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How To Disable the Ping Service On an iPhone or iPod Touch to Save Battery Life

iPhone iPod

There has been some talk that since Apple released the iOS update 4.3 that battery life is worse than before. One way to help remedy this problem is to disable Apple’s Ping service. Since you probably don’t use it anyway, here we’ll show you how to turn it off.

You know Ping, the social network for music that Apple introduced in iTunes 10. Or maybe you have completely forgotten about it. Either way, it’s doubtful you even use it.

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Disable Ping

1. Launch Settings on your iPhone or iPod Touch by tapping on it.

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2. Then tap on General.

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3. Next tap on Restrictions.

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5. If this is the first time you’ve been in Restrictions, you’ll need to enter in an Passcode twice. Or if you already have an Passcode just type that in.

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6. You’ll see that everything listed under Allow is set to ON by default and they’re grayed out. Tap on Enable Restrictions.

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7. Scroll down to Ping and turn it off. On this iPod Touch we also turned off FaceTime because it’s never used it anyway.

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8. Go back to the Home Screen and you’ll notice that the Ping button is no longer listed on the bottom.

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If you’re experiencing issues with your battery draining on your device more quickly since updating to iOS 4.3 – this trick should help you out. There is a new iOS update 4.3.1 that was released last week and is said to address the issue. But there is no mention of it addressing the battery problem on the Apple Update site.

Have you experienced battery issues since upgrading to iOS 4.3? Does turning off the Ping feature seem to work for you? Leave a comment below and let us know!

Posted in iPhone, iPod.

31 comments

By mysticgeek – March 27, 2011


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31 Responses

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  1. JetsBeatVikingsEveryYear says

    Excellent tip Mystic. keep ‘em coming.

    March 28, 2011, 12:40 pm
  2. Mike Perry says

    Ping doesn’t come up on in the Restrictions list on my iPhone, perhaps because I’ve never tried to use it on my iMac or iPhone. Which is too bad, because I’ve noticed the battery drain and would like a fix. Apple really should have a policy of getting better life out of each upgrade rather than worse.

    March 28, 2011, 2:01 pm
  3. Mike Perry says

    Oops! I clearly have too many gadgets. My previous comment, I just discovered, was about my iPhone 3G, which is running 4.0.2 and not my 3GS which is running 4.3. Ping does appear on the Restriction list of the latter.

    March 28, 2011, 2:13 pm
  4. El says

    Awesome advice. I never even knew that restrictions existed. All I knew was that all of sudden, after updating, my battery was crap

    March 28, 2011, 3:53 pm
  5. Andrea says

    Thanks your post very useful.

    March 29, 2011, 1:34 pm
  6. mysticgeek says

    BTW everyone…this will remove the Ping icon from the controls on the bottom of the iTunes screen as well. That provides you with a bit more space for relevant controls.

    March 29, 2011, 3:14 pm
  7. Dave Smart says

    Just started losing power like crazy 2 days ago. Battery has been losing power at a rate of at least 10% per hour in standby! Hoping that this solves the problem.

    March 29, 2011, 7:44 pm
  8. mysticgeek says

    @Dave Smart: I was having the same problem as well, and this seems to have helped. Not losing power like crazy as you mentioned.

    I was also losing power like crazy on my iPad and disabled Ping… not sure if it’s helping much yet though.

    March 29, 2011, 7:47 pm
  9. bschold says

    Thanks for the great tip. I have been losing power at a much quicker rate since installing iOS v4.3 so hopefully this will help. Plus I love that you used Gov’t Mule in the screenshots for this tip since they are one of my favorite bands!

    April 1, 2011, 3:36 pm
  10. mysticgeek says

    @bschold: Cool. Hope it works for you. It seems to be working for my iPod Touch 4th Gen. After the update I was losing a ton of juice in stand-by mode. Now it’s improved a lot.

    Also, Yep Gov’t Mule… you’ll find that we are huge fans as well here.

    April 1, 2011, 4:27 pm
  11. Stratos says

    Well did that thing with ping worked? cause i have the same problem with my iphone 4. THere have been just 5 months that i have bought it and never had problem with my battery life.. -.-

    April 11, 2011, 5:13 am

Continuing the Discussion

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