According to research carried out for my by an iPhone app developer, the battery issue that some iPhone 4 and 4S owners are experiencing is not, as some have suggested, related to the hardware.
The developer, who at this point wishes to remain anonymous, approached me late last week to discuss the issues he was experiencing with one of his two iPhone 4S handset. The problem he was seeing was pretty much along the lines of what others are reporting - rapid drop in battery when the handset is doing little or nothing.
Nothing new there, but what I thought was interesting was that he had two handset, one that was displaying the battery problem that some people are screaming about, and another that wasn’t. He admitted that the two handsets were very different in their configuration and had different apps installed. One was a test bed for apps he develops, the other was his day-to-day use handset. It was his day-to-day handset that was displaying the battery problems.
Both handsets were bought at the same time (direct from Apple for delivery on launch day), both are connected to the same network (AT&T) and both handsets are now running iOS 5.0.1. This to me was strong evidence to suggest that the problem affecting iPhone handsets was not a hardware issue. However, so that we could totally rule out this being a hardware problem the developer took things a step further. He factory reset both handsets and then recovered then from a backup. However, rather than reloading them with their original backup, he swapped them over. He reloading his day-to-day handset with the backup from his development handset, and loaded the development handset with the backup from his regular day-to-day handset.
Would the battery problem stay with a specific handset or swap over with the software?
Apple Inc.’s iPhone5 remains the most anticipated smartphone in the U.S. market, and appears to have broken all kinds of records when it comes to rumors surrounding a device.
Since January, bits and pieces about the next-generation smartphone have been making the rounds on the Internet, with different rumored specifications and concept images offered by various Web sites and blogs.
Apple is a couple of days away from announcing the arrival of the most anticipated iPhone to enter the U.S. smartphone market. The company has issued invites for an event Tuesday that will showcase the fifth-generation iPhone.
The iPhone5 is expected to run on the latest iOS5, which will come with 200 new features, including an improved notifications system, as well as the Newsstand and iMessage applications. In addition, the iPhone5 is expected to feature the new iCloud service for operating iTunes, enabling wireless remote access of purchased and personally collected music from all computers and mobile devices.
The iPhone5 will likely support HSPA+ networks that will provide faster Internet speeds compared with its predecessors, Japanese blog Macotakara reported, citing a China Unicom executive’s presentation at Macworld Asia.