PCs & Mobiles Forum - iPhone battery issues.. .could it be multi tasking? - Page 1

The iPhone doesn't allow most apps to multitask like people think it does. Unless they are streaming audio in the background to you, they aren't multitasking, they have created a snapshot and been unloaded. When you relaunch them the OS loads the snapshot of the screen and then launches the app again, which should carry on from where it left off.

Presumably you've updated all your apps.

Also I'd let the battery drain completely twice in a row, to let it re-calibrate.

But for me, there are one or two apps that if I run them, they do seem to have forced the wireless to stay open far longer than it should, and drain the battery.

If you want to delete an apps savestate data, or force it to close if its streaming in the background, double tap the home button, then when you see a list of recently run apps, touch and hold until they wiggle (same way you move icons around), then hit the close X on them.


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Quote:
Rob Shepherd says...
The iPhone doesn't allow most apps to multitask like people think it does. Unless they are streaming audio in the background to you, they aren't multitasking, they have created a snapshot and been unloaded. When you relaunch them the OS loads the snapshot of the screen and then launches the app again, which should carry on from where it left off.Angry Birds on os 3.x closed completely when I pressed the Home button.
Now, on the new fw, I opened it and it was *still* on the failed level screen and waited for my input to continue on. The reason I knew it was from that previous game was my audio ad crashed and was still off... it was definitely still running not just a screen snapshot.
I tried it again in various ways and it used to always load with the "clickgamer" or  "Rovio" screen first, if I play it at all or load past that screen when I "reload" it it continues on from where I stopped.

Just tried it again, hitting "home" mid level and it definitely took me back to the same point with even the bird exploding as it disappears.
Either it's freezing it in memory at that point or this new update could be something to do with it.

Either way, my battery seems ok until I launch something like AB then it dies much much quicker.

Jimbo : oÞ

"There's that word again... is there a problem with the Earth's gravitational pull in the future?"

After a fair bit of research and comparing the way it behaves to my Nokia N8 (which lasts 7 days + with mid-heavy use) I've managed to sort Sarah's iPhone 3GS.

Got these from the internet, first turn off the ping service, then got into network settings and choose reset network settings. Be warned though you will need to re-enter your WiFi password to re-connect so have it handy.

Keep checking for apps that are still running by pressing the circle twice, on the N8 every app has an Exit button or option in the menu, so when you leave that app it is fully shut down, looks like the iPhone doesn't have that option so you have to manually close every single app.

Sarah must have had 40+ on the go.

Then things I have found, obviously they may not be suitable for everyone.

The Wifi seems to be permanently connected as soon as your within 15 feet of the house, on my N8 it connects to the WiFi only when needed, ie to check email, or an app want internet access. As soon as it has finished what it is doing it automatically disconnects again.

So, as the iPhone doesn't seem to have an option for 'When Needed' the WiFi is on all the time. So she turns the WiFi off when not using it, and back on when she wants to use it, mainly for facebook, we browsing etc, just uses the 3g for email.

On the N8 you can fully customise your email, I found that on push it would drain the battery a lot faster even though no mail was coming in, with push enabled the phone would only last 1-2 days, watching the mail symbols it was checking for mail every 30 seconds or so and again the WiFi seemed to be on constantly.

So I set it to automatically check for mail once an hour between 8.00am and 8.00pm, no point searching for mail while I'm asleep! You can manually check any time you want to just by clicking on the email icon.

On the iPhone it didn't have these options so as a work around I originally changed Sarah's to check for mail once per hour then said to change it to manual when she goes to bed. However she said she finds it easier to just leave it on manual and check every couple of hours rather than remember to keep changing the settings.

This may not work for everyone as understand you may need to see mail as soon as it is sent.

Then we cycled the battery, run it down as flat as it would go, then fully charge it (with the phone turned off), at least 12 hours. Did this 3 or 4 times. Only turn it on when disconnected from the charger.

Before taking these steps, she would take her phone off the charger around 8.00 am, it would be flat by 5.00pm. Straight on the charger until 8.00 am the next day. Getting less than 9 hours out of a charge.

