iPhone Battery Drain, revisited

It happened again. I earlier blogged about the situation where my iPhone started eating the battery so fast that it was actually hot to the touch. Again, the issue was near-continuous network access to my home Exchange server (over ActiveSync), but this time I was able to resolve the issue by disabling calendar sync (which deleted all the calendar entries for that connection) instead of deleting the whole profile.
As soon as the calendar stopped being sync'd, the high network utilization went away; re-enabling the sync brought back the calendar items without causing the utilization problem.

Time Zone support on iPhone

Okay, this is one place where the lovely "intuitiveness" of the iPhone falls right on its nose: time zone support.

I've had the pleasure of travelling from my normal haunts in the Central time zone to the Pacific time zone, but the displeasure of having all my appointments continue to show the appointment in Central time. For instance, an 8am meeting in Pacific time would still show up on the phone as being scheduled for 10am, which is the equivalent Central time (Pacific is UTC-8, Central is UTC-6).

The root cause of the problem is a setting I made in the "Mail, Contacts, Calendars" Settings page, not the "General" page--which is where the other time-related settings are done.

At the very bottom of the settings page (iOS 4), there's a section for adjusting calendar sync; it has a Time Zone Support submenu.

Setting Time Zone support on results in the phone "locking in" on the selected time zone--in my case, I set "Chicago" ages ago, when I first got my iPhone--and ignoring the "embedded" time in the calendars. There's an explanation on the submenu: Time Zone Support always shows event dates and times in the time zone selected for calendars. When off, events will display according to the time zone of your current location.


Huh?

I'm not the only one with the misunderstanding. Google the phrase "iphone time zone problem," and you'll find a bunch of folks with similar problems: appointments set in one time zone will result in them "sticking" to the old time zone instead of moving to the new time zone with you.

Here's where the setting becomes counter-intuitive: If the device supports time zones, it implies that it "recognizes" that there are different time zones: an appointment set for 8am PDT should show up as 8am when the phone is in the Pacific Time Zone, while showing 10am when in the Central Time Zone. The opposite should also be true: disabling Time Zone support should result in the phone ignoring all time zone metadata and displaying all times as input, regardless of the physical location of the phone.

I don't have a problem with the iPhone operating this way; my objection is the way the settings are presented to the user. My recommendation is that the equivalent settings be duplicated on the General Settings page (Date/Time), and that the setting itself be called "Time Zone Override".

iPhone Battery Life: use it or lose it?

I think most iPhone users have discovered that their little "magical" friend has a propensity for chewing through battery life like high-schoolers chew through Doritos. Tips and tricks for extending life abound, but all the ones I've read amount to disabling functionality of the phone or applications.

I accept that keeping the GPS receiver on at all times will be a big drain; there isn't a lot of value of keeping it on when I spend the majority of my day inside and away from windows that could allow reception.

No, the things I don't want to disable are important functions to me. Things like push messaging; that's why I have a smartphone in the first place: to stay in touch and have messages at my fingertips.

So I husband my battery use, and most days am lucky to get through it with at least 30% still showing in the indicator.

But over the holiday weekend, I noticed something: I was regularly staying above 50% by the end of the day. Curious. I wasn't using it any less; if anything, I was on it more, taking pictures, checking social media, etc. What was the big difference?

I think I found it, and you may find it a surprise...

I use Bluetooth (BT) for in-car hands-free and for my Sony-Ericson HBH-IS800 headset. I normally leave the BT radio enabled so the phone automatically connects with the car; the way Apple buried the BT controls in the Settings app is pretty annoying for quick or frequent BT enable and disable, so I take the lazy way and leave it on. And I normally leave the HBH turned off to retain battery life, so the normal state for the iPhone is Bluetooth On/Unpaired.

And that seems to be a huge battery drain; an even bigger drain than having a paired device connected to it.

Here's what happened: this weekend, I kept my phone in my pocket, but didn't keep the HBH with me; I left it plugged into its charger until time came that I might want to use it. I noticed at one point during the day that my phone was paired up with it, however; I didn't realize it could/would do that while charging. I also noticed that the phone wasn't chewing through the battery like usual. So I did a qualitative experiment: One day, I would keep the phone paired with my HBH at all times; the next day I'd keep it un-paired, as usual; and the final day, I'd actively enable and disable the BT radio whenever I actually needed it.

