May 11 2008

Second Gen iPhone: 3-G When You Want It, EDGE When You Don’t

Posted by: admin in Online And Tech News

Second Gen iPhone: 3-G When You Want It, EDGE When You Don’t
For those concerned about the battery taxing tendencies of 3-G chipsets, there’s new evidence that Apple may be planning to include a 3-G kill switch of sorts in its forthcoming second-gen iPhone. The option, although hidden, was discovered to be…
3g_option

For those concerned about the battery taxing tendencies of 3-G chipsets, there’s new evidence that Apple may be planning to include a 3-G kill switch of sorts in its forthcoming second-gen iPhone. The option, although hidden, was discovered to be a part of the latest firmware update for the regular EDGE-based iPhone and was found in the 2.0 beta5 Preferences binary. This, of course, implies that Apple will be using common firmware/software for both models of the iPhone, but the developer who made the discovery notes that the 3-G on/off option will only be available to those who purchase a 3-G iPhone.

A screenshot of the new preference appeared Saturday on an independent Chronic Productions blog, which is also a part of iPhone hacking Chronic Dev web site. It was accompanied by code references that support the screenshot from the latest firmware.

Here’s what the hacker who discovered the hidden feature has to say:

Well, when you have nothing to do all day, this is what happens. Note that this is not fake, it is in the beta 5 .ipsw, but will normally not show up on an EDGE iPhone. Turning 3-G on will just crash the phone if you use an EDGE phone. If you do not believe me, then decrypt the beta5 rootfs dmg, and see for yourself in /Applications/Preferences.app/Network.plist

Now there are plenty of 3-G phones that tout decent battery life these days, but recall that Steve Jobs specifically mentioned the battery draining problems associated with 3-G phones when he introduced the iPhone in the U.K. If the company wasn’t able to remedy those problems — at least to Jobs’ satisfaction — such a feature would make a whole lot of sense. To date, no one has independently verified these new 3-G claims, but we suspect this we’ll be hearing a lot more about this in the coming week.

[Chronic Dev via MacNN]

Photo courtesy of Chronic Dev