iPhone share of U.S. traffic hits 69%

On Tue, 30 Jun 2009 19:49:08 -0700, Jeff Liebermann wrote in :

Sitting on a charger is death on a battery unless the charger is very smart.

Poor design. Inexcusable.

Poor design. Inexcusable.

All that's actually needed is flash memory, as used in the great majority of properly-designed cell phones.

Look, this being the Internet, for all I know you're the Battery King of the Universe. But I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that if you're not, it's just possible Apple has access to some stuff you don't.

Apple is kind of nuts about stuff like this, and their premium pricing allows them to source parts most vendors wouldn't even look at. iSuppli commented in their breakdown of the most recent iPod shuffle that the thing had capacitors in it that were "half the size of what had previously been considered the smallest device of their type". This is a basic, trivial little part where Apple was going out and sourcing stuff that basically nobody else was using because... well, mostly because they're obsessive.

If there's some way to get twice as many charge cycles for ten times the price, but that comes down to "just" four times the price if you order 5 million of them... that sounds like the kind of part that mostly isn't going to be widely available in the market, until someone like Apple comes along and orders the 5 million. (And most vendors won't even use it then.)

On Tue, 30 Jun 2009 19:51:58 -0700, SMS wrote in :

Internet harvesting, zero experience. Have you ever done this? No. Do you know anything about controller issues? No. Replacing cells is a PITA and usually a bad idea. Much better to buy a good aftermarket battery.

Sure. No problem. I'll just carry a Netbook or MacBook with me everywhere I may need to use my iPhone heavily and change the battery. Too bad I can't just plug a commodity USB memory thing or SD card into the iPhone and back it up without iTunes and a computah. Maybe backup to an online server or NAS box via Wi-Fi. I can do that with my Windoze Mobile 5 phone using one of several 3rd party apps and MS ActiveSync.

Most users (including me) don't know the difference between a backup and a sync. See: "Backup the iPhone, Restore from a Backup & Delete a Backup"

I make it a habit of actually testing the backup and restore of my critical appliances. I've had some really bad experiences recently with some disgusting Windoze imaging and backup software. However, this is the iPhone, where nothing can go wrong, go wrong, go wrong. Well, in the process of testing, I managed to wipe all the synced music and videos from my iPod Touch. It did save all my purchased tunes. However, when I tried to sync to a different computer, I was informed that the iPod Touch would only sync to one computah. I can authorize up to 5 computers, but apparently can sync only to one. It then offered me an incomprehensible dialog box which I interpreted as offering to move the sync computer from the old to the new. Well, it did that, but once again wiped all my music, this time taking the purchased tunes with it. The good news is that I was able to recover following the steps I found on some blog.

I then attempted to make a backup, which iTunes reported that it worked. The next day, I switched computers again, but this time iTunes only wiped some of my music. I have no idea how it decided what to destroy. It wasn't the check boxes for syncing as I have every tune checked on both machines. I got disgusted, went to the computer that I had made the backup. Once again, iTunes wipes a mess of tunes, but this time, I decided to see what backup and restore would do. It restored all of my previous settings, again wiped most of my non-purchased tunes, and removed a few apps. The apps were eventually restored using sync.

I'll leave it to the reader to decide if this backup exercise and test mess was the result of user ineptitude, failure to RTFM in detail, bad software design, or karma failure. I'm undecided at this point. Switching computers is an obvious culprit, but if I can register 5 machines, why can't I sync and backup to 5 machines? It works with ActiveSync. It can be made to work with Palm HotSync. But iTunes requires hacking with a hex editor: "How to Sync iPhone with multiple computers"

A 1.5 pound chunk of lithium that can power your computer is about as close to the opposite of "vapor" as anything I can think of.

good thing the iphone has flash memory then. plus as i said before, it's backed up anyway.

iTunes creates a backup of your iPhone or iPod touch when you sync, which you can then use to restore from if you need to return to a previously backed up state.

thanks for confirming exactly what i said.

enable manual sync.

i agree that it's not as obvious how to do it as it could be.

not necessary for an ipod. the iphone only syncs music from one computer but can sync contacts, apps, etc. from another computer. i'm not sure why there's a difference between the two, since they're basically the same device, one with a phone and one without.

what's become quite apparent over the last week or so is that many of his arguments are vapor.

Sorry, I wasn't clear. I just wanted to note that backup and sync are somewhat different. Also, I'm still not sure I know the exact difference.

That article is for the iPod, but probably applies equally to the iPod Touch and iPhone. That was one of the first things I did. During the installation of iTunes, it asked if I wanted to manually manage my folders (which is the same as manually manage music and videos). I said yes.

When asked about the ease of learning Apple versus PC's, my usual answer is something like "Apple makes easy things easier, but difficult things impossible". Over the years, I've found plenty of exceptions, but in general, methinks it's true. Backup and Sync should be a no brainer. They're not.

Thanks. That explains some of the weirdness. I forgot to mention that syncing the photos, contacts and calendar apparently (not 100% sure) worked well with two computers. Syncing apps failed in the manner mentioned, but that may have been something I did wrong. Tunes, videos, and podcasts were a big problem. If it can sync (and backup) the photos, contacts and calendar to multiple machines, I see no reason why it can't do the same for the others (unless I'm missing something here). I smell a bug or design error here.

