A Few iPhone Questions

[Mu]

I've tried to find answers to these questions, but haven't been able to find anything. So I apologize if any of these are old questions.

1. On the bottom of the iPhone, there are little holes on the bottom, on each side of the dock connector. I only hear sound out of the left side. Is this correct? Is the left side the speaker and the right side the microphone or what?

2. I am using AT&T's prepaid GoPhone plan, basically just because I don't like being locked in to a contract. Every few minutes, I get a big message covering the whole screen saying "The last transaction cost x.xx USD. Your account balance is xx.xx USD. You have xxx N&W minutes remaining." The transaction cost is usually 0.00, unless I've just finished a call. It correctly reports my balance and night/weekend minutes remaining. The problem is that it pops up with this message so often that it really interferes with using the phone. When I wake up in the morning or check the phone after being busy for a while, I will have 20 to 40 of these messages, and I have to press "Dismiss" on every one to actually ever get into the iPhone interface. Even placing an emergency call is impossible until dismissing all of these pointless messages. Does this happen to other prepaid users and is there any way to turn it off?

3. My iPhone crashes, or at least quits applications suddenly and unexpectantly, quite often. I think I've had the iPhone crash in just about every application except Calculator. YouTube crashes about 1/4th of the time I try it, iPod has crashed every time I've used it for more than 10 minutes, Safari crashes every 5-15 minutes, and I've even had Camera and Mail crash. It's rarely severe enough to require a Hold/Home buttons reset, but it's extremely annoying. This may be the word's best ever interface, but it only works a few minutes at a time. Are others experiencing crashing to this degree? (It may have gotten slightly better after the 1.0.1 update, but still . . .)

4. Is listening to the iPod at the same time as surfing in Safari even supposed to work? So far, my guess is no, but I'm not sure.

5. With "Recent Mode" on or off, I still receive my sent GMail messages in my inbox that were sent from my computer. Is there any way to stop this?

6. Even when just pressing the back button in Safari, the entire page appears to re-load. So what is the cache that can be cleared in Safari's settings? How big is it? Why does it appear to not be used?

7. What is the plug-ins feature in Safari's settings? The only plug-in-like feature I've seen is that Safari can play some MP3/MP4/MOV files in the browser.

[jhollington]

1. On the bottom of the iPhone, there are little holes on the bottom, on each side of the dock connector. I only hear sound out of the left side. Is this correct? Is the left side the speaker and the right side the microphone or what?
The short answer is yes. The sound only comes out of one side, with the other side used for the microphone input.

2. I am using AT&T's prepaid GoPhone plan, basically just because I don't like being locked in to a contract. Every few minutes, I get a big message covering the whole screen saying "The last transaction cost x.xx USD. Your account balance is xx.xx USD. You have xxx N&W minutes remaining." The transaction cost is usually 0.00, unless I've just finished a call. Does this happen to other prepaid users and is there any way to turn it off?
Yes, this is also normal behaviour, unfortunately. This is not specific to the iPhone, per se, but a feature of AT&T's GoPhone plans in general, as users previously complained about never knowing where they stood in terms of their prepaid accounts.

Unfortunately, since the iPhone actually offers an unlimited plan, and since it displays network notifications as pop-up dialogs, it creates a more serious problem. Almost all data transactions should result in a zero dollar charge, but you'll still be notified of this by the AT&T network. In fact, if you set the iPhone to check e-mail every 15 minutes, and leave it on overnight, you'll wake up in the morning to several dozen of these notifications that must be cleared before you can proceed.

If you search the web, you'll see there have been many complaints about this elsewhere, and a number of people have already contacted AT&T and Apple about it.

At this point the only way to avoid this issue seems to be to sign up for a contract plan, and this is the answer that AT&T has been giving people thus far.

3. My iPhone crashes, or at least quits applications suddenly and unexpectantly, quite often.
I have had one lockup in the entire time I've had the iPhone, while reading an e-mail message. I simply reset the iPhone and carried on.

If you're having crashes more frequently than this, you might want to try doing a full "Restore" on the iPhone via iTunes to return it to its original factory settings.

After the restore completes and the iPhone restarts and appears in iTunes, you'll be offered the opportunity to restore your backed up data to it (things like preferences and SMS messages, for instance). You can try to do this the first time around, but if you're still having crashes and lockups, you may want to try to do a restore and start fresh (rather than selecting your previous backup for restore).

