Apple Investigating Reports of Poor Battery Life for iPhone OS 3.1 Users

[MacRumors]

http://www.macrumors.com/images/macrumorsthreadlogo.gif (http://www.macrumors.com/2009/09/21/apple-investigating-reports-of-poor-battery-life-for-iphone-os-3-1-users/)

The iPhone Blog reports (http://www.theiphoneblog.com/2009/09/20/apple-seeking-info-iphone-31-users-reporting-poor-battery-life/) that Apple is taking steps to investigate numerous reports of reduced battery life from iPhone OS 3.1 users. The company's AppleCare division has reportedly begun contacting users complaining about the problem in its support forums (http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2152451), asking users a series of 11 questions about their battery life issues.An undisclosed number of users who have posted on Apple's discussion boards about poor battery life following the iPhone 3.1 software update are being contacted by AppleCare helpdesk with a hefty list of 11 follow-up questions. These questions focus primarily on the usual battery culprits, email (especially push), WiFi and Bluetooth, and App Store apps. Number 10, asking "When you notice a power drop, does it seem to be a legitimate power drop, or rather an issue with the battery icon indicator?", is certainly interesting.Users are also being sent a "Battery Life Logging" configuration profile for installation on their devices. The configuration profile reportedly tracks battery usage data and syncs it to iTunes, where users are asked to send the data back to Apple for analysis.


http://images.macrumors.com/article/2009/09/21/092827-battery_life_logging.png

iPhone OS 3.1 was released (http://www.macrumors.com/2009/09/09/apple-releases-iphone-os-3-1-for-iphone-and-ipod-touch/) earlier this month at Apple's "It's Only Rock and Roll" media event and brought a number of enhancements for iPhone and iPod touch users.

Article Link: Apple Investigating Reports of Poor Battery Life for iPhone OS 3.1 Users (http://www.macrumors.com/2009/09/21/apple-investigating-reports-of-poor-battery-life-for-iphone-os-3-1-users/)

[BryanLyle]

Good. I am one of the many that has seen a dramatic decrease in battery life since 3.1. I did NOT have any battery problems under the 3.1 betas.

[BongoBanger]

Probably just a firmware glitch. I'm sure they'll do the appropriate analysis and patch it promptly.

[macduke]

That sucks. My launch 3GS has had no problems since the update.

[Acevesx]

This should be interesting. I think it is funny how it mentions they ask about wifi bluetooth and push. I went to the genius bar asking about my battery life and he told me that I should have wifi location services bluetooth and push turned off until I have to use it.

I just think it is sad that other cheaper and much less advanced phones can have all of these things on and enabled and last days on a single full charge.

[iOrlando]

this is one reason why i dont update things for weeks or months at a time. i just realized there was a 3.0.1, 2 weeks ago.

itunes same thing. .i think i do have itunes 8 though.

[QCassidy352]

On one occassion with 3.1 I saw my reported % drop from 55 to 28. But as apple's question indicates, it was just an issue of reporting, not a real drop, because the % then stayed at 28 for a very long time, and when I plugged in, it "went up" to 36, which I assume is what it was really at. A little strange, but I'm more concerned with how long my battery actually lasts than what the indicator says.

[Princeps]

Good. I am one of the many that has seen a dramatic decrease in battery life since 3.1. I did NOT have any battery problems under the 3.1 betas.

Initiate DFU mode on your phone and restore the phone. Be sure to set up as "new phone" when you sync your data back unto the phone. Prior to the growing numbers of users experiencing lack luster standby or usage reports, I was sure that I had a physical issue with my 3G. Since the process that i have described above I now have much better battery life. Please reply back either way if your finding differ than mine.

[RonD69]

hmmm...I'm wondering how much of the "poor battery performance" is due to increased iPhone usage of the new features.

[vivithemage]

Fix it!

[Kwill]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7C144 Safari/528.16)

I noticed diminished battery life on my 2G iPhone after the 3.1 update. Don't know if it's "legitimate" or icon glitch since I recharge when the indicator shows a loss of 30% power. Pre 3.1, I could go all day on standby with BT and wifi enabled and lose about 10% power.

