It looks like there’s seriously something really funky going on with the battery consumption of iPhone OS 4 (iOS 4) on older-generation iPhones. Ever since upgrading to iOS 4, the battery on my 3GS barely lasts a day even on light use. Last night I had around 50% left of the capacity when going to sleep. In the morning I found out the battery had drained overnight. Fortunately I had no work that day, I’d been rather late since the alarm clock (naturally) wasn’t working.

It’s not the first time either (or second, or third…), and we have to keep in mind none of this happened on previous versions of iPhone OS. It’s not just me and my phone either, others have this issue too (not just one crackpot with a dying battery). Here we seem to have a case of a cell phone battery draining 50% in 8 hours while on standby. Far from normal.

In addition to overnight drain I can see battery level on iOS 4 dropping around 1% a minute when actually using the phone. If the battery’s 100% in the morning, it’ll be around 60% on evening (or less, depending on usage), even when in standby-mode.

Solutions to the problem according to messages on Apple’s support forums:

1. Erasing the phone
2. Restoring the phone from a backup
3. Turning off location services
4. Turning off push email
5. Turning off Spotlight indexing
6. Draining the battery and then recharging
7. Waiting for a while, it gets better soon
8. Installing the updated Exchange profile
9. Turning off running background applications
10. Praying to Ni-Cad, ancient Chinese god of battery and dancing in the rain while holding the phone

Ok, so the last one is mine, I wanted to have a nice, round number like 10. Nevertheless the rest are proven solutions that are guaranteed to work except when they don’t. Please note that none of these solutions are suggested by Apple to fix the issue. As far as I know, Apple hasn’t even acknowledged that there’s an issue.

Let’s take a closer look:

1. Erasing the phone
2. Restoring the phone from a backup
Haven’t tried these yet. To me they seem like a last resort and a major pain, especially #1. Although, if all else fails they’re worth a try and I’m fast running out of solutions.

3. Turning off location services
4. Turning off push email
Now these are just silly. Of course they improve battery life. So does disabling 3G. And Wi-Fi. The actual problem still remains and turning off features to fix it is useless. You could have all of these enabled on OS versions prior to iOS 4 with no issues. Hey, let’s turn off the phone, that’ll save battery and certainly stops the drain.

5. Turning off Spotlight indexing
Kind of like the previous two suggestions, the difference being that Spotlight doesn’t use data connection. No major difference. Probably works better on 3G models than 3GS. Still, earlier OS version was able to run Spotlight without problems.

6. Draining the battery and then recharging
Now this I’ve tried. Multiple times. Not by choice though, kind of comes automatically when your battery drains overnight. Results were disappointing.

7. Waiting for a while, it gets better soon
Who knows, maybe this works on some occasions. For me it didn’t. I hope people don’t use this approach when dealing with illnesses or wounds.

8. Installing the updated Exchange profile
Applied this, but unfortunately it didn’t fix the issue for me. Seemed like a valid solution, though. Helps those using Exchange accounts.

9. Turning off running background applications
While this seems to have a certain effect on battery life, it does not fix the issue at least for me. Also, let’s remember that iPhone 3G users are suffering from the same issue and there’s no background multitasking on iPhone 3G.

10. Praying to Ni-Cad, ancient Chinese god of battery and dancing in the rain while holding the phone

This did not work.

The iPhone problem diagnosing and recommended solutions often feel like voodoo, with people advising to do this and that “because it definitely fixes the issue”. This makes it quite hard to find solid facts.

I’ve been searching for a way to fix this ever since iOS 4 was released and I’m not any closer than I was a month ago. Not cool.

Fortunately according to Wall Street Journal, Apple is currently investigating iOS4 issues on older devices – namely on iPhone 3G. Here’s hoping this leads to improvements on 3GS as well and improved battery life.

Sometimes it’s the little things that get to you most. Like some of the Sony’s design choices on PlayStation 3 that are rather hard to understand. For instance, consider the charging of a controller. They’ve somehow managed to build a device that is charged via USB, but only accepts charge from USB ports of a few selected devices – mainly the PS3 itself.

You can’t use USB chargers that plug into power outlet, the controller won’t charge. Besides PS3 itself, I’ve only managed to charge the controller using a laptop’s USB-port, with the condition that the computer isn’t on standby. Speaking of standby, you can’t charge the controller with PS3 either if it’s not powered on.

Sony keeps sweetening the deal by including an amusingly short USB cord to charge the controller with. If the battery runs out while you’re playing, you’re essentially forced to sit 10 cm away from PS3 (and possibly your TV) while waiting for the controller to charge. Either that, or invest into a longer USB cable that is probably useless for any other purpose besides PS3. Makes me wonder what the grand idea behind this is…

After finally saving enough cash to replace my foreced-into-retirement-iBook, I invested in a brand new MacBook Pro 13″. Even though MBP’s value for money decreased considerably doe to the recent MacBook-upgrade, I still wanted the aluminum enclosure and the backlit keyboard.

