Ask iPhonewzealand
We get a lot of questions via email from our readers so we have decided to set up a new section called “Ask iPhonewzealand“. These are emails we get from our readers asking us how to do something. They may be easy, or more long winded, but if you have a question for us you’d like answering use our contact form to get in touch.
1st Edition:
Hi Guys, quick question – how do you get the battery % indicator displayed to the left of the battery charge icon? Is this available on a Vodafone iPhone? I’ve seen it in many screenshots but I suspect these were screenshots of XT & 2 degrees IPhones
Cheers, Tony
Battery %
This is actually a question we get asked a lot and as our iPhone Basics section goes to show not everyone is aware of this.
It’s not a hack nor do you have to do anything special to switch it on, however it is located in a rather obscure place.
To get the percent display go to Settings –> General –> Usage and you’ll see the On/Off switch for this option right at the top.
On/Off switch
Easy as that. Thanks for the question Tony.
Note: this is only available on the iPhone 3GS [legitimately].
Only 3GS unfortunately
(cameronbetts has made 2 comments)
Does this work on iPhone 3G or 3Gs as I can’t seem to find it on my iPhone 3G?
(damnelectric has made 2 comments)
Must of been one of those ‘hardware’ features that was impossible for apple to implement on the 3G!
(martin308 has made 10 comments)
Edit by Mak: Sorry, due to rules set by our advertisers, all Jailbreaking discussion must be confined to the Jailbreaking forum. Cheers.
(Manock has made 37 comments)
Yes, this only works for 3GS. Dan, would be great if you could edit the post to say this.
(ant has made 13 comments)
Added it in. Good read!
(Mak has made 222 comments)
And by the same reasoning battery % indicator is also a “very small part of the iPhone 3G/3GS”. The point is that both features unnecessarily force users to upgrade for no good reason other than for the sake of it.
Remember that a 10.6 upgrade isn’t just a matter of money for all users. Many Apple users were actively encouraged (conned?) by the company into buying G5 processors as long term support was implied. With 10.6 comes the end of that support (prematurely in the eyes of many).
(ahmad has made 101 comments)
Ahmad. They dont disable it, I think you just got bad advice
I bought 3 of the new magic mice in Japan recently and the sales guy made sure I had either 10.5 or 10.6. He said "if you have 10.5, make sure you get the lastest upgrade so you can use all the fns of the mouse".
So apple want people to use the MM with whatever can use it
And at around $50 the upgrade of OS is actually half the price of a mouse anyway!
Try doing that with an MS product
(Richard has made 50 comments)
@ martin308:
Today I bought a new "Magic Mouse" and one of the features, "momentum scrolling" is 10.6 only. However I discovered (in passing) that this is easily enabled in 10.5.
I love my Apple products but sadly Apple does some really petty things that degrade a lot of feel good/good will. Deliberately withholding features to make newer software/hardware seem better is just plain evil.
(ahmad has made 101 comments)
Richard – momentum scrolling is explicitly stated as a 10.6 feature only. I bumped into a website (I wasn't looking) that explains how to type a command into the terminal of 10.5 and enable this in Preferences.
(ahmad has made 101 comments)
Sorry misread that "momentum scrolling" yes – a very small part of the mouse (IMO)
(Richard has made 50 comments)