[moracity]

The only time I've noticed a massive power drop is when I am in range of an active bluetooth device that has not been paired with my phone. Still, it takes 6-7 hours before it's dead. I happened to notice this last week when I had my phone sitting on my desk next to a dell mini 10v with BT turned on. By the end of the work day, my phone had gone from fully charged to nearly dead.

[MalibuMatt98]

Interesting, I have not noticed any excess usage of battery in 3.1, but I have been playing intense game which do drain the battery. I'm sure there will be a patch in the near future if this is a real problem. I have to say when there is an OS issue with Apple, they do come out with fixes relatively quick which usually fixes the problem.

[RajK]

I'm glad to see this is being raised. I've been noticing really appalling battery life lately and I was getting concerned.

[jonnysods]

My battery life became awful after 3.0 - but since 3.1 I've had no issues again. Before 3.1 I could barely get 6-8 hours out of it - and this is normal use mind you. I'm doing the same thing now and it's fine. Weirdness.

Aside from that, I am finding that the overall stability of the OS has dropped significantly on my handset since 3.1 - lots of screen freezing, parts of the UI not appearing (eg when I open Mail the top and bottom grey bars are missing and I have to restart the phone). It's very frustrating when you have business to do on your phone!

I have the 3G - hopefully when I get the next revision all my troubles will be gone!

[oyebto]

i wonder if they will the fix the iphone "coma" thing.

[kyleb822]

they need to fix the "unresponsive" issue along with this...not just a battery issue

[Marzzz]

I have not noticed any problems with my 3G sine upgrading to 3.1; I do wish they had a customizable one step Energy Save preference option that would optimize power usage when needed.

[jamesarm97]

Me too. I have it plugged in over night and take off at 7am with 100%. By 8pm with light use it is down to 30%.

[The Samurai]

I already posted (http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=790380) this thread ;)

[phinsup]

Same issues here, although I find the random freezes that require a hard reset to fix more annoying then the battery life issue.

[jmuchrisf]

the battery on my 3GS has been terrible since I updated. Dramatically. I drop to 80% charge after an hour.. then it goes down equally fast for the next few hours, until it shuts down. So that tells me it's actual battery drop and not a power meter issue. I hope they get it fixed!

[skuban]

What great features did 3.1 add again?

'Cause the only diff I see on my 3GS is that my playlists are all messed up.

[iMouse]

I'm beginning to wonder if this is either poor reporting by the battery indicator or an issue of "junk" being left over from upgrading the OS.

I have no problems whatsoever with 3.1 on my 1st gen iPhone. Actually, while battery life has stayed relatively on par with 3.0, the performance of my phone has been better. On 3.0, I would encounter short periods of time where the phone would hang while it checked for mail in the background. This appears to have been fixed with 3.1.

Also, my wife's 3GS is not experiencing any of these battery issues as well.


Has anyone who has restored their phone in DFU mode encountered similar reported issues with battery on 3.1?

[toanavinai]

How about logging and fixing the coma issue here, Apple.

This is ridiculous - I've been awake for 2 hours this morning and already suffered 3 complete crashes, one which, after rebooting, trapped the iPhone in the camera app, where any button input from either the sleep or home button took a fscking picture of the screen.

This is retarded - I didn't pay a premium for a phone/ipod/media device that can't stay stable long enough to DO any of it!

[mm1250]

Yes, I've noticed 3.x reduce my battery. I used to safely get a full day out of my phone, than I'd have to charge when going to sleep.

WHEN IS BATTERY TECHNOLOGY GOING TO ADVANCE! This is STUPID! Whoever is able to develop mobile battery technology that can keep up with demands of powering high-power consumption devices with a long period of time without recharging is going to be a real RICH MAN. Right now I see this battery technology really holding back the advancement mobile devices.

[Xenious]

During the last stages of the 2.0 Enterprise beta a change was made that started my battery life randomly nosediving on an original iPhone with 2003 exchange servers. I had a quite detailed bug report and the final recommendation was that the exchange servers needed a patch that was known to have helped. The whole issue had to do with the frequency of the phone and the exchange server talking. There was no desire to have the patch applied from our admins and we're still running the same Exchange 2003 today. I have this happen sometimes on my 3GS as well. It helps if I switch exchange ssl proxies sometimes. On weekends when I receive far less exchange mail my battery life is considerably improved.

