One of the security features of the iPhone is the Auto-Lock feature, this feature basically locks your phone if you don’t use it for a configured time ( normally one minute). The problem of this feature is that it turns off WIFI or 3G connectivity. This can be hassle when you need to run a long network background process.

In order to avoid this in you application you just need to use the property idleTimerDisabled in the UIApplication class. Here is a example:

[UIApplication sharedApplication].idleTimerDisabled = NO;

Don’t forget to turn it on after your process is done, or else, you can drain the device battery very fast because the device will never idle when running your application.