A few weeks ago, we reported that the The Guardian had received word from a customer that Apple had contacted him regarding poor battery life. He was asked to install a monitoring program on his phone. Using the program, Apple engineers hoped to be able to use the diagnostics to determine what was causing shorter battery life for some users. A senior engineer at Apple contacted the person who wrote a post online, and indicated that the company was contacting users to resolve the problem. Then, Apple confirmed that they had found issues in iOS 5 that are causing some iPhone owners to experience poor battery life with their iPhone running its latest software.
Last week, Apple released iOS 5.0.1 to fix the battery life issue. Then, it was reported that even after the update some users still continued to experience battery life issues. I know many of you Apple haters must be laughing right now, but hey! At least, Apple is constantly on the lookout and will get this issue fixed. They care about their customers unlike some companies. *cough* How about ‘em Android software updates, eh?
Now, German site Macerkopf (amazing on how these rumors pop up from nowhere) reports [Google translation] that Apple is working on two software updates for iOS 5. These updates are looking at both near-term battery fixes and longer term improvements to Siri. According to Macerkopf:
iOS 5.0.2 coming very soon, solving the battery bugs. Should arrive before the end of next week. Apple is working hard on the update. In addition Apple ist working on the first big iOS 5 Update (iOS 5.1), bringing some siri-extensions. Also the Siri hardware-control is in work “take a picture”, “make a video”, “switch on/off WiFi”, “switch on/off BT” and more.
The report claims that Apple’s internal goal is for iOS 5.0.2 to provide iPhone 4S users 40 hours of standby with 10 hours of active use. Holy smokes! If true, this will be awesome! It said that the update will arrive “no later than next week.” Honestly, to me these rumors seem likely.
In addition, the next major update, iOS 5.1 is rumored to feature ”many changes” related to Siri voice control, but the update is not expected to arrive by the end of 2011, as work on Siri is “very expensive.” The site claims that Apple will add new voice commands to Siri, allowing users to initiate activities like taking photos, recording a video, turning Wi-Fi on or off, or enabling and disabling Bluetooth.
Macerkopf has not been a consistent source of rumor regarding Apple, and thus this report should be taken with a grain of salt.