I wonder if any of the users having the worst experience are connecting to Exchange 2003, 2007 or umm 2010 beta?

[JollyRogers]

After upgrading to 3.1, if I leave 3G network on and am not in a 3G coverage area like where I work, it will kill my battery quick. I have to turn off 3G.

Now when at home, I have 3G coverage and the thing will last all weekend and some with my light usage...

[garethjs]

Much worse battery life with 3.1 than 3.0 with MobileMe (no exchange)

[morserj]

hmmm...I'm wondering how much of the "poor battery performance" is due to increased iPhone usage of the new features.

None at all. Because I used to be able to go my whole day without charging. Now I cant even get trough eight and a half hours AT work without ever touching my phone... When I get home from work and look at my phone I am in the red battery with the 20% warning on screen. About an hour to two later its dead and shuts off. Definitely a 3.1 bug somewhere.

[snoozee]

it seems there are even more serious problems with 3.1 ...
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2169242&tstart=0

[richxps]

Has anyone here actually been contacted by apple yet on this ?

[bubba*nix]

Apple really needs to take a serious look at the jailbreak app MyProfiles and implement this into their OS. Being able to turn battery-hungry features such as Push, Location Services, even 3G off depending on things like time, day of week, vicinity to a wifi access point, etc is wonderful. Also being able to change alerts based on email sender/subject is another great feature that makes the iPhone more Blackberry-like.

[wizard]

While I can't claim dramatically shorter battery life I have noticed an issue with the behaviour of the icon. It certainly is linear for one thing. Second when you get to the 20% mark there is still considerable battery life left.

In any event I'm sure Apple will resolve the issues soon.

Dave

[alent1234]

i've had a similar issue after i restored as new by wiping my phone from the phone. fix was to restore as new from itunes and turn wifi off. i even noticed that the battery problems were there only when wifi was on.

it's most likely the iphone OS locking files and the upgrade or restore being screwed up

after my latest restore as new it seems battery life is a lot better than with 3.0 on my launch 3GS

[jpetrie]

I had some pretty serious battery problems after the last update -- for a while it seemed that battery life was drastically reduced (based on the indicator), but I think that was just a reporting problem. After a while I noticed it wouldn't appear to take a charge either, and would beep twice when I plugged it into my computer instead of the usual once... Following the advice of some blog post I found that described a similar issue way back in the OS 1.x days, I just powered the thing down (holding the top button for a while) and rebooted it, and everything fixed itself. I stopped noticing odd random bits of unresponsiveness and UI rendering weirdness after this as well.

Might be worth a shot for anybody experiencing similar issues.

[Mark Booth]

When I first installed 3.1, the battery life on my 3GS was absolutely horrible. Typically, under 3.0.1, I'd have about 65-70% battery life left at the end of a day. Under 3.1 (with the exact same settings: Bluetooth & WiFi on, Fetch and Push OFF), I was getting 28-35% battery life left at the end of a day.

HOWEVER... I was having other problems under 3.1. Visual Voicemail stopped working and my 3G data service wasn't working properly. About 75% of the time, when I'd go to use 3G data, the phone acted like it wasn't connected to ANY data service, despite the fact that I had 4-5 bars of signal. If I reset the iPhone (hold down both home and power until I saw the Apple logo), then data would immediately start working. But, next time I went to use it same problem! I was reseting the phone multiple times per day!

Those problems prompted me to call AT&T. The service rep escalated me to level 2 where a very helpful gentlemen promptly asked me, point blank, if I had every jail broken my iPhone (NO!), or hacked the carrier settings to enable tethering. Oops... sheepishly, I admitted I had! He told me that is the source of the troubles. He said 3.1 doesn't play well with hacked iPhones (probably because AT&T and Apple want it that way). He then instructed me to reset the network settings, which didn't help (Voicemail was still dead). Next he had me do a restore from backup. That still didn't help. Finally, he told me the only thing that would work was a restore as a new iPhone and then manually reinstall all of my music/photos/apps and manually reset all of my preferred settings! This did not make me happy! But who was to blame besides myself?! I'm man enough to admit when I did something I shouldn't have and spend the better part of a day restoring the iPhone as a new phone.

