tags: Mobile, cell, iphone, ui
iPhone Network Lost
September 24th, 2008, by Rich.
The iPhone has a quirk that is starting to become a hindrance. Every time the phone goes through a patch of dead air where there’s no cell signal, it pops up a dialogue box saying “network lost”. This obviously could be useful at times, but it’s bad for two reasons:
- Firstly, we, the collective public of mobile phone users, have coped without such a pop-up on all previous mobile phones, we’re happy with a little icon telling us how much signal we have, so it’s cute, but redundant.
- Secondly the iPhone is a computer - its so much more than a phone, so a pop up message indicating network loss interrupts other applications and thus gets in the way.
A good example is in the car when using InstaMapper’s GPS Tracker. Once interrupted, the tracker is no longer the foreground application, so it can no longer stop the phone from sleeping: consequently the screen goes off, and position and speed can’t be read without turning the screen back on and unlocking the phone - not something to be doing whilst driving.
There has to be some way of disabling this that I’m missing; or it needs to be an option in the next OS release!
September 24th, 2008 at 2:12 pm
I think you can disable that message, I used to get it but don’t anymore
September 24th, 2008 at 5:08 pm
Hmm, I’ve never had that message. I’ve got the latest firmware which I assume you have also?
Think much of Android G1? Looks like a damp squib as I predicted (to myself!).
September 24th, 2008 at 10:47 pm
Yup. I was on 2.0.1 and 2.1 within hours of their release.
September 30th, 2008 at 5:14 am
It only happens when you have your Carrier Selection set to a specific carrier, instead of ‘automatic’. Change it to “automatic” and it should go away.
Unfortunately for me, i have to keep my carrier manually selected, so until someone releases a patch or something, im stuck with the message.
September 30th, 2008 at 1:02 pm
My Neo Freerunner running Qtopia doesn’t do that.. ;-)
September 30th, 2008 at 1:18 pm
Yeah, the openmoko phone is tempting, but the shared minutes and unlimited 3G data on O2 here in the UK makes the iPhone comparably inexpensive, and I don’t have time to hack it at the moment :)
October 27th, 2008 at 10:08 am
Well, I’ve managed to stop the error, and it was Sam’s comment that got me there, but curiously it’s the opposite of what Sam described. If I have “O2-UK” selected as my carrier then I don’t get the message (i.e. a “specific carrier”) but when I use “Automatic” the error returns. Anyhow thanks Sam - you got me to the right place.
This is somewhere Android is going to really win. Being able to go to the source, see what’s happening, and if desired, change it is definitely simpler. This of course can be counterbalanced by the stability offered through Apple’s steady and controlled platform evolution, which will mean Android won’t be for everyone.