iPhone battery life suggestions

I am developing a voice recording application that communicates with the server real-time, therefore requiring persistent Internet connectivity. I have included UIRequiresPersistentWiFi in my info.plist and have also disabled device going to sleep when the app is active. However, this understandably has a serious effect on the battery life of the device. Users end up having to leave this continuously plugged in. For an app that is touted as meant to replace handheld recorders, this is a serious shortcoming. My app also has many xml threads sent from iPhone to server, so wireless connectivity is of paramount importance.

My questions are: 1. Is it possible to somehow switch on UIRequiresPersistentWifi status only when required during a session. For example, can thi开发者_C百科s be switched on only during transfers or xml updates to server and be switched off at other times? 2. Likewise, can IdleTimer be enabled and disabled programmatically at will during a session. For example, enabling idletimer only when no foreground or background tasks are running on the device.

Any other suggestion to ensure normal battery life? All my users will be on iTouch 4 or iPhone 4.

Any help/suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Answer to part 2: Yes, you can enable and disable the idle timer depending on what the user or app is doing, and how long it's been. I know of a couple apps that disable the idle timer, but then re-enable it if the user doesn't touch any UI elements for 10 minutes, but then re-disables it if the user starts some long operation again. etc.

Partial answer to part 1: Using the radios (sending wifi data) takes power. A good way to save power is to not send data for as long as possible. Maybe buffer large amounts of data on the device, and try to burst upload it later.

My suggestion would be to not communicate with the server continuously, sorry :(

Is it possible to cache chunks of data into a file on the phone and transmit the chunks to the server periodically in one big burst? Same for the XML. Or does your app really really require it to be broadcast real-time?

And as far as I know, if you have specified UIRequiresPersistentWifi, you're stuck with it :(

Sorry, probably not the answer you want!