When I was done, my iPhone is working better than before 3.1! It's seems snappier than even under 3.0! I have had ZERO problems with Voicemail. My data service ALWAYS works correctly and, to my "seat of the pants" measuring method, seems faster then ever. And, guess what?.... At the end of a day, I now have between 65-70% of battery life left!

Now, I'm not suggesting that everyone having reduced battery life post-3.1 has done any hacking on their iPhone. But, let's face it, there is a pretty high percentage of folks in these forums that HAVE hacked their iPhone. If you are one of them, and you installed 3.1 over the hack, you just might be having problems because of the hack.

Mark

[Chimpy]

I've had to reboot a number of times as well....here's hoping that this survey gives them the data they need to push an update out fast.

[rishey]

Who knew that battery life on the 3gs could get any worse?
I wish they would put in a replaceable battery that is non-intrusive similar to the way the sim card is inserted into the iPhone. Yes, I say THE iPhone because calling it simple 'iPhone' is so douchy sounding. :eek:

[Sambo110]

Thought my battery was dyeing, good to know it's not!

[wolfshades]

This is good news. I typically have BT and WiFi turned off on my iPhone and have noticed an appalling decrease in battery life throughout the day. It barely makes it to the end - which is quite unusual. When 3.0 was installed, battery life was fine - no complaints at all. 3.1 seemed to be the culprit.

P.S. I've never hacked my iPhone either. I'm a GOOD little Apple fanboy. :)

[leandromp]

I am one of those people having problems with the battery!

[acurafan]

Who knew that battery life on the 3gs could get any worse?
I wish they would put in a replaceable battery that is non-intrusive similar to the way the sim card is inserted into the iPhone. Yes, I say THE iPhone because calling it simple 'iPhone' is so douchy sounding. :eek:
if they have a removable battery i'd not complain as much! :mad: but having to plug in to charge all the time is ridiculous when i travel to client sites. it's so infuriating...i love my iphone but it lasts like 5 minutes.

[Wild-Bill]

How about pre-3.1 users??? I got my 3Gs on launch day and the battery life pretty much sucks. I guess I should take my brother-in-law's lead and turn mine in @ the Apple Store for a new one. This is crazy. Left the house @ 100% at 7am. It's now 11:49am and after some very LIGHT usage I'm at 68% !

I shudder to think what this phone's battery life would be if I upgraded to 3.1. :eek:

I guess I'll make the trip this weekend to get a replacement. I hope it's not a refurb. :rolleyes:

[ccuk]

Apple really needs to take a serious look at the jailbreak app MyProfiles and implement this into their OS. Being able to turn battery-hungry features such as Push, Location Services, even 3G off depending on things like time, day of week, vicinity to a wifi access point, etc is wonderful. Also being able to change alerts based on email sender/subject is another great feature that makes the iPhone more Blackberry-like.

I totally agree... It is something I miss from my SE phones, being able to adjust ringtone profiles based upon time of day etc. Hopefully Apple will implement something like this soon and add more powerful features such as the toggling of 3G etc to said profiles.

[Digital Dude]

Apple's obsession with an ultra-thin phone is going eventually hurt their sales. With all the emerging technologies, Apple would be far better off by making the next generation device thicker so as to incorporate a larger battery! The real world battery life while using GPS and Bluetooth will flat-line your device in no time. The Palm Pre and RIM, slams the iPhone hands down. BTW: I love my iPhone, MacPro, AEBS, MacBook Pro, etc.
Regards, :apple:

[Mark Booth]

Apple's obsession with an ultra-thin phone is going eventually hurt their sales. With all the emerging technologies, Apple would be far better off by making the next generation device thicker so as to incorporate a larger battery! The real world battery life while using GPS and Bluetooth will flat-line your device in no time. The Palm Pre and RIM, slams the iPhone hands down. BTW: I love my iPhone, MacPro, AEBS, MacBook Pro, etc.
Regards, :apple:

Hogwash on the Palm Pre! One of my friends has a Palm Pre and its battery life is FAR worse than any iPhone. He hates the damn thing because of the terrible battery life.

