Is Apple Playing Tricks with Battery and Wireless Signal Indicators?

The iPhone 2.1 firmware update is out! Two of the most talked about enhancements are the enhanced battery life and the enhanced signal boost. However some have cast doubts on the effectiveness and the credibility of Apple's latest claims. Did Apple really put an effort to improve these problems? Or did Apple just cosmetically tweak the indicators, making battery and signal seem longer and stronger than they really are?

Battery Indicator

Many have claimed that the battery indicator goes from near 100% to under 10% in just minutes. I have experience the same phenomenon as well. It was a thrill to see the battery stays at near 100% after 2 hours of continuous heavy mobile Safari use. However at about 6 hours after a full charge, the battery indicator suddenly showed that battery level is less than 10%! This has been reported by many other people. Some have suggested to completely let the battery drain off and then give it a full charge to solve this problem. This phenomenon may have also give people a false idea that the iPhone really does improve battery life by quite a bit as suggested by polls. There are some people who reported the 2.1 iphone software update actually made their battery drain faster and offered no relief. There are also many people who are rejoiced that the firmware boosted battery life for as much as 50%.

Wireless Signal Indicator

Apple has stated in their release that the new firmware update "improved accuracy of the 3G signal strength display." The question is, did Apple add any enhancements to get better reception or did they simply enhance the signal bar cosmetically? Many people have reported that their signal bar went up 2-3 bars after the update. If solving the reception problem is as simple as adding more bars, changing the 3G, EDGE icons to blue, shouldn't all carriers learn from this?

Controlled Testing Needed

With so many claims of Apple not really fixing the battery life and wireless signal in the 2.1 firmware update. We really need a good controlled experiment to test battery life and wireless signal reception. Give us 10 NEW iPhone 3G's (Or iPhone 3G with new battery). Have people surf websites with heavy content until the battery is completely drained so we can test for true battery life.


Update 1: Gizmodo is reporting that battery life has 15% improved in a nonscientific way. There are also many people reporting their battery life increased from 20% to 100%. Still there are some that claims the firmware update did not do anything to improve battery life. Gizmodo also states that the signal reception has not only improved in terms of the level of bars on the phone, but the reception has actually gotten better, losing the periodic drop-outs and injected silence.
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iPhone 2.1 Software Update Available. Improved battery Life and Reduces Time to backup to iTunes

Today, Apple finally releases the long awaited iPhone 2.1 Software Update.

The following are improvements stated by Apple.

"iPhone version 2.1 contains many bug fixes and improvement, including the following:

• Decrease in call set-up failures and call drops
• Significantly improved battery life for most users
• Dramatically reduced time to backup to iTunes
• Improved email reliabilty, notably fetching email from POP and Exchange accounts
• Faster installation of 3rd party applications
• Fixed bugs casuing hangs and crashes if you have lots of 3rd party applications
• Improved performance in text messaging
• Faster loading and searching of contacts
• Improved accuracy of the 3G signal strength display
• Repeat alert up to two additional times for incoming text messages
• Option to wipe data after ten failed passcode attempts
• Genius playlist creation "

More to come after I've tested with the this new firmware update.

Update #1- I have been running safari on widget extensive websites for 2 hours now. So far it crashed twice. It is still impressive considering I have music running in the background. It crashed when I try to drag the pages down or zoom in on the webpage when the page was not done loading. It crashed on digg.com's add widget page when I was digging through some stories. It also crashed on the blogger sign-in page. By the way, this blogger update was done on the iPhone. Impressive, considering the iPhone browser used to crash when I try to enter text on blogger. Crashless safari seems closer to reality.

Update #2- After the 4th hour of intensive wireless internet use, the battery life suddenly went from 90% to under 10%. I will have to let it drain, then recharge fully to see if it is a one time fluke. Is Apple messing with the battery life indicator or did battery life really improve?

Update #3- Many people have reported Safari crashes. Some people had never had that problem before. Follow the link to resolve iPhone Safari crashing
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Will Apple Ever fix iPhone Safari Crashes?

With a major Apple event to take place tommorrow on September 9th, rumors of an iPhone software update to version 2.1 on the same day has surfaced. But will a new software update solve one of the major problem that has plagued the iPhone since its launch in 2007? The Problem: iPhone Safari crashes during web browsing.

