3g - Home Away From Home

[skippybangkok]

For anyone who was stuck in the dreaded rain this evening, may god have mercy on u !.

Was stuck in my car for 2 hours, going down Petchburi, trying to get onto the "express"way . 1hr 30 mins. Although 3G still being built out ( i have True Service ), there was service on Petchburi all the way down to the 3 way expressway junction ( crossing over rama 4 ).

Was on the iPhone ( with car charger - if not batt dead - cant see how anyone could do 3G with out being connected to a power source)....... and well, was as happy as a pig in sh......... ( as far as one can be in heavy jams )

Chatted w. friends on MSN messenger , few e-mails, news / safari and blogged a bit on face book etc........... Made the time go by real fast.........

[bkkmick]

I'm with you on that Skippy. Stuck in traffic but the 3G allows streaming BBC Radio 5 nicely.

Curious though, I'm new to the iPhone and noticed that the battery life seems quite short. Does using 3G really use the battery more?

[nikster]

3G is already up and running in BKK? Can somebody provide more details? Is it some sort of tryout, or is it an actual rollout that will hit the rest of the country sooner or later.

About 3G and battery - what drains the iPhone battery rapidly is Safari (web), and a lot of other apps. Streaming radio for example would use lots of battery because 1) 3G radio must be on at all times and 2 - stream needs to be decoded which stresses the CPU. For streaming radio you'd not think anything special about listening to it for an hour, but that takes a lot of power because of the radio and the decoding. On the other hand you can play music for 24 hour straight or more because there is no radio, the screen turns off after a while, and mp3 decoding is very efficient, done in hardware.

I have a 1G iPhone and I more or less know which apps use a lot of power by the temperature of the phone. If it gets pretty warm or even hot, it's draining battery.

I don't have issues with battery because I know what to expect. I think a lot of people complaining about the battery life don't realize that they simply do way more stuff with the iPhone than they ever did with their old phone, not to mention it has a very large and bright screen.

About the 3G experience - don't know I had lots of fantastic experiences with plain old GPRS on my iPhone. Buying plane tickets, for example, not something I expected to do with a phone.

[namoo]

Main points to save battery on iphone 3g:

1. Turn Off 3g - just uses 2g antenna - saves a lot

2. Turn Off Location services

3. Turn Brightness to 50% or less ideally 30%

4. Turn Off Push services if u can live without it

5. Turn Off wifi

[bkkmick]

Slight diversion/hijack of the thread...

Talking about using the iPhone in the car, can anyone recommend a shop to buy a iPhone car cradle? (or even better can I order online to get delivered within Bangkok?). Even better would be one that offers a hands-free option.

I've tried ordering from some international websites but they won't deliver to Thailand.

Thanks

Mick