My iPhone has been on and unplugged from power for just over an hour this morning. I've checked E-mail (manually) twice, changed my Voicemail greeting (about 10 recordings before I finally settled on one to send to my voicemail), and I've taken one brief telephone call. Battery life is still at 99%.

Mark

[Stigma]

I subscribed to a data plan about the same time as I got 3.1 so I thought my battery was dying faster because of the data transfer. Even though I turned Wi-Fi off, it didn't seem to change it's performance. Never really thought that it could be the software. My battery's always good until it hits about 70% and then it just drops from there to 20% in about half the time it took for the first 30%.

It'll be interesting to see what's gained from this. Hopefully it'll improve my battery life.

[hildegueden]

Yes, I've noticed 3.x reduce my battery. I used to safely get a full day out of my phone, than I'd have to charge when going to sleep.

WHEN IS BATTERY TECHNOLOGY GOING TO ADVANCE! This is STUPID! Whoever is able to develop mobile battery technology that can keep up with demands of powering high-power consumption devices with a long period of time without recharging is going to be a real RICH MAN. Right now I see this battery technology really holding back the advancement mobile devices.

This comment really made me jump!!! I'm a researcher in energy storage alternatives for mobile devices such as direct alcohol fuel cells and microfluidic fuel cells. Buddy, believe me.. we're working very hard to find a solution. It's true Li batteries are on the limit and so far is the best we have, but well, I can tell you.. if we succeed, talking about those who work on this field, you will have battery life at least 11 times of what you have know. It's just a matter of time.

[zackkitzmiller]

I'm beginning to wonder if this is either poor reporting by the battery indicator or an issue of "junk" being left over from upgrading the OS.

I have no problems whatsoever with 3.1 on my 1st gen iPhone. Actually, while battery life has stayed relatively on par with 3.0, the performance of my phone has been better. On 3.0, I would encounter short periods of time where the phone would hang while it checked for mail in the background. This appears to have been fixed with 3.1.

Also, my wife's 3GS is not experiencing any of these battery issues as well.


Has anyone who has restored their phone in DFU mode encountered similar reported issues with battery on 3.1?

Nope.. I've done full restores a couple of times, including DFU... Same issues. If I roll back to 3.0, problems go away.

[snverhallen]

Improved battery life is always welcome. Battery life has always been the biggest con on my 3G.

[WestonHarvey1]

Initiate DFU mode on your phone and restore the phone. Be sure to set up as "new phone" when you sync your data back unto the phone. Prior to the growing numbers of users experiencing lack luster standby or usage reports, I was sure that I had a physical issue with my 3G. Since the process that i have described above I now have much better battery life. Please reply back either way if your finding differ than mine.

Problems that require the setup as new phone solution are extremely frustrating. Every time I have to do this, it shatters my illusion that I can rely on my iPhone. Most things sync, but many do not. Most apps and games lose all their data, and I have never seen a solution for that. SMS, call history, so much goes out the window.

Every time I do this, it is weeks before I'm back to a seamless experience again. There's always "one more thing" I run into - one more missing password, one more setting.

[GoKyu]

I was wondering why I had to recharge almost every day...I thought it was just me :)

[3goldens]

confidence that apple is doing this, NOT! They have been really bad as far as servicer goes on this, releasing updates without throughly testing them. My battery life sucks to, but is it worse than it always was, who the hell knows. I think it is. I always use one of those mophie battery paks anyway just in case, cant trust this thing to hold a charge for a full day of work.

I just discovered on saturday that my visual voice mail was not working again, it was non functioning over the course of a months time in July, and they finally fixed it, and then people started saying, you didn't get my message?

No, thinking they probably never really called. Then it happened so many times I manually checked it and lo and behold there were like 44 messages in the system that I had not heard!

I almost went and got a blackberry at that point.

