images.jpegMany people don’t realize that their cell phone is always transmitting. It is constantly sending out a signal to the surrounding towers saying “I am here”. That’s how a cell tower knows to send a phone call your way. Well, the strength of the signal the phone puts out will vary depending on the reception conditions. If you are close to a tower the phone can power down and send out a lower strength signal. If you are far away, or in poor reception conditions like inside a building, the phone has to boost its power to get a signal through. Of course, the higher the signal strength your phone is putting out, the more power is being drained from your battery. You may have noticed that sometimes your phone battery seems depleted for no apparent reason. This is probably because you spent a significant amount of time in a low signal area.

How does this relate to the iPhone and e-books? Well, the iPhone is a cell phone and is subject to the effect I mentioned above. Recently I decided to put my Kindle aside for a week or so and finish off reading a number of eReader-format e-books I have in my Fictionwise library. This has not worked out as well as I hoped.
Both my home and my work are in low signal areas. At work I often drop signal completely, as we are in a dip and not in direct line of site to any AT&T tower. This means that my iPhone is putting out maximum signal most of the time. I can easily get two days on the phone without a recharge, but not when I put any significant time into reading an e-book.

Even with the phone’s display brightness set very low I can’t get a full day’s use (16 hours) out of the phone if I read for a couple of hours or more. This is not the case when I’ve used the phone for reading in high signal strength areas. In such areas I can get a full days use before I have to recharge. This is important to me since I don’t use a land line and keep the phone on 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

The solution? For the time being I’ve switched my SIM to my MWg Zinc II Windows Mobile phone and have turned off the phone portion of my iPhone. I still keep the WiFi on, as it is very useful for getting email or a quick jump over to the internet. In this mode I easily get my 16 hours before I have to recharge, even with several hours of e-book reading.

Bottom line, if e-book reading is important to you, and you are not in a good signal area, then you might want to consider going a two machine route: iPod Touch for e-books and a cell phone of your choice for calling.

7 COMMENTS

  1. This hasn’t been a huge problem for me, as I have the first generation phone, which drains power more slowly than v2. My husband discovered the Richard Solo 1200 iphone charger – you can bring it with you and recharge when you’re running low on juice. Best purchase ever (well, at least next to the iPhone).

  2. Too bad you can’t turn off the cell phone portion. A “plane” button that truns of wireless access would be nice for battery saving options.

    This was interesting for me as I am still debating betweena an iPhone and a Touch. I already have the Kindle and do most of my reading on that.

  3. On the iPhone, you can turn on “airplane mode” to turn off both the wifi radio and the cell radio. There’s no way that I know of to turn off just the cell radio, but leave the wifi radio on, as it seems Paul wanted to do.

    When traveling abroad, there is an option to disable data connections via the cell radio, so you don’t get whacked with data roaming charges.

  4. This is just one more example of why, given the current state of technology, (and batteries) that the all in one device will remain a dream for most of us for the immediate forseeable future. I love my phone for being a phone, and in a pinch an internet device, but not a music player or camera because it draws down the battery too fast and affects it’s primary purpose (and all of which other devices do better) and I love my Sony reader for being the nearly perfect non business reading device (and audio book and music player). These two things and my blackberry, because my Firm doesn’t (as in won’t)support the iPhone, give me almost everything I need on a daily basis. Once I have the new business reader from Plastic Logic, life will be really sweet.

  5. It is easy to turn off just the phone and leave the WiFi on. First, go into Airplane mode and turn it on. This will shut off both the phone and the WiFi. Right under Airplane Mode is WiFi. You will see that it is now set to Off. Turn it on. This will just turn on WiFi and still leave the phone part off, and you will see the airplane where the signal strength meter used to be.

    This is how I am running now and it saves a lot of battery life. I like leaving WiFi on so I can have instant access to email and the net.

  6. I have only an iPod Touch, and this was one of the reasons. I also was worried about ‘accidentally’ using a feature which unknown to me would use the cell phone part and thus cost me money/airtime. I also just don’t use a cell phone often enough—even with it being my only phone and me not having a landline, I just don’t get that money phone calls since everyone uses email so much these days. My mom is the only person who still uses the phone with any regularity 🙂

    I have found with the touch that unless I start playing games or watching video, I can easily go three days between charges (this, using it for music and reading). If I add in a little bit of game-playing, it drops to every two days. More than satisfactory for my needs. But I have found that I have trouble focusing on it when I am moving (for example on the treadmill) so I keep my eBookwise for that.

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