If you’re like many iPhone users, you suck the power out of your battery completely about once every 24 hours. The more useful a thing is, the more you use it–hence, my iPhone’s battery tends to be more empty than full. Here’s what to do to keep that battery alive:

1. Disable 3G. Bar none, this is the single most effective way to increase battery life on the iPhone. If you can tolerate the slowness of Edge and you don’t use any realtime data apps (like VoIP stuff, say), then Edge should be sufficient. You’ll probably have fewer dropped calls with Edge too.

2. Turn off WiFi and Bluetooth. Unless you’re using them, WiFi and Bluetooth are battery killers. Besides, the gimpy-ness of the iPhone’s Bluetooth support makes me question why anybody would leave it on at all.

3. Decrease the frequency of e-mail checks. This will result in fewer data transmissions and preserve the battery.

4. Install the 2.2 firmware update. Apparently, it helps.

Tags: 2.2, 3g, battery, dropped calls, firmware, iphone, voip, wireless

Among the improvements cited by Apple’s release notes for the 2.1 iPhone firmware were decreased call drop frequency and improved battery life. And on one of those (call drops), I’ve definitely noticed an improvement. Also, it seems that the availability of the 3G network is greatly improved.  But I have no noticed no difference in the life of my iPhone’s battery, despite Apple’s claims to the contrary.

Tags: 2.1, 3g, battery, firmware

Well, does it REALLY extend battery life?  Does it really improve the call drop problem?

Come back in 24 hours and I’ll tell you.

Tags: 2.1, appstore, firmware, updates

But there were some bright spots. Mainly, the addition of high definition television content to iTunes, which paves the way for more Apple TV sales, and of course, the addition of NBC-originated content to iTunes. But the new iPods, while cool, weren’t quite the leap forward many were expecting.  They did add some nifty apps, like a workout tool co-branded with Nike.

Maybe the most significant addition to Apple’s music empire is this new Genius List feature, which takes a feather out of Pandora’s cap, creating playlists that suggest music based on the preferences of the user.  Nearly lost in all that hype was the detail that a new bug fix for iPhone firmware should be hitting the Net on September 13, according to Steve Jobs.

Here’s hoping the new firmware has a video camera and media messaging.

Tags: apple, apple tv, camera, firmware, ipod, ipod touch, steve jobs

2.0.2 was supposed to improve the speed of Safari, improve the speed and stability of text entry, and even eek out improved battery performance.  Now that it’s been in the wild 48 hours, has anybody been able to confirm any of these improvements with this release?  Well, apparently not.  Here are more iPhone firmware reports.

• iPhone, There I Blog talks about the lack of visible changes in the 2.0.2 release.
  
• The iPhone Blog talks about what’s coming in the 2.1 release according to Steve Jobs.

Tags: 2.0.2, apple, firmware