Tag: Mobile Device

How to Preserve iOS 9 Battery Life: Part 1 Background App Refresh

I’ve had my iPhone 6 Plus for about 1.5 years now, initially the battery life was amazing. More recently I’ve noticed that it rapidly drops off, this is in part due to the age of the device but it’s also in part due to several factors that I will cover in a series of posts about preserving iOS 9 battery life. I expect these tips will remain valid even with subsequent iOS versions.

Background App Refresh was a feature introduced in iOS 7 and for the best summary of what it does I refer to an Apple support article:

…Apps can continue to run for a short period of time and are then set to a suspended state so they are not actively in use, open, or taking up system resources. They will instantly launch when you return to them. Certain tasks or services can continue to run in the background. To lessen the effect on battery life, normal app background refreshing is scheduled for efficient times, such as when your device is connected to Wi-Fi, plugged into a power source, or being actively used. When Background App Refresh is on, apps that take advantage of this feature can refresh themselves in the background. For example, an app can check if new content is available and download the updates, or retrieve the updated content in the background when it receives a push notification, so the new content is ready for viewing when you launch the app. Apps can also schedule background refreshing based on your location. If you force an app to quit by dragging it up from the multitasking display, it won’t be able to do its background activities, such as tracking location or responding to VoIP calls, until you relaunch the app. iOS learns patterns based on your use of the device and tries to predict when an app should be updated in the background. It also learns when the device is typically inactive, such as during the night, to reduce update frequency when the device is not in use.

You will read many articles on the internet that tell you disable all Background App Refreshing to save battery life and others that will tell you not to bother at all as it makes no difference. 

Apple Resource’s advice is to go through the list and make a conscious decision as to how much you use each application and how much you’d value it updating whilst in the background. It’s perfectly OK to leave apps that you value and use all the time as active due to the intelligent way Background App Refresh works. What you don’t want is every single app using it if you rarely use them. Although it was first introduced in iOS 7, apps taking advantage of Background App Refresh will have percolated through over time, which is why you may have a shock when you open up the Background App Refresh found at:

Settings -> General -> Background App Refresh 

Leave a comment about how many apps you ended up disabling. As always, follow Apple Resource in Twitter, Facebook or sign up to our monthly newsletter.

Review: Verbatim MediaShare Wireless – Turn a Hard Drive into a Wireless Hard Drive and Stream Files, Movies and Data Wirelessly to Your Mobile Device

Disclaimer: This was a personnel purchase, as such it is being reviewed completely independently.

Buy now in the United Kingdom or in the United States

What is it?

The Verbatim MediaShare Wireless is a wireless hub turning a ‘wired’ hard drive into wireless hard drive that provides a way to share files and media between up to 5 connected devices on its private wi-if network via its file manager app. With 9 hrs of continuous battery life there is plenty of juice on the device to keep you going for a long plane flight or work day, it can even help charge your mobile device if needed.

Unlike wireless hard drive units this device acts more like a hub allowing you to connect a USB hard disk or thumb drive as well as an SD card. This has pros and also some cons. The pros are you can connect any USB hard drive to the unit and are not limited to a single drive, another advantage of which is the ability to then connect those drives to a Mac and back them up with Backblaze. It also provides you the ability to insert a camera SD card and transfer them wirelessly to a hard drive whilst on the road, also allowing you to view them on any mobile device. The obvious cons are that you need to carry both this unit and a storage unit, and you will need to connect the two together which might be a hindrance whilst travelling unlike a traditional wireless hard drive. 

 

Who is this for?

This device appeals if you are looking to do the following:

  1. Carry a lot of media (movies etc) on the road with you when you are travelling without a laptop. 
  2. You want to transfer photos from your camera SD card to a large hard drive when you are out and about, allowing you to take more pictures.
  3. You want to go iOS only.
  4. You travel with kids. This is great to keep them (and you) occupied on a long flight. You could also wire this into your car 12v supply and tuck it neatly away in your boot (trunk) with a hard drive attached. This would create an in car media hub. 
  5. You need to share large files or media with a project team quickly and securely.
  6. You want more flexibility than a wireless hard drive unit. 

How Well Does it Work?

The hardware itself works really well. It is well designed, feels solid and is easy to access. 

However, where the whole package falls down is the app software, at least on iOS. It works well, but hasn’t been updated and looks just plain weird on iOS. Verbatim need to update it ASAP from a visual perspective. I’ve been able to stream movies, open PDFs, pictures all with great speed and ease. When opening a movie file, there was no buffering or lag at all. There isn’t a desktop app, so you are limited to mobile devices. Obviously with removable media this isn’t an issue. I’m not sure if the dedicated wireless hard drives come with desktop software, but if not, this could be a distinct benefit of going with this unit.

