Apple: iPhone battery issue due to iOS 5, fix coming

(Credit: CNET)

CNET - Apple has finally broken radio silence over criticisms of lackluster battery life affecting iPhones old and new since releasing iOS 5 last month.

In a statement provided to AllThingsD, the company said it’s aware of the problem and plans on offering a fix in the form of a software update.

“A small number of customers have reported lower-than-expected battery life on iOS 5 devices,” Apple told the outlet. “We have found a few bugs that are affecting battery life and we will release a software update to address those in a few weeks.”

As noted last week, users have flocked to Apple’s support site to complain about lower than advertised battery life on the new phone, which went on sale in mid-October, as well as on Apple’s previous models.

Affected users say fully-charged devices are running out of juice during the course of a workday, even with minimal use, a problem that was not present on their devices before the iOS 5 software update.              More

Prizefight: Apple iPhone 4S vs Motorola Droid Bionic

CNET - The Motorola Droid Bionic proved to the world that a dual-core processor and Verizon’s 4G LTE chipset could exist in the same phone. The result is one speedy handset, with plenty of power as well. Aside from the usual multimedia and enterprise features, the Droid Bionic also has Webtop functionality that transforms the humble smartphone into a bona-fide Netbook thanks to a variety of accessories.

However, it faces a serious challenger in Apple’s latest device wonder, the iPhone 4S. Even though it’s widely touted as merely an incremental upgrade, it has a lot of power under the hood. There’s plenty of brains behind this beauty, with a dual-core processor along with a seriously upgraded camera. And, of course, it features Siri, the voice assistant that is the current darling in the tech press. Will the Droid Bionic’s Android brawn win against the iPhone 4S’ elegant strength? We find out in this Prizefight.

Editors’ note: The Prizefight scoring system is as follows: Each judge rates on a 0-to-5-point scale. At the end of each round, we will take an average of the three judges’ scores. The final score for each phone will be an average of all five rounds.

Next Round

Walmart Selling iPhone 4S for $188

PCMag.Com - Want the cheapest Apple iPhone 4S in town? Head to your nearest Walmart.

The “always low prices” retailer has begun selling the 16GB version of the iPhone 4S on Verizon for $188, or $11 less than units offered through Verizon’s own retail stores or the Apple Store. The iPhone 4S is only available in select brick and mortar Walmart stores.

Last Friday, the iPhone 4S hit Apple Stores and three U.S. carriers: AT&T, Verizon, and for the first time, Sprint. The devices start at $199.99 for a 16GB model with a two-year contract, to $299.99 for a 32GB model, and $399.99 for a 64GB model. The iPhone 4S is also available from Best Buy, and in-store at select Radio Shacks.              More

Gizmodo Explains: What’s So Smart About the iPhone 4S’s Antenna?

With the iPhone 4S, Apple says it will deliver an iPhone that works anywhere in the world, and with fantastic reception.

How did they do it? One word: antennas.

Apple’s marketing guru Phil Schiller said the iPhone 4S “intelligently switches between two antennas to receive and send.” Brilliant! But vague. How exactly does a smart antenna act?

When you have a small, thin device that needs to receive and send multiple types of signals without interfering with one another, you need to get creative. As we learned from the iPhone 4 “antennagate,” even the best engineers and designers can’t always come up with perfect antenna scheme.

But antenna gurus have plenty of tricks up their sleeves, it’s just a matter of finding the best recipe—and sometimes inventing a spanking new technology.

“What [Apple] seemed to allude to was a switching or selective processing technique: taking the better signal between two antennas and using it,” said Aaron Vronko, co-founder of Rapid Repair, in Portage, Michigan.

That’s one step in the right direction, but there are many other antenna hurdles to clear. On a cell phone, antennas have to be placed close together simply because cell phones are little. And antennas close together tend to interfere with each other. One way phone makers can address that is by placing antennas at opposite ends of the phone, a technique called spatial diversity.
In the AT&T version of the iPhone 4, however, both cell antennas were at the bottom. So if you happened to grab the phone too close to both of them simultaneously, you would experience signal attenuation. Antennagate!

But Verizon requires that the antennas on their phones be separated at the top and bottom of the device. That way, if you’re holding the phone at the bottom, you likely have a free antenna at the top.

Still, since a cell phone is so small, simply separating the antennas won’t prevent all interference. You need a space between them of at least one full wavelength. At the lowest wavelength, about 900 MHz, that would be 13 inches. Not even Gordon Gekko’s phone was quite that big (his DynaTAC was 9.8 inches). So engineers use other “antenna diversity” approaches, like polarity—placing the antennas at varying angles, or pattern diversity—using antennas with different radiation patterns.          More