Safari when in Dock

Just in case some of you iPhone users don't know this or have not seen this anywhere here, I have found that the internet is lightning quick while I am at work in a manufacturing facility, if it is inserted into the dock and the dock is plugged into an outlet. It is ten times faster, maybe hundreds times faster loading webpages when in the dock.

Jeff

Thanks for the advice, I'll try that sometime.

Are you talking about on WiFi or on EDGE?

Love your avatar, Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention were one of the best bands in the 60's

Your welcome Zappa! and I am talking about EDGE, no Wifi where I work.

On your iPhone, go to speedtest.dslreports.com and choose their "iPhone Speed and Latency Test". Try it plugged in and not plugged in and see if you get different results.

Thanks, you've got a great avatar too.

Yes I would like to see these results for myself.

Hmm... just tried this and I see no difference.

I tried using the Wi-Fi here at home and then I tried it using EDGE. I didn't see any difference. Ah well.

- John

I don't find a difference either.

Me neither. However, the phone connection is better when the iPhone is in its cradle. I've been able to use it in my 2nd office where I used to get disconnected all the time. But I find it a bit annoying to dial or text with the phone upright.

This is true.

I went into the basement and stuck myself in the darkest corner of the utility room and I got two bars of service. I plugged it in, and I got four. Interesting.

- John

I think it's faster in the dock because the phone isn't doing any power saving. Mine seems to be faster as well. It doesn't use any data from the host PC, so this is the only possibility I can think of. Maybe grounding the phone makes for better edge connection?

You don't have to do it upright! Just take the phone out of the cradle and do what you want with it, like go to a bookmarked site or type one in, or phone someone, type up an email, then, just after finishing, place the phone quickly into the dock or cradle.

My dock is attached to my computer so if I'm near it I ain't using the iPhone for the Web.

It sounds like what the OP is experiencing is actually better reception, which is possible for a variety of reasons. But this will vary depending upon location, distance to tower/AP, etc. Moreover, I doubt anyone would see speed increase 10-100 times--that's a little hard to accept (unless the signal was so poor beforehand that it wasn't actually unusable).

I find I get better reception if I don't cover the antenna of the iPhone with my hand.



--
Mike

Maybe the reason for the increase in speed is, as Tinman said, a reception improvement. The antenna in the bottom of the phone may be somehow "enhanced" by the cable connected to the phone and it is similar to hooking a piece of wire to an old rabbit ear antenna to extend the antenna length. Maybe the power/data wire is working as an antenna in that case. I dont have my cable here but can someone experiment with it, check your speed normally, then plug in the charging or data cable but leave the outlet end unplugged. Do you still see an increase in speed and reception?

Nate True posted a blog about this awhile back. He mentioned getting a 50% speed increase when his hand wasnt covering the antenna. I too notice a difference when I don't cover the antenna (though I never tested to see how much of a difference). Anyway, for anyone who's interested, you can read his blog post here:

http://cre.ations.net/blog/post/iphone-tip---want-better-edge-speeds--take-your-hand-off-the-ant