4. Is listening to the iPod at the same time as surfing in Safari even supposed to work? So far, my guess is no, but I'm not sure.
It works fine for me.

5. With "Recent Mode" on or off, I still receive my sent GMail messages in my inbox that were sent from my computer. Is there any way to stop this?
I don't use my GMail account with my iPhone, so I can't really say for certain how that's supposed to work, but if you're BCCing or CCing messages to yourself, they will land in your GMail inbox and end up back on your iPhone. I've had this problem with other devices such as the Blackberry in the past, and I normally use a rule in GMail to avoid this.

6. Even when just pressing the back button in Safari, the entire page appears to re-load. So what is the cache that can be cleared in Safari's settings? How big is it? Why does it appear to not be used?
This happens for me as well.

7. What is the plug-ins feature in Safari's settings? The only plug-in-like feature I've seen is that Safari can play some MP3/MP4/MOV files in the browser.
According to Apple's web site, "Plug-ins allow Safari to display certain videos."

That's about it right now, but I suspect this is probably intended for future expansion as more plug-ins may become available.

[Mu]

Thanks for the response.

Regarding the account balance messages, what makes it especially annoying is that they still come up if connected via WiFi. Also, by default, the iPhone only checks e-mail manually. So when I first got the iPhone, I only received the messages after manually checking my e-mail. Then, I tried setting it to automatically check every 15 minutes. The automatic checking did work successfully, but it added the problem of having countless annoying messages, so I turned the settings back to "Manual." So the iPhone is not checking my e-mail, but I still receive messages every few minutes, even if the phone is on hold, with no possibility of data transfer. I can't figure out why it sends me the messages when the phone isn't doing anything, or why it sends them when connected to WiFi.

Regarding the crashes, I've only had to reset the iPhone once or twice, so they might not be true "crashes," but instead unexpected, sudden quitting of applications, with loss of unsaved data.

I'm honestly surprised that you can use iPod and Safari at the same time. If I set a playlist going, and then open up Safari, it seems to wait 30 seconds, as if checking to see if I really do want to browse the web, and then stop playing, in the middle of the song.

"Always Bcc myself" is turned off, and I thought turning off "Recent Mode" was supposed to stop sent messages from arriving in the inbox. Instead, turning off "Recent Mode" does not send me copies of messages sent from the iPhone, but does send me copies of messages sent from other places (Outlook, webmail, etc.). Maybe I'm just confused about "Recent Mode" actually does . . . .

[jhollington]

I can't figure out why it sends me the messages when the phone isn't doing anything, or why it sends them when connected to WiFi.
Well, I think the iPhone intermittently checks the GPRS/EDGE network for a data connection, even if you're not actively sending data. Because of the way that GoPhone works, even a single ping packet will result in a "data session" that it will feel the need to notify you about.

It's definitely a very annoying feature, and something that Apple and AT&T need to work out, since the iPhone is just as much to blame for not ignoring these messages or at least presenting them in a different manner.

Regarding the crashes, I've only had to reset the iPhone once or twice, so they might not be true "crashes," but instead unexpected, sudden quitting of applications, with loss of unsaved data.
Again, I've not had that experience at all, other than the single hang that I noted.

I'm honestly surprised that you can use iPod and Safari at the same time. If I set a playlist going, and then open up Safari, it seems to wait 30 seconds, as if checking to see if I really do want to browse the web, and then stop playing, in the middle of the song.
When I'm playing a track, Safari does perform a little bit more sluggishly (not so much that it's noticeable, but I can tell the difference if I'm looking for it). Whatever track is playing keeps going without missing a beat, however.

What bitrate is your music at? That could possibly make a difference, since a higher bit-rate requires more processing power and memory to play.

"Always Bcc myself" is turned off, and I thought turning off "Recent Mode" was supposed to stop sent messages from arriving in the inbox. Instead, turning off "Recent Mode" does not send me copies of messages sent from the iPhone, but does send me copies of messages sent from other places (Outlook, webmail, etc.). Maybe I'm just confused about "Recent Mode" actually does . . . .
I suspect that's exactly what "Recent Mode" does. The iPhone only tracks messages that you've sent from it. It has no way of knowing about messages you've sent from elsewhere (other than your own name being in the "From" field), so it doesn't filter those.