3G iPhone Beta 5 Firmware Settings Leaked: On/Off Option

Chronic Productions Blog, which is part of iPhone hacking Chronic Dev web site, has leaked the information about the iPhone Beta 5 Firmware containing several 3G preferences. Most notable setting allows users of the second-generation iPhone to prolong the battery life by disabling 3G access.

The setting reads: “Using 3G loads data faster, but decreases battery life.”

This is very interesting because when Apple officially launched iPhone in the UK last year, Apple CEO Steve Jobs was questioned why the current model didn’t have 3G.

At that time, Jobs blamed power issues saying that the 3G chipset would be too much of a drain on the unit’s battery life which promised 8 hours of call time, but said that future models would have the technology.

According to Chronic Productions blog, several 3G-related strings in beta 5 of the upcoming iPhone firmware were located in Network.plist file and extracted from the iPhone software v2.0 Preferences binary:

is3GEnabled:
set3GIsEnabled:specifier:
SettingsNetworkController
Network
ENABLE_3G_GROUP
ENABLE_3G
3G_TEXT_GROUP
3G_TEXT
9DM1

We couldn’t independently verify these claims ourselves, but according to Chronic Dev (screenshot):

Well, when you have nothing to do all day, this is what happens. Note that this is not fake, it is in the beta 5 .ipsw, but will normally not show up on an EDGE iPhone. Turning 3G on will just crash the phone if you use an EDGE phone. If you do not believe me, then decrypt the beta5 rootfs dmg, and see for yourself in /Applications/Preferences.app/Network.plist

Apple has long claimed the decision to support EDGE over 3G is due solely to battery life issues. As a result and due to the higher 3G power consumption, Apple is giving users an option to fall back to EDGE speeds in order to prolong battery life. Apple’s co-founder, Steve Wozniak (aka: Woz), dubbed as “the only Apple employee free to comment about its products critically,” thinks different:

“I don’t understand why it would be a battery issue. I get as much life on my 3G phones as I do on my non-3G phones. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe I’m not paying close enough attention. But I don’t think that’s it though.”