AM
The battery tip worked for me..
once I disabled SSH my battery is lasting a lot more!
Thank you!!
Posted by: Eduardo | October 04, 2007 at 09:27 AM
That is very nice program to have. However, i do have a question, I tried to turn off the edge setting. But when i tried to turn it back on, i lost the ability to use it. It keeps saying unable to connect, not registered to T-zones. Anyone had that problem yet?
Posted by: Eisa AlMuhairi | October 05, 2007 at 02:27 AM
if you have tmobile and your edge does not work go to settings/general/network/EDGE
and erase the username and password and leave blank
than on the APN box erase what's there and write internet2.voicestream.com and it should work
do not be fooled lots of cell phone nerds charge up to $60 beans just to do this :) spread the word so no one else pays to configure edge on tmobile!
Posted by: bendermarte@gmail.com | October 10, 2007 at 10:16 AM
"SSHD constantly runs, waiting for a remote login attempt. This in turn drains your battery"
This is GREAT NEWS so I can disable it now to save battery. Now, regarding EDGE... this application just change the connection information for EDGE but it doesn´t actualy disable EDGE. That could means it´s still trying and trying to get conncetion consuming lot of battery... right ? Is this a fact ? if so, is there any way to disable EDGE ?
Thank you !
Posted by: Pepo | October 22, 2007 at 09:12 PM
Any found a hack to unlock the TV OUT function on an IPHONE V1.0.2 yet?
Posted by: wesley | October 30, 2007 at 07:00 AM
Any found a hack to unlock the TV OUT function on an IPHONE V1.0.2 yet without having to to upgrade to V1.1.1?Please let me know.Thanks
Posted by: wesleygr4@hotmail.com | wesley | October 30, 2007 at 07:02 AM
Does anyone know a way to forward a text or sent one to multiple users? If not, how could they have forgotten such simple things?
Posted by: todd | November 27, 2007 at 02:19 PM
hi, I brought an iPhone from US under AT&T. I unlocked it to any network in UK with firmware 1.1.1. Now came out the version 1.1.3. Is it posible or good for me to upgrade to it? Will it make any difference? Cheers
Posted by: reborn7577 | January 30, 2008 at 08:39 AM
i have an unlocked iphone, i dropped it once near the top right corner,nothing happened at that time the phone was working perfectly, then i updated it from 1.1.1 to 1.1.2, after 2 weeks from the updated i started noticing that my signal gets so low most of the time and never comes back to full signal.
is this a software or hardware problem?
Posted by: samer | February 04, 2008 at 05:46 PM
Anyone got an iPhone on 1.1.4 unlocked? No? If you are the proud owner of Mac you can upgrade to 1.1.4 and unlock the iPhone and sim using this program! http://ijailbreak.com/ I used it the other day and it works! Try it and see for yourself. :-)
Also anyone having problems turning off SSH using services app try BossPrefs it worked for me. :-)
Posted by: Matthew Hillman | April 16, 2008 at 05:42 AM
I've bought a bran new 16gb 1.1.4 Iphone recently. I used Ziphone to jailbreak it, but since a while I have this very annoying problem. Even if the Battery is fully charged, the signal "Battery Low" appears and it shuts down my Iphone. Nothing I can do could change that. I restored it and ziphoned it 100 times already.. but nothing improved. I would love to have a tip or a solution for that. thanks
Posted by: lolodos | May 15, 2008 at 12:49 AM