Initial impressions of the laptop were rather positive. I really like the aluminum casing, and especially when compared to my 2005 model iBook, the new MacBook Pro is pretty compact. The CPU is only a bit faster than on my Mac Mini, but overall the laptop still feels much faster. Plenty of thanks to the improved integrated graphics and total memory of 4GB, I would assume.

The glass trackpad feels excellent, even better than on my old iBook. That’s a big deal, since in my opinion many PC laptops are still struggling to get to that level of comfort iBook had to offer (Here’s looking at you Asus and your EEE-series). The trackpad takes some time to get used to though. The gestures and customizations offer many possibilities, but learning a new way of doing things is always a time-consuming process.

Jury is still out on the battery life. Apple claims it’s “up to 10 hours”, but all I’ve gotten yet is around 6-7 hours on light usage such as web browsing. It should be noted that WLAN and bluetooth have been enabled on all cases, so the battery should last a bit longer when you switch them off. It’s still a new battery and it takes a while to see what the actual capacity will be in the long run.

Despite of all the good qualities, it was soon time for the laptop to depart as the biggest drawback ended up overwhelming. Every time audio was turned on, the machine emitted a high pitched whine from below the keyboard area. This was extremely annoying especially in a silent environment. That being said, it was time to send the laptop to be repaired. I suspected that the problem was on the speakers, but they ended up replacing the entire logic board. A little bigger issue than I had originally expected. After a few days in repair, I got the MacBook Pro back and everything is once again smooth and shiny.

With new laptop in hand, my productivity is soaring. Hopefully that translates to me getting the new layout finished soon.

Looks like the content is getting a bit stale again. After all, it’s May and the last update was on January.

Fear not. New layout is in works and I have a few posts in the pipeline. To be completely honest, I also have about four old drafts that should probably be finished soon.

So there, not dead yet.

Wouldn’t it be nice if a new year would also mean leaving all your old troubles behind? I’d like the year 2010 to stop the trend of my stuff breaking. Which is not cool. My trusty old warhorse of a laptop, the iBook G4 suffered a hard drive failure recently. Adding to a list of breakdowns already including a hard drive, computer power supply, bluetooth keyboard and printer.

I had all important files backed up, so data loss isn’t the problem. It’s replacing the drive. While modern Apple notebooks provide easy access to the hard drive, that was not the case in the company’s old-school hardware. It’s no picnic on PowerBooks and even less for iBooks. In fact, replacing the hard drive on my iBook actually requires disassembling the entire laptop. Not kidding, no easy-access hatches here.

Oh, and it’s a 2,5″ PATA-drive. Which means the replacement is harder to find and more expensive than the modern SATA-drives. So, disassembling a laptop and a hunt for an overpriced drive: sign me up for a fun project.

For the past month I’ve been mostly stuck with playing Bioware’s Dragon Age: Origins. Not stuck literally, as I’ve progressed steadily, but due to the sheer size of the game. In-game clock is around 70 hours and no end in sight.

Granted, there’s the downloadable content adding to length, but despite that this game is huge. A bit too massive, perhaps. While I’ve enjoyed it very much, I’m actually looking forward to completing it and regaining some spare time. Although… there’s Mass Effect 2 coming up this month. Oh well…

Based on the recent amount of computer hardware failures I’m seeing there’s definitely a case of bad karma going on. About a month ago I had a hard drive biting the dust (Samsung T166, thank you very much). Then, a few weeks ago the power supply of my desktop pc died. When I installed OS X 10.6 on my Mac Mini, the optical drive sounded really funky during the whole process – making it the top candidate for the next piece of electronics that just can’t take it anymore. Oh, and did I mention the two keys that just stopped working on my Apple Wireless Keyboard?

Bad mojo keeps going warranty-wise. The Samsung drive is under warranty, but since I’ve lost the receipt Samsung refuses to have anything to do with it. You’d think that requiring a piece of paper before taking responsibility of your products is kind of silly, but maybe it’s just me.

As for the power supply, we have a jackpot. It’s not only out of warranty, but a proprietary model as well. When designing the Aria case, Antec engineers decided to fit in a non-standard PSU with shape resembling letter ‘L’ slightly. This made sure that there’s no luck finding a replacement other than Antec’s own models and unfortunately getting a replacement is both difficult and hideously expensive. Shame since Antec Aria’s a nice case. I resolved this by connecting a standard ATX-power outside the case. The setup is hideously ugly, but works as a temporary solution.

If the DVD-drive on my Mac Mini chooses to call it quits, I have another nice ordeal in front of me. While replacement drives are available, opening the Mac Mini is a major pain. There’s, of course, hope that the drive continues to function normally and just sounds like a chopper taking off.

All right, today’s lesson? Serves me right for choosing computer’s with non-standard form factors and parts.