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Well your remote only sends out an IR signal when you press a button, this is on all the time. If you accidentally sit on your remote leaving the button pressed down the remote battery could die out a little faster.

It's only on if your phone is in use. When the screen is on. It's got to be using like a billionth the power of the screen.
 
Cannot believe you just called me out as a lurker. Owned.

As much as "always-on" IR might affect battery life, I'm doubtful that it's responsible for a battery draining at a rate of 10% per hour. My bet's on software.

Yeah, there's no way a little flickering IR LED is going to use anywhere near the power of the display on the device.

Someone with access to two 4S's should do a little experiment and see what the difference is in battery life.
 
Oh lucky me, Shell Beach FTW! ;)

Oh, alas, I live in the Chicagoland area & not very good at long range relationships. Plus, I'd be too shy to ask her out.

Sorry I could care less about the proximity sensor, I'm having trouble getting past how strangely sexy MJ from ifixit is..

Glad to know I'm not the only one who thinks MJ's cute. I don't feel as pervy. :p
 
Just to be clear, the article source states the IR is only active when the screen is on.

while this is true, I'm always texting and surfing the web on my phone, so in theory the IR device would be on a lot since my screen is on a pretty decent amount of time out of the day. Like I said before, I did notice a very noticeable battery difference with this feature turned off... for what it's worth...

Cannot believe you just called me out as a lurker. Owned.

As much as "always-on" IR might affect battery life, I'm doubtful that it's responsible for a battery draining at a rate of 10% per hour. My bet's on software.

It surprised me as well lol. If anything I wouldn't say it's necessarily the IR power consumption itself, but sometimes SIRI would just activate without actually be facilitated to turn on. Basically by mistake. This would happen a lot while texting. I noticed this happened when I would put the phone down, so maybe some part of that motion coupled with my hand over the screen activated it? I have a feeling that not technically the IR device, but rather the constant on and off of Siri + searching of when the user is"raising to the face" may amplify battery consumption, at least more than normal.

The raise to speak feature is cool, but buggy to say the least. I wouldn't say it's software, because I have done multiple restores and set up as new, and have been using 5.0.1 (both beta 1 and beta 2).

Who knows if this is the main cause... the battery issue is a whole other crazy, complex, story. What I do know is that I turned off "raise to speak," and my battery is definitely better, and I have two iPhone 4S and had them in a pretty controlled environment for comparisons.
 
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wow so thats what that is? I just tried it out and wow its great!

I tried imitating it by raising the phone and putting my hand over the IR but it didn't work. But every time I raise it to my ear it works. thats crazy! I found a knew way to use siri now.
 
That girl looks funny. Don't really know if I find her very attractive or not attractive at all. Sort of hybrid attractiveness. Very weird.
 
That sensor kind of reminds me...

tumblr_lk2h00saN41qhj25fo1_500.jpg


(In Siri voice)
Sentry mode activated.
Hello...
Is anyone there?
There you are.
Activating
 
Could the IR sensor be harmful to your eyes?

I would like to know if being exposed to this IR sensor always being on, could cause problems with the eyes? If anybody knows anything about this being a health risk, please let me know, as I use my iPhone 4S a lot.
 
Mine doesn't work that well. Usually gets it right about 60% of the time.
 
I remember reading about this proximity sensor just after the 4S was introduced. A blogger reviewing the phone said he had been told by an Apple guy that the company wanted people who might otherwise feel self-conscious about talking into their phone in front of people to make it look like they were on a phone call. If that's the reason, I think it's pretty clever.
 
not geek enough

I must not be geek enough compared to the rest of you because everyone is talking about tech and all I could think about is how hot that chick was. HAHAHA
 
I would like to know if being exposed to this IR sensor always being on, could cause problems with the eyes? If anybody knows anything about this being a health risk, please let me know, as I use my iPhone 4S a lot.

The risk is negligable. The infrared light from an incadescent light is many magnitudes brighter than that from this diode. Infrared light from the sun is many many magnitudes brigher than an incadescent bulb. It's like having concern that a firefly lighting near you at night might cause a severe sunburn. Infrared will cause less harm than the light coming from your iPhone's display, especially since it's dimmer than visible the light being emitted from the display.

----------

I remember reading about this proximity sensor just after the 4S was introduced. A blogger reviewing the phone said he had been told by an Apple guy that the company wanted people who might otherwise feel self-conscious about talking into their phone in front of people to make it look like they were on a phone call. If that's the reason, I think it's pretty clever.

I don't get it. If I'm on a phone call, I am in fact talking into my phone.
 
Yep....

A basic IR LED can stay lit for something like 1-2 weeks, just running off of a couple AA batteries. Comparisons to the IR transmitter in a remote control aren't that good because those typically use much higher-intensity LEDs. (They have to shoot across large rooms, or even reflect off other objects before they reach the receiver in a TV or other device.)


Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/9A334)

Don't think it uses that much battery.

LEDs are very efficient
 
Sensor is always on

The sensor is always on, as long as the screen is lit. In a completely dark room, you can actually see the very faint red glow with the naked eye.

What bothers me though, is that I thought I'd save some battery by disabling the Raise to Speak function. However, even when I disabled it in settings, the sensor was apparently still coming on when the screen was lit, regardless of the fact that I had disabled Raise to Speak.

My conclusion is that I don't know if disabling that function actually saves any battery, since disabling the function doesn't seem to physically disable the sensor when the screen is lit.

Thoughts?
 
That girl looks funny. Don't really know if I find her very attractive or not attractive at all. Sort of hybrid attractiveness. Very weird.

Cute, but wow, what an irritating & harsh nasally voice :(

You know she's ON this very thread, right? Reading and participating? My god, you folks are socially inept. You two are carved from the same block of people who are like "OMG, A GIRL!!" D.T. is right, some of you need to get out more.
 
You know she's ON this very thread, right? Reading and participating? My god, you folks are socially inept. You two are carved from the same block of people who are like "OMG, A GIRL!!" D.T. is right, some of you need to get out more.

I guess these haven't read the rest of the thread but I definitely agree with you.

(Bring on the -1s, haters. I don't care ;))
 
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