Oops. I goofed. I've replaced batteries in several iPod Touch's and didn't recall exactly if it cleared the memory. Thinking back, it didn't and everything was still there after the battery replacement. At the same time, I was also replacing batteries in a Sony Clie and Palm something, which did clear the memory. I also managed to be swayed by Apple's battery replacement FAQ. See item #3: "iPod touch Out-of-Warranty Battery Replacement Program: Frequently Asked Questions"

My appologies.

Yep. Thanks for the correction. However, since the iPhone doesn't really need a 2nd battery, there's *LESS* of a reason for battery to be sealed in the package.

they're different but generally occur at the same time. you can also cancel the backup and the rest of the sync will complete.

a sync updates the device with new content (music, movies), contacts, photos, etc. if you purchased content on the device (apps, music), that's copied back to the computer, along with new contacts and bookmarks, etc.

a backup copies all user data on the device to the computer, including data from the various apps, notes, sms messages, mail configuration settings, icon positions, game scores, etc. when you restore, the backed up data is copied to the device and then all the music and movies are synced, so it's exactly the way it was just prior to the backup. this also works across devices, such as an iphone to an ipod touch or vice versa.

a backup should occur automatically when you sync, or you can invoke it manually from the contextual menu in device in the list on the left. a backup may not occur if it knows nothing has changed, such as if you decide to add a few more songs right after you synced (and backed up). usually the backup is very quick, although some apps have huge amounts of data and that can take time.

you can also look at what was backed up:

i've used the former, not the latter.

Yeah, I keep an old Dell with serial and parallel ports for this reason.

If Apple is sure that it will last longer, then surely their warranty covers battery life for 24-36 months?

For degrees of "only cell phone" that excludes the Nokia N95, and various recent Blackberry models, MotoROKR, and a few others.

That also seems to be the case with UPS batteries. However, I have a marine float battery charger (Statpower 10hw Truecharge) that keeps 2 large size 27 gel cells charged. The batteries are perhaps 8 years old (or older as I obtained them used) and are almost as good as new. I have a West Mountain Radio CBA II,

which I use to characterize various batteries. In general, batteries that were inside a commodity UPS or laptop, last about 3-5 years at best. Meanwhile, batteries that are charged by a proper float charger, seem to last forever. Incidentally, I've slow started characterizing cell phone batteries and am finding wide variations in capacity, even on new batteries.

One of my customers accidentally did an interesting battery life experiment. They had purchased two new IBM A31 laptops with Li-Ion batteries. One laptop lived in the office and was on the charger

24x7. The other spend half the time in the office, and the other half on the road, usually running just off battery. The 24x7 battery lasted 3 years. The 50% road/office laptop lasted about 5 years. That makes zero sense (to me) because the official line is that the number of charge cycle determines the life of the battery. The office laptop never went through the recommended 3 or 4 charge discharge cycles when it was new. From then on, never went through any charge cycles. Meanwhile, the road laptop was run down and recharged perhaps 300 times in its 5 year life.

Lots of guesswork here, but it would seem that the 24x7 battery charging or the battery charger itself was killing the battery.

Nope. I erred. The iPhone uses flash ram, which is non-volatile. My memory of whether the data was there after I replaced the batteries was faulty and I was confused with a Sony Clie and Palm something that did lose its mind during the battery transplant. However, since the iPhone does have non-volatile memory, there's less of a savings and reason to use a non-removable battery.

No, I screwed up. The iPhone uses flash RAM which does not lose its mind when the battery is removed. Sorry for the confusion.

Yech. Nokia would do better to have a wind up phone with a key or crank. Turn the crank, which runs a small permanent magnet generator, and charges a super-cap. (Sorry, I can't hear you. Crank harder for more power). I'm also waiting for the alternative energy cell phone. Charges on solar cells, has a wind turbine for using wind power, and will also use methane or natural gas in a fuel cell. Politically correct green colored case, of course. Sigh... it's already here:

"Samsung debuts solar-powered cell phone"

"Using air to charge cellphones? IIT-Delhi does it!"

Nuclear cell phone battery?

Equal guessing on my end, but I blame heat. My laptops that run all day (while plugged in) have burned their batteries in 2-3 years. Those with light usage (though also plugged in to keep the batteries charged) have lasted longer. I suspect that while the cooling fans and fins are designed to keep the CPU and hard drives cool, keeping the battery cool isn't a design consideration.

Well then it's your lucky day, there are two standards for the fourth pin here, as defined by the device's capabilities.

For Video output capable devices the fourth pin is used for video, and cables are compatible between some digital cameras (rare), Creative and Apple players, and one other brand that I don't recall (a friend was visiting and used my Creative cable to connect his media player to my TV.)

For audio w/microphone the fourth pin is also cross compatible, in that you can use the same 3.5mm headset with a Blackberry, iPhone, and N95.

To my knowledge it's not an officially designed standard like the 2.5mm and 3.5mm headset jacks are, but the manufacturers are being cross compatible which means it's only a matter of time (and desire) before a formal standard is published.

No Palm in recent memory lost it's memory when it lost power, not the T|E2, T|X, Lifedrive, Treo 650 or newer, Centro, Palm Pro, etc, all Flash.

For Windows Mobile the transition happened effective WM5 which requires flash.

Long gone are the days when you lose anything other then your clock when your device loses power.