iOS 5.0.1 and battery life

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I’m happy to report that the recent iOS 5.0.1 update has made a dramatic difference to the battery life of my iPhone 4. And I’m hearing that from various other sources too about the iPhone 4, the 4S and even the 3GS.

On Saturday morning, I unplugged my phone. Normally, even though my usage was light, I would have expected it to be all-but-dead by Sunday morning. Instead, I still had about 30% charge by the time I plugged it in again Sunday night. I have never had that experience with any iPhone model I’ve owned (this is my third) or with any previous iOS version. I’d say Apple finally fixed a major problem.

Since the battery life issue was the only one that’s been reported about the iPhone 4S, I’d say that’s resolved and, if you’ve been waiting to get one, you can go ahead.

iCloud and you

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iCloud is the new Apple service that will ultimately replace MobileMe. If you’re a current MobileMe user, you will get all sorts of “reminders” and nudges to migrate to iCloud or start an iCloud account.

Unless you’re running Lion (Mac OS X 10.7) on all of your Macs, don’t do it.

The problem with iCloud is that it requires the latest OS and won’t work with any previous OS for synchronization of data. If you migrate to it and still have a previous-OS Mac, you will lose the ability to share your contacts and calendars among your Macs and iOS devices, and there is no way back.

The alternative is to start a brand-new, free account with iCloud for a specific purpose on your iOS devices (like backing up to iCloud instead of your Mac), but when you do finally migrate, you will have multiple iCloud accounts and, at this time, there is no way to merge them.

The bottom line is, if you use MobileMe and haven’t completely upgraded to Lion, you don’t have to do anything until June 2012 so leave iCloud alone. But if you don’t have a MobileMe account, or have upgraded all of your Macs to Lion, go ahead with iCloud.

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