Now we turned the phone on at 8.00 am on Monday its now 8.00 am Thursday, 72 hours later, and it still has 10% left in it  Still only half as long as the N8 will last with much more use, but a huge improvement.


All the best

Gerald.



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This item was edited on Thursday, 4th August 2011, 08:16

Quote:
Superted says...
Keep checking for apps that are still running by pressing the circle twice, on the N8 every app has an Exit button or option in the menu, so when you leave that app it is fully shut down, looks like the iPhone doesn't have that option so you have to manually close every single app.No, pressing the home button closes an app. The only exception to that is an app which is streaming audio in the background. The iOS doesn't let anything run multi-tasking, with as I said the exception of streaming. What people *think* is multi-tasking is actually quick switching.

Most of the other stuff you said was good tho!

I think Push drains the battery for mail, because some mail services aren't actually using Push, they require the phone to poll, which means it has to come out of power saving mode on a regular basis to check mail, which costs juice.


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Quote:
Rob Shepherd says...
No, pressing the home button closes an app. The only exception to that is an app which is streaming audio in the background. The iOS doesn't let anything run multi-tasking, with as I said the exception of streaming. What people *think* is multi-tasking is actually quick switchingRob it may be "quick switching" but it seems to be acting like a pause-hold-in-memory-still-running on my phone.
This is the issue I'm experiencing since my update and, right now, I can go back into Angry Birds and pick up where I left off last night.
I've been playing AOD Defence for over a week and hit a score of 1, 999, 999 intending to take it to 999,999,999 and stop it and have only just found out why in the last couple of days, my phone seems to be less jerky.
It's NOW closed AoD on me but I didn't play it for a day or two.

I have screenshots of it hitting over the 1,000,000 score mark luckily and now a bit peeved cos I had it almost on an endless loop with hundreds of archers (from the hero guy!) and the Deadites backed into their own archway.

Now I've just booted it to find out if it was still there and I'll have a buggy phone for a couple of days again
If anyone knows how to manually switch off apps I'd be grateful.

BTW, my battery isn't too heavily drained from where it was before but it's as slow as a week in the jail now with the extra appearing to run in the background.

Jimbo : oÞ

"There's that word again... is there a problem with the Earth's gravitational pull in the future?"

Quote:
Jimbo Þ says...
but it seems to be acting like a pause-hold-in-memory-still-running on my phoneYes, it's designed to "seem" like that, but it really isn't.

Quote:
Jimbo Þ says...
This is the issue I'm experiencing since my update and, right now, I can go back into Angry Birds and pick up where I left off last nightYes, because the iOS loads a saved screen from the time you closed it, and whilst you are staring at that it launches the app (which is quick to do because a) they are small and b) they launch off flash memory) which loads the info it needs for a saved state.

An app HAS to support this for it to work, it really isn't running in the background. And quite a few apps don't, because quite frankly it's a bit of an effort to code it in.


Quote:
Jimbo Þ says...
It's NOW closed AoD on me but I didn't play it for a day or twoI think the phone can invalidate the saved data.


Quote:
Jimbo Þ says...
BTW, my battery isn't too heavily drained from where it was before but it's as slow as a week in the jail now with the extra appearing to run in the background.They aren't! If you don't believe me, jailbreak it, connect via SSH and run something that shows you the task list.


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Quote:
Rob Shepherd says...
They aren't! If you don't believe me, jailbreak it, connect via SSH and run something that shows you the task list.
It's not that I don't believe you, this is just my experience. When I say pick up where I left off, if I reload Angry Birds I even get the music continuing from where it stopped.

Definitely during my AoD massive score run my phone would jerk and stammer and when I restarted the game it would jerk a few seconds then go back to a normalish speed, albeit slow due to the amount on screen.
Now that it's definitely closed off or deleted whatever to do with AoD the phone was back to normal, after restarting it earlier the phone has become a bit sluggish (but not jerky yet) again.

Can't jailbreak it, it's on the latest update and CBA messing about with any of the jailbreaking apps... if I can't do it by hitting that website then it can wait til they catch up with the iOS.

Jimbo : oÞ

"There's that word again... is there a problem with the Earth's gravitational pull in the future?"