Wanted: An iPhone power miser app
While Guy Kawasaki might be able to get 36 hours of standby life out of his iPhone 3G, many of the rest of us are struggling with having enough power to make it through a day. Mike Davidson, CEO of Newsvine in Seattle, came up with a great idea for any iPhone developers in the TUAW audience. He'd like to see an iPhone power miser application that could turn off 3G, location services, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and push e-mail with one tap (low drain mode), then turn on all of the same services with another tap (full power mode).
Davidson explains that it currently takes him 15 steps to disable the power-hungry features of his 3G, and another 15 steps to turn those features back on. Whether or not those features are something that the average NDA'd iPhone developer can actually control is one big question; if they aren't, this would be a great app for Apple to develop -- quickly!
Me? I'm waiting for "The Clapper" version of the power miser app -- "Clap On! Clap Off!"
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While Guy Kawasaki might be able to get 36 hours of standby life out of his iPhone 3G, many of the rest of us are struggling with having...
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Bloggers crack me up. Always savin' that time. God bless them.
August 30 2008 at 9:56 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyYou mean like this: http://www.flickr.com/photos/timheuer/2781689897/? I tried writing this the day the SDK was made public (http://timheuer.com/blog/archive/2008/07/14/iphone-3g-battery-drain-and-accessories-not-compatible.aspx), however in communication directly with Apple, the headers are not exposed for an app that would be accepted to AppStore based on the current terms.
August 29 2008 at 8:16 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyId love this to appear if I was to tap the signal bars in the top left, best place for it to reduce clicks and slides and not to have to have a dedicated icon taking up space
August 31 2008 at 12:33 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyApple marketing would never allow such an app to be created. It would be tantamount to an admission that iPhone battery life sucks.
August 29 2008 at 12:47 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyYes! That would be awesome.
I can see it now....
In the preferences of this App you would be able to choose the settings for "Low Drain Mode" as well as the settings for "Full Power Mode," and you would be able to choose how you want the Brightness, 3G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, location services, and Push. Then all you have to do is open the App and tap which mode you would like.
:D
I think this is a great idea, although it may be better to have homescreen icons that allow you to switch these power sapping functions on and off, purely for flexibility. For instance if I need to turn the bluetooth on in my car for my headset I have to go through all the settings, as described above. But if there was a single button on the homescreen, like a shortcut to simply switch the services individually on or off, i think that would be great!
August 29 2008 at 3:51 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyThat is also a great idea... and the shortcut could be a triple tap of the iPhone's home button
August 29 2008 at 10:15 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyI suggested this to Erica the day the 3G came out. Erica, how about it?? :)
August 28 2008 at 11:20 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyGreat idea; Apple should just make an "energy saver" app that not only does this but that also could turn on energy savings when the battery reaches a user-defined threshold (so if you specify that when your battery drops to 25% then all extraneous processes are shut off).
August 28 2008 at 11:16 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyAfter noticing a few of my friends and colleagues with new iPhones, the best thing anyone can do to improve battery life is turn down the display brightness to 25-33% (but keep on auto-brightness). If you need it higher, fine, but most will notice that the 55% default setting is too bright for normal usage.
The battery life will go up A LOT. ;)
Seems like you and Erica Sadun didn't cross paths in the office today. Checkout the previous post about Boss Prefs; it does exactly what you want. Maybe you don't want to jailbreak, tho.
August 28 2008 at 10:02 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyI have thought of this idea also. Why not include something similar to profiles like on a blackberry. You could have Home and Road, High powerlow power, etc..
This is a concept thats been on laptops for years, and since the iPhone is a mini-laptop it makes sense for apple to include this as a feature.
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