Again; this was qualitative, not quantitative: there are too many other variables at play to put real numbers to it. However, by the end of the experiment, I was convinced: If you want to extend battery life without turning off the BT radio (by far, the best choice), make sure it's paired.

As I understand it, it goes a bit like this: the preferred state for the device—when BT is enabled—is to be paired. With anything. If it's unpaired, the radio throws extra power into trying to see if one of its partners are "out there" trying to reach it. When it's paired—and able to readily "stay in touch" with the partner—the radio draws less power than when it's "seeking."

Rule of thumb: when it comes to BT power consumption, radio off < radio paired < radio seeking

iPhone Battery Drain--Fix!

It's happened to me twice now, but this time I was able to do something about it...

My iPhone went bonkers yesterday and stared draining the battery like there was no tomorrow. It went from fully-charged to 20% in 3 hours; that's just nuts.

I did what every iOS user does in that situation: kill all the backgrounded stuff and restart the device. Usually that works pretty well. This time it didn't.

The phone was using the battery so "hard" that the device was warm to the touch. Again, that's just nuts.

So I got the thing connected to my office WiFi and started watching the syslogger for my firewall; every TCP connection would then be logged for the device.

Sure enough, I found the culprit: the Exchange ActiveSync service for my home email (yes, I run an Exchange server at home) was getting requests from the phone every couple of seconds.

Given that I had problems with my Inbox earlier this week using Thunderbird, I assumed that I had another "broken" email message in my Inbox, and moved all the messages to another folder. The inbox cleared up on my iPhone, but it was still going after the server like gangbusters.

So I deleted the EAS profile from the phone. Blissful silence from the syslogger was the result. Then I re-applied the EAS configuration profile to the phone to re-establish the EAS connection, and voila!, the phone isn't going apeshit anymore.

I'm not sure I want to tempt fate and put all the messages from my inbox back, but I am pretty happy with the result: the battery should once again last all day.

Overcoming a CDMA smartphone's limitations

A number of pundits have posited that the Verizon iPhone wouldn't gain much traction with current GSM customers because of CDMA's designed-in inability to do voice & data simultaneously. AT&T is trying to play up that aspect of their smartphone lineup (not just the iPhone), while Verizon is playing up the "dropped call" perception that AT&T is suffering.

I'm a longtime, loyal Verizon customer. I have received great coverage and customer support the whole time I've been with them, and I'm not interested in anything that's not on Verizon. So how does one overcome the limitation with CDMA?

With WiFi.

As I understand it, this is the case with all smartphones, not just Verizon's iPhone: if you have WiFi available (and connected), all the data flows through that route, leaving the cellular connection available for calls. That may be fine for home and at the office (assuming WiFi is available), but how do you manage that when out-and-about?

Well, my solution may be a little unorthodox, but I find that it works quite well: I keep a Verizon MiFi in my car, so WiFi is readily available wherever I go.

Yeah, that's a bit crazy, but follow my reasoning, and you may agree that it's "crazy like a fox."

First off, I have a laptop and iPad that don't have cellular network access, so I've made the conscious decision to use a MiFi for them. At the time I purchased the MiFi, I also had an iPod Touch, so that made three devices that could share the one data plan. Brilliant device, the MiFi.

But now that I've traded the iPod for an iPhone, why not cancel the MiFi data plan in exchange for the lower cost of using the Personal Hotspot app? I quickly discovered that there are many disadvantages that come with that decision, most of which stem from Apple's design of the iOS operating system: when using the hotspot app, your iPhone more or less ceases to be a phone.

I don't have any experience with Android, but it may be similar: unless you root your phone, you live with lots of limitation on what it can do concurrently.

So if you decide that you're going to have that dedicated WiFi hotspot, you've just created the situation that will overcome CDMA limitations: Let your smartphone use the MiFi, too. Yeah, it's kind of redundant: using a Verizon MiFi to provide WiFi to a Verizon smartphone: either way—cellular or WiFi—the phone is using Verizon's network.

