Noah's Randomness

For quite some time I have had issues with my iPhone 3G’s battery life. This week it had gotten to the point that even with my Mophie Juice Pack Air that I would be getting the dreaded 20% battery warning around 7-8pm each night (after taking my iPhone off the charger around 8am). So I took it to the Apple Store to have them look at it. I also took it there due to having cracked plastic near my headphone jack. This was causing audio to drop out when listening to music on my iPhone via headphones.

The Genius I worked with hooked my iPhone up to one of their MacBooks and asked me to accept an agreement that “would send a bunch of 1s and 0s to Apple about my iPhone.” I was assured that no personal information would be transmitted. Yeah, OK (I don’t fully buy that)…

But that’s beside the point. The first thing the Genius said is that he saw a lot of unresponsive apps on my phone. The second thing he indicated was that an update to the new 3.1.3 version of the iPhone OS would possibly cure my battery life issues. I’ve heard that song and dance over and over again and wouldn’t believe it for a minute. They’ve said that about every single iPhone OS update but none have delivered any significant battery life improvement, IMHO.

Then came the surprise. As the Genius scrolled down in his “Behavior Scan” report of my iPhone, up came a section entitled “Third-Party Apps.” What did this show? An entry labeled “Cydia_”… Oh, crap. The next thing I know the Apple Genius turns to me and says “There’s your battery problem. You’re using third-party apps.” I replied by telling him that I had jailbroken my iPhone once a while back and that I indeed did see a slight decrease in battery life which then prompted me to go back to a stock version of the iPhone OS. He replied “Well when we see that, we typically won’t do anything for the customer. Jailbreaking voids the warranty and after that, Apple won’t honor it.” First thing that went through my mind was “Oh, crap…” especially since I had purchased AppleCare for my iPhone (as it has been beneficial on my other laptops, except for my latest one. I’ll tell that support nightmare some other time). Read the rest of this entry »