Reports of iPhone Browser Crashing Daily

Ever since the original iPhone launch, there have been numerous reports of iPhone Safari crashing multiple times per day in Apple related forums and blogs, particularly when surfing non-iPhone optimized websites via Mobile Safari. Some users have even claimed Apple's phenomenal mobile browser crashes every time they use it. Since then, Apple has released many software updates, but none has completely solved the problem. Some updates such as software version 2.0 had actually made the crashes more frequent. In later version 2 updates, apple has fixed crashes and freezes when filling out forms and entering texts, but the iPhone browser still crashes from time to time.

Possible Events Triggering the Mobile Browser Crashes

It has been reported that the iPhone Safari are likely to crash when

1. Displaying website that has a large file size or embeds widgets.
   
2. Opening multiple websites within Safari
   
3. Using the iPhone browser in landscape mode
   
4. Changing between 3G and the EDGE network

RAM of 125 Megabytes is insufficient

Some have suggested that the 125 megbytes of RAM in the iPod Touch/iPhone is insufficient to carry out tasks in the modern world wide web. That is why as long as iPhone and iPod uses a 125 megabyte RAM, mobile Safari browser will always crash. Thus the only way to prevent crashes is to avoid using too many applications or opening to many memory intensive websites at once. It makes sense. Today's web site are for computers with 1 or 2 gigabytes of RAM. My Firefox as of now uses 157 megabytes of RAM. I am opening 6 webpages on 6 different tabs though. Since the iPhone has only 125 megabytes of RAM to allocate all its programs, any inadequate distribution of its memory can cause application crashes. Website with large embedded contents can potentially make Safari crash.

Could it be the Software?

Software could definitely have an effect on Mobile Safari crashes. Just look at the fix that was done on software update version 2.02. The software update fixed apps from crashing. They must have done something to allocate the memory more efficiently so that apps won't crash. They can do the same thing to mobile Safari. Also, the browser itself, if optimized to use minimal memory and bug free, can help lower its crash rate. Safari browsers have been known to have a tendency to crash more than the other browsers. May be it is time for Apple to look into optimizing Safari as a priority.

Solutions to prevent iPhone Safari crashes

So far, Apple and many other iPhone users have suggested few ways to prevent iphone mobile browser crashes.

• Power off the iPhone when your browsers start crashing. This can help reset some apps that may be running in the background.
• Try not to use too many functions at once, such as listening to music and surfing at the same time.
• Get the latest firmware. Usually they will help to improve stability of the iPhone browser.
• Surf a heavy content embedded website in portrait mode.
• Try resetting the cache. To reset cache, go to setting-> Safari-> Clear Cache. Also wait until the page finish loading before browsing with your fingers.
  

Big inconvenience and Reducing Productivity

The iPhone is a smart phone that is supposed to create conveniences and help us boost productivity. With the ability to access the full world wide web on your fingertips (except for flash content of course) as well as many other cool features such as GPS and thousands of applications, iPhone makes life more convenient and enables productivity anywhere that has an wireless signal. However, when the browser crashes constantly, the time it takes to reload the webpage can cause lots of precious time to be wasted. In the era of Web 2.0, the mobile iphone safari users could be utilizing a widget, making a comment on a blog or forum, or even writing a blog on safari. When iPhone browser crashes in the middle of these kind of tasks, it can be very annoying to do them over (and over) again!

iPhone Safari is taking shares of the overall internet browsers quickly

Apple's crash-prone mobile browser, although crashes unpredictively, is gaining the browser market share fast. With web market share near 0.5% and more iPhones flying off the shelves around the world. There is no doubt in my mind that Mobile Safari will quickly be an important way to access the internet for many people. Hopefully, its success and people's complaints will force Apple to pay more attention to its mobile browser, giving us a crash-free Mobile Safari complete with flash and other goodies .

Update 1: Firmware 2.1 had been released. Some are still reporting excessive Safari crashes. My advice would be to continue follow the above suggestions to prevent those pesky iPhone browser crashes.

Update 2:Firmware 2.2 has been released. It promised stability and bug fixes for the iPhone Safari. I've tested it on previously crash prone websites. The result: noticeable less crashes, but crashes nonetheless. If you are still having those annoying crashes, update now to get a more stable iPhone browser along with the new Google Street View for the iPhone!

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