That's cool. You have access to voice and data simultaneously, even when you're out-and-about. But here's where it gets really interesting: I have no facts to back this up, but it has been my experience that the MiFi does a better job of maintaining data connections when traveling in the hinterlands and low-coverage areas. I routinely travel in places where my phone (both Blackberry and iPhone) goes into low/no data modes while the MiFi happily runs as if nothing had changed. It is my theory that when the carrier provisions a data-only device like the MiFi, it has the option to favor data over voice for the signal usage, where a phone will always be provisioned to prioritize voice over data. When in those coverage areas, I find that my CDMA phone is no better or worse than in good coverage: the data and calls still get through.

So there you have it: Get a dedicated personal hotspot, and your CDMA smartphone—not to mention any other WiFi-only devices—will always have access to data, even when you're on a call.

Blackberry vs iPhone

Executive Summary: don't give up your corporate Blackberry in favor of an iPhone, regardless of whether you're on Verizon or AT&T.

Background:
I've been a Verizon customer for as long as I can remember—over 15 years—and have been a Blackberry/RIM customer and BES+Exchange administrator for over 5 years. I've used and supported Blackberry devices going back to the 7250 (CDMA Color "click wheel"), and still believe that the "Curve 2" is the best device they've come out with for Verizon to date.

That said: for anything other than phone calls and interacting with the corporate Exchange server, the Blackberry pretty much sucks. The Java platform is slow and clunky, and something as simple as web browsing is an exercise in futility.

When the iPhone was released, I thought it was a clever toy. I had associates with them that loved them, but in many ways my Blackberry Curve was better. I had a flash for my camera. I could take motion video. I could type long messages on the thumb keyboard with a minimum of errors, and when AutoCorrect was 'invoked', it normally made sense; better yet, I had complete configuration control over AutoCorrect in the Settings application. Had the iPhone come to Verizon in its pre-iOS4 incarnations, there's no doubt that I'd have stuck with my Blackberry.

Enter the iPad.

To be sure, I agreed with many of the tech press who thought of the iPad as a bit of a toy—"an iPod Touch on steroids"—from the rumors and actual announcement by Apple in early 2010. I had no desire to buy one, and would probably still be a happy laptop-only guy had I not won one in a drawing. Of course, it was "only" the $500 16GB WiFi model, but it was enough: in short order, I realized how useful a smaller, pocket-sized version of the iPad would be, and soon had an iPod Touch to complement the iPad.

Make no mistake: for me, the iPod Touch was a miniature iPad; in no way was the iPad ever like an iPod Touch on steroids. And I still carried my Blackberry in order to "get work done."

I soon discovered the limitations of he WiFi-only lifestyle: while WiFi has become fairly ubiquitous in my town and areas where I work and live, coverage just isn't universal. One solution would be an upgrade of the iPad by replacing it with a 3G model; another would be replacing the Touch with an iPhone. Unfortunately, both solutions leave the other device "unconnected", force you into multiple data plans, or force you to leave/change carriers. My solution was to add the Verizon MiFi.

That choice turned out to be genius: not only did it answer the need I had for the two iOS devices, it also filled the gap for my laptop use. Now I didn't need to plan my on-call outings around local hotspots: the hotspot came with me. On more than one occasion, having the MiFi in the car gave me and/or my wife constant connectivity for all the devices at hand.

So this setup worked fine for the better part of a year: I'd keep my Blackberry for phone and email; the MiFi was "always on" and available in the car; use the iPod for casual gaming and web browsing; the iPad was a pure entertainment device—movies, social networking, Angry Birds HD—while still keeping a laptop and desktop for "real work". My business life was primarily supported on the business Blackberry's phone/data plan, and my personal life was primarily supported on the personal MiFi data plan.

When the Verizon iPhone finally made its appearance in 2011, I decided to take the plunge: I'd eject the Blackberry and iPod in favor of the iPhone in order to pilot the device for the company.

Results:
The iPhone on Verizon is a very capable phone. Shortly after my switch, I had to work with a vendor's tech support for an issue and spent over 4 hours on a call. This is no feat for a Verizon Blackberry, but is anecdotally known to be problematic on AT&T iPhones.

