Yeah, my iPhone 3GS has been actin’ funny, and I don’t know why. I really don’t. And as a SysAdmin I find the lack of real troubleshooting tools very frustrating.
About the best I can do here is to report my findings. So here are some of the things my iPhone 3GS has started doing.
Network Confusion
The iPhone seems to get confused when presented with too many network options if one of those options doesn’t perform as expected. Case in point: I have an extended WiFi network at home, and the iPhone, of course, always opts to use it when I’m home. Signal strength is usually great here, so the iPhone just chugs along. But recently my wireless had some problems and, though the signal was good in some places, it was spotty in others, and in places it would fail to get on the Internet. Turns out one of the Airport Express remotes was having problems, allowing the phone to reach the Airport, but not necessarily get connected.
When something like this happens the iPhone does not gracefully switch over to 3G. Instead it tries endlessly to use the broken WiFi connection. This in turn quickly wears down the battery, as WiFi access is pretty battery intensive.
Personally, I think it would be great if the phone could be a little smarter than that, and if it can’t get Internet on a WiFi connection it can see, pop up an alert and ask you if you want to switch to 3G or Edge.
Instead, the iPhone spends all day killing its own battery on a connection that’s busted. We have a term for that in the industry: sucky.
Can’t Wake; Heats Up; Shuts Down
On occasion I find myself unable to wake the phone. This often happens if I leave the camera running and put the phone to sleep. My guess is that sleep can hang (just like on the full-sized Mac OS) when there are power hungry processes running. It’s not a huge deal, though it does require a force reboot, and it is becoming more and more worrisome. The other day this happened, only this time the phone had gotten very hot. After trying a few times to wake it up in the usual manner, it decided all on its own to reboot. Spooky!
This happened, by the way, soon after I downloaded my first application with push notification capability — Zillow — as did other strangeness.
Needless to say, I’ve turned off push notifications on the iPhone. I am not convinced they’re ready for prime time, frankly.
Push Notifications Notification: This Wasn't Here Before
Application Identity Crisis
Another thing that’s been happening since downloading Zillow is that, from time to time, my application icons get switched around. Zillow will have the icon for the iHandy Level, or Wild West Pinball will have the icon for Zillow. The only way to fix this seems to be to delete the confused apps from the phone and then re-sync them from my Mac. Sometimes even that doesn’t work. Untold fun!
Iconfusion!
More Compass Confusion
I mentioned my troubles using the compass on the subway, but where the compass really comes in handy for me is just off the subway. Walk out of the terminal, and: which way is north? Right. iPhone!
Only the other day I needed to figure out which way was east. And there was no east. Seriously, I’d spin the compass around but it would never show east. Uh, we need east for this to work.
Battery Recharging
Last night was, perhaps, the oddest symptom I’d had yet. I’d left for a river cruise (yes, a river cruise) with a decent battery charge. Probably 70-80 percent, I’d guess. After an admittedly heavy evening of photo and video shooting, the phone suddenly gave me the “I’m almost out of juice” warning, telling me that the battery was at 20 percent. “It’s cool iPhone. I understand. You’re tired.” And I gave it a rest. At some point, though, I just had to grab one more shot. But after doing so, the iPhone rebooted. When it came back up I checked the battery charge percentage. It read 58%.
As my friend pointed out, batteries cannot spontaneously recharge. Something is clearly wiggy with the battery report on the iPhone.
One Last Shot: Empire State vs Chrysler
Bad Power
Since I’ve gotten my iPhone 3GS the little plug that comes with the thing, the one that connects the phone to a wall jack, only works intermittently. I’ll plug it in and my phone will start charging. I unplug it then replug it and the phone won’t even register it’s plugged into anything. It’s really annoying, but since I have other options — in the form of my old iPhone power brick — and a lack of time, I haven’t done anything about it. Plus I’m just not looking forward to the conversation with the Apple Genius:
Me: “Uh, yeah, this plug only works some of the time.”
Genius: [Plugs phone in] “Seems like it works fine to me.”
Me: “Uh, yeah, I know, but in, like, ten minutes, if you unlpug and replug it, nothing.”
Genius: [Unplugs and replugs the phone] “Still seems to work. Maybe there’s something wrong with your power.”
Me: “Yeah, but this has happened in a variety of buildings.”
Genius: “It’s not happening here.”
Me: “It’s intermittent. Give it a few minutes.”
Genius: “Uh, sure. Okay. NEXT!”
Power Adaptor (Apple)
Conclusion
So what do I think about all this? Well, I think that either the iPhone 3GS or the iPhone OS 3.0 has some power issues, and some sleep issues. I think that the power adaptor included with the iPhone 3GS is crap, and that push notification is very power-hungry, and possibly very flaky when in the wrong hands. I also think that the Zillow application may just be the wrong hands (though it’s a pretty cool app, granted). I have just de-installed Zillow and it seems to help with my icon problems at least. Hopefully it will add some much-needed stability to the phone.
Thank heaven I didn’t have to remove pinball, though. I’m not sure I could have lived without pinball.
In any case, am I still happy with my iPhone 3GS? Yes, absolutely. But I think I’m getting ready for some bug fixes a la the iPhone OS 3.1 update.
7 Comments
The bit about ‘bad power’, the phone, like Mac laptops gives you a percentage/available time remaining on current use scenario. Thus if you’re using the camera/video (pretty battery intensive) the battery reads how long it will last under that current scenario.
You stop doing the battery intensive thing and the phone adjusts it’s percentage, usually up. I see this all the time on my laptop. Try doing a CPU intensive task (handbrake encode?) using battery power, 10 mins in look at the remaining time. On my Air it will go from 3hrs to 1hr. If I stop the encode, and give it a few mins the battery life will go back to 3hrs (or there abouts).
Having read your bit about push notifications, I’ve switched mine off as my battery life was way worse than on my 3G. Will see how it goes.
Thanks for the info, Matt. I thought the battery power indicator was indicative of actual battery life left in the battery. I guess it makes more sense to estimate based on usage scenarios, though. Interesting.
Anyway, good to know. I’ve never really noticed this before, but then, I’ve never really done much video on my phone ’til now.
-systemsboy
Actually Zillow now requires Notification on the iPhone under OS 3.0 which IS NOT GOOD. After installing Zillow 3.0 version my battery life problem took a big turn for the worse.
The problem with Zillow OS3 is the notification kills the battery life (like 2-3X). I noticed this when I woke up in the morning and put my fully charged iPhone in my pocket. 1 hr later my battery was at 78%. Didn’t even turn it on! I wondered how that could have happened when normally it would have been say 95%.
I noticed that the usage said that I’ve used the phone for 52 of the last 58 minutes! How did that happen I wondered. Well, long story short, it was the notification of the Zillow app keeping alive. I’ve since shut off notifications for Zillow and my old battery life is back.
Yeah, I have to say, Removing Zillow from my phone seems to have helped immensely with the odd behavior, so far anyway. I think both the overheating and strange reboots I’ve seen are likely due to Zillow and/or its use of Notifications. This is the first time an app has had any real negative affect on my iPhone. It looks like that is a real possibility, though.
-systemsboy
Having switched off notifications since my post, I’ve gone from normally having 30-40% battery when I get home from work to having about 60%.
Will see how I get on tomorrow with a whole day to compare. I’ve got battery percentage switched on, although only for this test. I agree with systemsboy and gruber, scary seeing the battery drop so quickly.
Just as an update now I’ve been running without Notifications switched on for a couple of weeks, my increase in battery life has been astounding.
It feels like my battery life has almost doubled.
Thanks, Matt! My experience has been about the same. Pretty durned good battery life.
-systemsboy