How to improve iPhone AT&T reception in California? Turn off 3G

About 10 days back, I moved to California with a lot of new dreams. This place is just awesome :D. But I gotta admit, I realized that the signal reception of AT&T is pretty bad in California, especially in crowded cities. I could never receive phone calls or even missed calls. I had to rely on voice mails or google voice number to get connected.

This forced me to find ways to seek better signal reception and voila I found it. Most Base Stations are installed with 3G equipment to support the enormous about of traffic on their AT&T network. But, there might be other 2G/2.5G base stations near your house.

The simple solution is to turn off 3G if you're at home. One can use the Wi-fi as an alternative to access emails. This is how you do it.

Step 1 : Home > Settings > General > Network > Turn off "Enable 3G".
Step 2 : If it helps, turn off Cellular Data, but it is not needed.

If the iPhone fails to pick a new base station, turn off and on the Airplane mode to find new base stations.  You'll find the Airplane mode under Settings.

Enjoy!

iPhone iOS 4.0 Upgrade slows down 3GS? Learn how to improve the performance

A few weeks back I upgraded my iPhone 3GS with the latest iOS 4.0 version. Initially it was uber fast and I enjoyed the new additions, especially multitasking. Now, I can keep my RunKeeper app and also work on other apps while I'm walking/jogging/running.

But, over the last few days, it has been very slow. It was painful to even compose a simple mail and to read emails. The solution I found is very simple.

1. Open the multitasking taskbar by double clicking the home button. (Pic1)
2. Click on the icons for a few seconds before they start shaking. (Pic2)
3. Close the apps which you no longer need to be running in the background by clicking on the red - (minus) sign on the left top corner of the icon. (Pic2)
4. After you've closed all the applications in the background, delete all the unwanted songs/videos in your iPhone using iTunes.

Hope that helps!