Conclusion

The main point of a product review description is should you by it or not? Well if you need to share a large storage device with one or several mobile devices or you travel with kids then the answer is simply yes. If you want more flexibility that a wireless hard drive whilst effectively converting multiple wire hard drives into wireless hard drives then this product is for you. The software needs to be updated urgently, but still functions fine. The hardware is solid and fast as well as nice and compact.  You can buy the device from the links below, and if you do please leave a comment on your thoughts of the device.

Buy now in the United Kingdom or in the United States

How to Know if Someone has Blocked you on iOS

UPDATE JULY 2016: It appears Apple may have made a change to how Messages appear when you are blocked. It used to be that they showed as ‘Delivered’, now they don’t show anything. So if you send a message and it returns no status at all you are either blocked, or the persons phone is off. 

Have you ever got yourself in a situation where you are wondering why someone isn’t replying to your FaceTime calls or iMessages? How do you know if you have been blocked or if you are just being plain ignored? 

There are many articles on the Internet, all stretch the topic out far more than it really needs to be. Here is the simple answer.

How to Know for Certain

To be 100% certain, the person you are trying to contact has to have an iPhone and you need to make a cellular call to their phone on more than one occasion. If the phone goes straight to voicemail you are either blocked, or their phone is off. To confirm this step you need to disable your caller ID and call them back straight away. 

Switch Off Caller ID

  1. Tap on ’Settings’
  2. Tap on ‘Phone’
  3. Tap on ‘Show My Caller ID’ and switch it to ‘Off’
  4. Call them straight away.

If the phone now rings you can confirm you were blocked. 

What About Messages?

Messages is a cloudy way of telling. It used to be that when you were blocked your messages still showed as ‘Delivered’, this gives no definitive indication. However, per the notice at the top of the post, I’ve noticed that when you are newly blocked the message receives no status. A few days to weeks later. I’ve noticed it then changes back to ‘Delivered’. Remember though, showing no status could also mean the phone is off. So really, two calls is the only real way to know. 

What About FaceTime?

FaceTime calls will just ring and ring and then eventually fail, in short they will act as though they are going through but the person is simply not answering.

What Else?

If you were once sharing locations with the person via ‘Find My Friends’ then this will be a massive clue. If you see ‘XXXX XXXX is no longer sharing their location with you’ in your iMessage conversation, where ‘XXXX XXXX’ is the person name, then you have a good indicator they have blocked you. If it says ‘Location Unavailable’ then this IS NOT an indicator of being blocked, merely that they are out of reception, their phone has died or they have turned it off. 

So in conclusion, the only sure fire way is via a cell call with an iMessage as a belts and braces check. It should be noted that the user must have iOS7+ to be able to block a caller, so check this as well. The information in this article is valid up to (and most likely beyond) iOS 10.2.

Have you noticed any other behaviour? Reading this long after iOS 10.2 and wondering if this article is still valid? Leave me a comment below or on Twitter. 

Calibrate Your iPhone and iPad Battery

Is your battery percentage not reporting correctly or acting erratically? This post gives you a guide on how you can recalibrate your device battery. 

Have you ever noticed that one moment your iPhone or iPad is reading a certain battery percentage, then all of a sudden it drops 5 or 10%? Have you noticed that it sits at 1-2% for a very long time? Have you noticed that as soon as you plug it in that it suddenly jumps up by tens of percent?

All of these symptoms give an indication that your device is no longer able to accurately predict the amount of juice that it has in its battery. This doesn’t necessarily mean there is anything wrong from a hardware point if view, more that you need to teach it to present the correct level of power to you – this is called recalibrating the battery. 

You can recalibrate your iPhone and iPad battery with a few simple steps:

  1. Use the device until it powers down of its own accord
  2. Leave the device off over night or for at least several hours
  3. Plug the device in and wait for it to start of its own accord
  4. As soon as it has started up and you are at the iOS home screen, power off your device
  5. Leave the device off whilst it charges to 100% and let it charge for a good few hours after it is full
  6. Unplug the device
  7. Power the device on and monitor how the battery percentage fairs, if it still isn’t quite right, repeat these steps again. If several attempts fail to resolve the issue then a clean install of iOS (not a restore) would be an appropriate step before you have to admit that it is an actual hardware issue

Why does your battery get like this? I’m not sure, but I would assume that plugging the device in for partial charges doesn’t help. It would be helpful to carry out these steps on a monthly or bi-monthly basis.