As expected, all my iOS applications were able to move from the iPod to the iPhone, but in order to match some of the corporate Blackberry functionality, I had to add a couple additional apps: While iPhone supports Exchange ActiveSync (EAS), [in my environment] it only supports synchronization of mail, contacts and calendar. I'm a regular user of Tasks and Notes, so iMExchange 2 was my fix. Later, I learned that the only way to manage out-of-office notifications "natively" is through Safari, so I added iGone to improve the experience a bit. Great: free functionality on the Blackberry can only be achieved with $4 in applications on the iPhone.

But wait; there's more: EAS, VPN, iMExchange and any other interactions with the corporate network rely on your Windows/Active Directory logon. When your corporate policy requires you to change your password on a regular basis, you must manually change it on your iOS devices to match. And you better do it quickly, or your devices could fail to logon enough times to lock you out of your account. Yet another place where the Blackberry excels (because it uses a proxy agent to access your stuff); and unlike my other conversion issues, "there's no app for that."

As a replacement for the iPod Touch, I really appreciate the additional functionality of the GPS, accelerometer and always-on connectivity (the WiFi-only devices drop their connections when in stand-by, while iPhone switches to 3G when in standby).

Other nits:

• the Calendar app on iPhone—whether a side-effect of EAS or a "standard" iOS functionality—removes stubbed-in meeting invitations. Before I started using iPhone, meeting invites were always written to my calendar as "tentative"; they stayed that way until I chose to do something about them. With iPhone, those tentatives are removed and aren't part of my calendar at all if I don't take some sort of action.
• Sound/vibrate on iPhone—With iPhone, you have two states for sound/vibration: "noisy" and "silent". While you have a great deal of control over the ringtones for phone calls, you are otherwise brutally limited in your control over notification sounds and/or vibration. In contrast, Profiles on the Blackberry are wonderful. Not only can you set per-contact notification styles, you can set up various sound-only, vibrate-only and sound+vibrate profiles for various message types. Further, on the newer Blackberrys, you can set up a "bedside mode" profile that is automatically invoked when some combination of "plugged in" and time rules are met. In my case, I would switch to "phone only" from 11pm to 6am when on the charger, and "vibrate only" at any other time.
• Virtual Keyboard on iPhone (and to be fair, any touch-only device) is nowhere as reliable or responsive as the thumb-board of the Blackberry. To be fair, I think some of the Blackberry models have terrible keyboards, too, but the frequency in which I accidentally hit "delete" instead of "m" on iPhone is just appalling. And Apples insistence that no 3rd parties "muck with" the keyboard means there will never be any real improvements in it.
• Email Management: The only place iPhone beats Blackberry for email management is support for multiple Exchange connections (starting in iOS 4); there's no way to connect to multiple BES servers using Blackberry. That said, however, the Blackberry is the hands-down champion for email management. The Blackberry "knows" that it's a messaging platform. When a new message comes in, the device can be configured to jump directly to it when unholstered or awakened from "sleep." In contrast, messaging is just another app (albiet built-in) on iPhone. When a new message comes in, you may get notification, but when you invoke the app, it returns to the last state you left it; sometimes, that requires 3-4 taps to get to the new message. In addition, with iPhone, you can't:
• Filter messages from being forwarded to the handheld; Blackberry has a robust ruleset for managing this.
• Select multiple messages for mark-as-read/unread (although you can move or delete multiple messages) or mark read before a given date—I used this function all the time on my BB.
• Delete on the handheld but leave on the server.
  

Wrap-up:
So that's it: I've joined many of you that are in a love/hate relationship with an iPhone. The Apple hegemony is set up so that I'll likely never see my "nits" addressed, and some of them—like the EAS password issue—are deal-breakers for my recommendation as a replacement for a business Blackberry. Personally, I'm not ready to give up on iPhone and go back to a Blackberry, but I've been on one long enough to have interest in what RIM decides to do with Qnx after they get the Playbook released. If they manage to breathe new life into their devices and put some good, basic functionality back into their OS, I can see myself going back to Blackberry for my corporate life.