iPhone Gripe: Battery Life Fixes
After 2 -3 years of using the iPhone I am ready to admit that it has one major flaw. Battery life! Or, to be exact, lack of battery life.
After years of simply plugging the phone in at any chance I had, I started to do some sluething around, looking for ways to improve the life of the battery. Apple provides a decent guide to battery saving techniques, however, As I’ve started to employ these techniques in an effort to save battery life, the more and more frustrated I am with the amount of time it takes to complete such a simple task.
The two features that eat up the most battery on my phone are BlueTooth, and Wifi but neither needs to be on at the same time. When I leave my house in the morning, I turn on Bluetooth for the drive to the office, when I get there, I turn off Bluetooth and turn on Wifi so I can sync necessary apps, etc. At any point where I go mobile, I must turn on Bluetooth and disable Wifi as it is no longer needed.
Now, don’t get me wrong, it’s not the fact that I must switch Bluetooth/Wifi on or off but rather that the process for getting to these particular on/off settings is so buried in the phone.
Wifi is the easiest, all you do is tap Settings > Wifi > On / Off. But to control Bluetooth you must go Settings > General > Bluetooth > On / Off. Trying to navigate these menus while on the go, or trying to drive is downright frustrating.
Fixing the Problem
After digging around for a simple app that would allow someone to turn Wifi / Bluetooth on or off with a single tap or maybe two from the home screen, I realized that there was no such thing, unless you had a jailbroken phone. I don’t consider this an option in my case.
If Apple where to develop some an app or some shortcuts on the home-screen of the phone that would allow a person to control their basic connection options without having to dig through settings they would solve this problem. Ideally, it would be a shortcut for each feature. So, tap the Bluetooth “app icon” to toggle an dialog box that would let you turn Bluetooth on or off, same would go for Wifi, etc.
I don’t see Apple making this change any time soon, so consider this an open letter to any iPhone App developer! You are welcome to take my idea, and create an app, and charge $0.99 for it! I’ll buy it! And I’ll advertise it here for anyone else!
Agreed! I haven’t seen any apps become available, and the only solution i’ve seen is to jailbreak the phone, unfortunately.
If you ever find an app or solution come back and let me know!
So, great discussion had in 2009. Now that we’re in 2010, any progress? This is the single most annoying issue with my iPhone. iLove everything else :-)
I imagine that with enough publicity, you could sell this as a 99cent app NO PROBLEM!
Josh — that would be amazing. Essentially, You should be able to click a app icon, and when loaded, you see simple switches:
Bluetooth: On / Off
Wifi: On / Off
I have a feeling that Apple would not approve the app, simply because it would be duplicating functionality that already exists. No matter how bad their current method is.
Do you know any App developer who could speak about this? I’d like to get a discussion going here!
I might just take a stab at making this over the weekend, it shouldn’t be that hard to make.