Category Archives: iPhone

Restoring iPhone to Increase Battery Life

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A few months ago, my iPhone 4′s original battery couldn’t last more than a day. I bought a 3rd party battery to replace the original one. To my dismay, the replacement battery only lasted a bit longer than the old battery. I contacted the seller of the new battery. They agreed to send a new battery at no extra charge. The new battery they sent was still no good. So, I tried a different vendor and bought a more expensive battery. The battery life of this newest battery was only slightly better than the previous two replacement batteries. It never occurred to me that the problem was not with the battery.

Just a few weeks ago, I restored my iPhone due to other problems I encountered. I noticed the increased battery life right after I restored my iPhone. The battery life had gone from less than a day to two and a half days! I think part of the reason for the improved battery life was due to less applications installed on my iPhone. When I restored it, all the purchased apps had to be re-installed. I only installed a handful of applications that I used more often. I had quite a few applications previously installed that had processes running in the background even when the apps themselves weren’t running.  They quickly drained the battery.

You should give this a try if you have problems with the battery life of your iPhone: You may find that you do not need a new battery after all.

 

iphone4

ultrasn0w and Visual Voice Mail

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When I jailbroke my iPhone 4 with iOS 4.3.1, I used the TinyUmbrella method to preserve the baseband. One drawback of this combination is that the signal bar is always shown as one bar. The iPhone Dev Team released ultrasn0w to unlock your iPhone while fixing the signal bar problem.

There is one side effect of ultrasn0w that I just discovered last week. If you have ultrasn0w installed, the visual voice mail does not work consistently. I was puzzled by why my visual voice mail only worked sometimes. I then tried to unimstall ultrasn0w and found that the visual voice mail started to work once more. However, the signal bar problem came back without ultrsn0w. I did not care about the carrier unlock, but I really wanted the signal bar to show the right signal strength.

I came across this post that solves my problem. The solution is to re-insert the SIM card. One thing to note is that this only works until you shut down your iPhone. If you reboot, you have to re-insert the SIM card again.

Crackle – Free Streaming Movies for iPad and iPhone

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Crackle, a free streaming movie site, has come out with a new app for the iPad and the iPhone. This free app contains many free full-length movies along with various trailers and movie clips. Movies and TV series range from the Ghostbusters, The Da Vinci Code, and Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children to Seinfeld, Charlie’s Angels, and Married with Children, to name a few. Note that not all the shows on site are available on the app.

Crackle – App Store Link

Free iPhone/iPad Travel Guides from Lonely Planet

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Lonely Planet is offering their travel guides for US and Canada cities for free. Each guide was originally $5.99, and there are 13 guides to choose from. The offer ends at 6:00PM PST Friday, February 4th 2011.

•         San Francisco
•         New York City
•         Boston
•         Washington DC
•         Chicago
•         Seattle
•         New Orleans
•         Vancouver
•         Las Vegas
•         Miami
•         Toronto
•         Los Angeles
•         Montreal

[via Lonely Planet]

How to Enable Flash Support on iPhone 4

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One big issue with the iPhone or the iPad is that they do not support Flash. The only way to get Flash right now is to jailbreak your iPhone and install an application called Frash. The original steps to install Frash are not very straightforward. You need to know how to get the application binary to your iPhone through SSH and then you have to type command to install it. It’s not for the faint of heart. Thankfully, there are easier steps. The people at benm.at have made a repository for Frash. You can now install it through Cydia without other tools. Here are the steps:

  1. Jailbreak your iPhone 4.
  2. Tap on the Cydia icon.
  3. Tap on Manage and then Sources.
  4. Tap on Edit and then Add.
  5. Enter http://repo.benm.at and tap on Add Source.
  6. Tap on Search and enter frash to search the package.
  7. Select the frash package and tap on install to install the package.
  8. Tap on confirm to finish the installation.
  9. Tap on Reboot Device to reboot your iPhone 4.

After the installation is done, you will see a screen like this when you visit a site with Flash content.

Tap the gray rectangular box with Flash text and the Flash content will be loaded.

Even though it’s easy to install the application, don’t get your hopes up too high. I have tested it on several sites and it’s either a hit or a miss. It works well with simple Flash content. I have yet to get it to work with complicated Flash content. What is your experience with Frash? Tell us about it in the comment section.

How to Jailbreak iPhone 4 Using Mobile Safari

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If you have tried to jailbreak your iPhone before, you’ll know that it is a big undertaking. There are a lot of files to download and a lot of steps to follow. The release of jailbreakme.com has changed all that. All you have to do is use the Mobile Safari to visit jailbreakme.com and slide the slider and you are all set.

As of this writing, this site can jailbreak iPhone 4 with iOS 4.0 or 4.01. It actually exploits a vulnerability of Mobile Safari to jailbreak your iPhone. Therefore, do not expect the site to work for later iOS versions.

Here are the steps with screenshots. As with any jailbreaking, back up your iPhone before you attempt it.

  1. Open Mobile Safari and visit this site.
    jailbreakme.com
  2. Slide to jailbreak. The following screenshots show the progress.


  3. When jailbreaking is done, iPhone reboots. You can find Cydia on the home screen.

Apple Offers Free iPhone 4 Case

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On friday, Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced the iPhone case giveaway to consumers to fix the “death grip” problem: the wireless signal is sometimes muffled because the user is holding the device with a bare hand. This dilemma has been voiced by many users ever since the phone’s release in the US three weeks ago. Despite the company’s denial of such a problem, their free issue of cases will apply to the more than three million people who have already purchased the phone, as well as new buyers through September 30. People who have previously bought a $29 Bumper case will be refunded.

They are also offering a full refund for the phone within thirty days of purchase (with no restocking fee) for unsatisfied users.

[via Huffington Post]