iPhone 4S

Apple is currently working on iOS 5.0.1 beta 2 to solve the iPhone 4S battery issues. As of now the new firmware is only available to registered developers, but iPhone Dev Team member, MuscleNerd, let us know that it still works with the current redsn0w jailbreak.

MuscleNerd tweeted: "The latest redsn0w will JB today's 5.0 1b2, but point it at either 5.0 or 5.01 IPSW for now. (Apple's being ruthless with betas!)"

The Dev Team recently released a tethered version of redsn0w for iOS 5. However, there is a simple solution to "semi-tether" your jailbroken device. The SemiTether package ensures you will not be stuck with an iPhone paperweight during a crash or unexpected reboot. You can read more about tethered vs. untethered iPhone jailbreaking here.

Sprint is no longer the only carrier to offer the iPhone 4S with unlimited data in the US. Regional carrier C Spire Wireless is poised to start selling the Apple smartphone on its network starting November 11. Subsidized prices for the device will be the same as the three major carriers, however data and voice plans are less expensive.

Once catch, the two lower unlimited data plan tiers ($50 and $70 per month) don't include streaming data, as one would use for video and music. This means that for true unlimited data usage users will have to opt for a $90 or $100 per month data and voice package. For those who aren't familiar, C Spire was formerly known as Cellular South, and covers Mississippi along with some of Alabama, Florida and Tennessee.

Last week, Apple engineers were reportedly looking into complaints about unexplained iPhone 4S battery drain. On Wednesday, the company officially acknowledged the problem and said they are currently working on a fix.

Apple told Jim Dalrymple of The Loop:

“A small number of customers have reported lower than expected battery life on iOS 5 devices. We have found a few bugs that are affecting battery life and we will release a software update to address those in a few weeks.”

Apple is currently investigating reported battery life problems experienced by iPhone 4S users. There are many tips and tricks floating around about how to extent battery life on your iPhone, but you shouldn't have to shut down most of the useful functions of your device to get battery life back. Normally these problems are due to specific bugs or corrupted files in the iPhone firmware or applications (this happened with the iPhone 4.1 update).

Apple will often issue a fix in the next iOS update, however in the meantime iPhone users must do what they can to solve the problem or deal with abbreviated battery time. There are many general tips and tricks that can improve battery life on your iPhone, but these involve much compromise and will switch off many features of your iPhone. In the past specific apps such as Ping and Game Center were pegged as culprits. The flood of feedback from users of the iPhone 4S point to these top 5 fixes for short iPhone 4S battery life:

It may only be the first step, but iPhone developer MuscleNerd has successfully jailbroken the iPhone 4S. According to his post on Twitter, there are "huge missing pieces" with much work to be done before a public release can be contemplated. Still, we can see in the screenshots below that MuscleNerd has jailbroken an iPhone 4S running iOS 5. On the left is console root access on the device.

The right screenshot shows Cydia and Siri running on the iPhone 4S with iOS 5. For those waiting for a jailbreak solution for the iPhone 4S, this is encouraging news and it's only a matter of time until the iPhone Dev-Team or someone else gets everything together for a major iPhone 4S jailbreak release.