iOS4 for the iPod Touch battery non-issue

Anyhow, don't know if anyone has notice but probably have been wondering. If you own a previous generation of the iPod Touch and have recently updated to iOS4 you may have noticed that your battery life doesn't quite live up to the original state or potential that was present in iOS3.x.x.

So as to recap, over the course of the past week and a bit I have noticed that my iPod Touch tend to require charging more often. Generally, I would recharge every 2-3 days previously when I use it to listen to mp3, play a couple games, twitter, facebook, check email and also using it as a PDA. However without changing my usage habits I have noticed that I needed to charge the iPod every night or sometimes in the middle of the afternoon. This got to me to wondering if there was something wrong with the device for the massive battery drain. So, I decided to do some investigating on the Apple Support Forum and found that this problem is plaguing quite a number of people. There was a lot of work around solutions that entails turning off Push, Notification, Auto Fetching of Emails, WiFi, etc. However, these are inherently work-around. In reality there should be a problem or issue, considering that this issue did not arise until after the iOS4 update. So with further investigation and digging I found that a complete reformat and reinstall of iOS4 on the iPod as a clean installation may do the trick. And guess what, it did do the trick. Although, this would also mean that any previous data backup is now null. So you may want to proceed with caution before trying this as a fix, if you are likewise plagued by this vampirish issue.

After this fix, my iPod Touch has regained it battery life to similar level before the iOS upgrade. I am guessing that there was a bump on the upgrade that wasn't noted before that left some bits and pieces that was messing with the battery usage and consumption.

iOS4 for the iPod Touch 2G 8GB MC-Model

As the title clearly states, this is a personal reflection and review of iOS4 running on the iPod Touch 2nd Gen 8GB MC-Model.

For those that didn't know this is the current 8GB model that is available. It is virtually identical to a normal 2nd Gen model except for the bump to "MC" which is generally designated as a 3rd Gen device. However, Apple still view this as a 2nd Gen device despite the MC-model moniker.

In a previous post, I had mentioned that I had jailbreak my iPod Touch with the Spirit Jailbreak Tool. With the update to iOS4, this jailbreak was automatically uninstalled.

The download and installation of iOS4 was pretty smooth. There wasn't any issue with downloading from Apple's servers roughly an hour or two after it was released. The installation went smoothly (I presume since I was actually not there to physically monitor the installation process but there wasn't any error nor issues afterward). The re-installation of all my apps, files, settings, etc. went off without a hitch. It was a pretty smooth upgrade process.

iOS4 gained some notable improvement over iOS3.1.3. The first is the ability to have folders. For someone like me that have about 300 apps in iTune and generally having about 7 pages of apps, this was a God-send function. The second most important new function in my view was the new email app. The unified inbox is awesome and the ability to tweak your personal preference of archiving email or actually having the delete command equal to moving the email to the trash. This works out pretty well overall for my accounts synced with Gmail. An interesting new function was the ability to create notes on IMAP servers (like Gmail). Aside from these named new features there are quite a number of other ones that aren't named but those didn't quite standout as much.

Now the question is whether it was worth the upgrade, considering that my device is a generation old. I would have to say, Yes. The upgrade was definitely worthwhile, if not only for the ability to have folders or even just the unified inbox. An added bonus to the upgrade to iOS4 is the ability to use iBooks and its corresponding online book store from Apple. Although I have had previously been a devote user of Stanza as my ebook reader, I do not mind having another one that has a large online store behind it. Especially a store that stock more of the newer books.

Overall, the upgrade to iOS4 was worthwhile. So far there hasn't been any major issues with the new o/s. There has been occasional 'glitches' but I'm sure those will be work out in time.

iPod Touch Jailbreak

So for those that didn't know, I have a iPod Touch 3rd Gen 8gb, MC model. And because of this, prior to a couple weeks back it has been unable to be jailbroken untethered. With the new release of the Spirit Jailbreak hack, the newer 3rd generation iPod Touch are now able to be jailbroken.

This process was rather surprisingly simple. It was just a matter of using Bing.com or Google.com to find the hack's website, download the program, plug-in the iPod, sync/backup the iPod first, and then execute the jailbreak program. It was as simple as that. It took about 5min or so to accomplish.

As of yet, I am still not quite sure why I jailbreak my iPod Touch. Since I do not plan on running pirated software on it. I guess it was primarily out of curiosity that I did such a thing and also to say that I have tried it before. Although, with the upcoming release of iPhone OS 4.0 and the possible cost of upgrading the OS, it seems to be a good time to jailbreak and use some of the third-party programs and hacks available to jailbreaks to achieve some of the functionality of OS 4 while still retaining OS 3.x.x. Aside from this, I haven't quite figure out why to jailbreak. In a sense, it was over all a pretty educational process but nothing particularly outstanding.

I wouldn't particularly recommend jailbreaking or not. It seems to be a very personal matter and decision. And mileage and usages and needs varies depending on the user. But I for one am actually happy with what Apple already gave me in the default firmware and OS. A portable media device is just that, to entertain me on the go. I don't have need for it to be a 'be all it can be' device in my life.