Good battery life is essential for a mobile device to succeed in the post-PC era, and Apple’s iOS devices continue to pack upgraded internals and improved battery technology into every product iteration. iPhone, iPad and iPod touch users can use a handful of tips and tricks for conserving precious battery on the go. Many of the tips are pretty basic, but every little bit counts when you’re trying to make it through the day on one charge.
Here’s a roundup of tips and tricks for saving battery life on your favorite iOS device:
Your new iPad's Wi-Fi issues may not be hardware-related, and this simple fix could solve your issue.
This morning we reported that a number of new iPad owners are suffering from poor Wi-Fi performance on their new tablet. If you’re one of the unlucky few, then this simply fix might just solve the issue, and in turn save you a visit to the Genius Bar.
View your photos in all their glory in Picture Frame on iPad.
If you frequently use the iPad’s Picture Frame feature, you’ve probably noticed that it likes to zoom in on people’s faces within each photo. Fortunately, there is a way to prevent this.
While repeated alerts for our text messages are helpful sometimes, other times they’re just downright annoying. If you find that they frustrate you more than they help you, here’s how to turn them off and receive just one alert per message.
Since Apple launched Siri on the iPhone 4S back in October last year, hackers have been working their socks off to port the intelligent assistant to other iOS devices. But it seems all their hard work may have been wasted, because one guy claims he got Siri on his new iPod touch simply by restoring from an iPhone 4S backup.
Fed up of seeing updates in the App Store for apps that you do not want to update? Unfortunately most of us just have to put up with them, but if you’ve got a jailbroken device, you can use the Update Hider for iOS 5 tweak to hide them away.
One of the nifty little features in Apple’s iOS operating system is the ability to “swipe to delete” certain items. You can use the gesture to remove songs, podcasts, videos, text messages, emails, and more from your device, but for some bizarre reason, not audiobooks.
Here’s how to delete audiobooks directly from your iOS device — without the need for a computer.
When we install new apps on our iOS devices, they don’t just take up the storage space needed for the app itself, but they also consume space needed for storing “documents & data.” This can be all sorts of things, including save files for your games, pictures, videos, and content downloaded through in-app purchases.
Here’s how to see how much storage space each of your apps is using for “documents & data,” and how you can reclaim that precious space.
Photo Frame is a nifty feature on the iPad that allows you to show off your photo collection by turning your device into a digital photo frame when it’s not in use. By default, the feature cycles through all of the photos stored on your device, which could mean that an embarrassing image can pop up at any time and spoil the afternoon tea you were enjoying with friends.
Did you know that you can set Photo Frame to display images only from selected albums, or disable it completely to stop unwanted access? Here’s how to customize your Photo Frame and prevent that shot of you in your Justin Bieber pajamas from popping up again.
Apple makes it incredibly easy for you to set up a Gmail account on your iPhone — you simply hit the Gmail button when setting up a new account and enter your login details. But with just a little bit more effort, you can enjoy a much better Gmail experience — one that pushes new emails straight to your device as they come in.
Here’s how to set up Gmail the right way on your iPhone.
Today’s tip is a simply one, but it’s a question I get asked a lot when people see the battery percentage in my iPhone’s status bar. The iPhone ships with this feature disabled by default, and Apple hides the option away within the device’s general settings. So, here’s how to enable it!
Multiple tricks for gaining quick access to settings toggles on the iPhone’s Home screen have been making the news lately, and many rejoiced that such a thing could be accomplished without needing to jailbreak.
In the iOS 5.1 beta, it’s been discovered that Apple has blocked access to these settings shortcuts. How lame!
Lion has introduced some new yet basic privacy settings. The new settings control how you share your location and collect usage data to send to Apple. Although now it seems to be fairly basic I think it is still important to know what if any apps on your Mac are accessing location services on Mac OS X.
I’ll show you how to find out if they are or not in this tip.
Brightness Icons is a tweak for jailbroken iOS devices that makes it easier than ever to adjust the brightness on your device. No longer do you have to navigate your way around the Settings app to dim your display — simply do it right from your home screen.
OS X Lion Server hasn’t gotten much attention since its release alongside the standard version of Lion, but users will be happy to know that you can actually manage your iOS device’s settings straight from OS X Lion Server.
The main purpose of such a feature seems to be geared more towards system admins and those dealing with multiple iDevices that require similar setting configurations.
With the new touchscreen iPod nano, Apple successfully managed to shrink their mid-level iPod down to Shuffle-sized dimensions… but not without dropping some notable capability, including video recording and playback. It’s unlikely that Apple is going to suss out the dimensional wormhole technologies required to fit a video camera back into the nano’s postage-stamp-sized casing soon, but video playback might not be out of the question in a future software update.
The revelation comes by way of TUAW’s Erica Sadun, who spotted a lot of video-related details in the new nano’s internal settings property lists, with options for captions, alternative audio, television subtitles and screen aspect all hinting at possible upcoming support.
Interesting, to be sure, but Apple left video support out of the nano for a reason: that screen is just unsuitable to movie watching, and Cupertino knows it. The new nano, despite the touchscreen, is still similar in its innards to the old nano… my guess is that this residual functionality is simply legacy code from the fifth-gen, and Apple’s not about to flip the switch anytime before next year as an incentive to upgrade.