This iphone is one of the most over rated products around.
throw in the wonderful ATT network of dropped calls and bad signals in New York City of all places and I am really a step away from dumping it in th Hudson, no that anyone cares!

[richardhunt]

In my case the culprit was 3G. I've now switched 3G off on my 3GS and run it all day on edge. I'm now getting 2 1/2 to 3 days of battery use with about 1 to 2 hours of phone usage. In only switch 3G when I'm actively safari and I'm away from any wifi. I also turn off bluetooth when I'm not using as well as wifi.

With 3G and doing the same things as I list above, I was getting about 1 1/2 days worth of usage. Right now with 40 minutes of usage and 22 hours and 40 minutes of standby, my meter is at 85%. I'm on 3.0.1. I usually wait a month before I upgrade to latest to see if there are any issues, and based on reports, there are some issues. So I'll stick with 3.0.1 until more people report on their experiences.

[dadallas]

If anyone finds out about a fix or update please post it. I would love to have my full battery life back. Everything was great with my battery before 3.1

[kornyboy]

Wirelessly posted (iPhone: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7C144 Safari/528.16)

I haven't really seen a dramatic decrease in battery life but I also haven't paid a whole lot of attention to it either. It will be interesting to see what apple comes up with on this one.

[Dwalls90]

Would it be wrong to say that 3.1 was the worst iPhone software update EVER?

Stops tethering, messes with standby mode, screwing with battery life ... all for genius mixes? LOL, no thanks.

[cyb1851]

My wife has the 3GS, and I have the regular 3G phone. While she has had no problems with her phone, my battery problems started since I upgraded to 3.1. It didn't occur to me that the 3.1 update was the problem. I just thought my phone was going bonkers.

Here is what happens: with full power, it shuts down randomly. Then I have to do the two-button start thing to get it running. Then the black screen with the apple symbol comes on. Then it takes about 3 or 4 minutes to boot. Then the battery is dead. Then I plug it in to recharge it. Then within a few moments, it shows, like, half the battery power is restored.

This is happening 4 or 5 times a day. It's absurd.:mad:

EDIT: My wife and I haven't jailbroken or enabled our phones for tethering.

[bboucher790]

I guess I'm just lucky. I saw my battery life go from 4 1/2 hours > 6 hours. I feel like I can use my phone all day now :). When I went to 3.1, I set my phone "as new", there might be issues when people upgrade, who knows.

[shawnce]

WHEN IS BATTERY TECHNOLOGY GOING TO ADVANCE! Had to laugh when I saw this :)

Battery technology has advanced, amazingly so, in the last decade(s). They are working up against the limits of the chemical reaction/physics of the compounds available today. It isn't easy to get more out of these systems and keep them safe/stable for devices that get hammered on such as an iPhone.

New technology is always being worked on (large investment by many companies in this area) but the next leaps will take a little time for costs, safety, and robustness to be worked out. Then I would expend a run for a few users pushing these technologies to their limits, etc.

[iMouse]

My wife has the 3GS, and I have the regular 3G phone. While she has had no problems with her phone, my battery problems started since I upgraded to 3.1. It didn't occur to me that the 3.1 update was the problem. I just thought my phone was going bonkers.

Here is what happens: with full power, it shuts down randomly. Then I have to do the two-button start thing to get it running. Then the black screen with the apple symbol comes on. Then it takes about 3 or 4 minutes to boot. Then the battery is dead. Then I plug it in to recharge it. Then within a few moments, it shows, like, half the battery power is restored.

This is happening 4 or 5 times a day. It's absurd.:mad:

EDIT: My wife and I haven't jailbroken or enabled our phones for tethering.


The battery issue you describe sounds like a dead cell in the battery more than a software glitch. A friend with a 3G had a similar issue with 6 minute boot times. He restored his phone through DFU mode and it resolved the issue. Phone boots now in about 40 seconds.

He had a tethering profile installed when he upgraded which led us to believe it was the culprit. I removed the tethering profile before upgrading my wife's 3GS and haven't seen a problem with the phone at all.

[twoodcc]

well i'm glad to see Apple working to correct the problem

[MD5Hash]

I guess I'm just lucky. I saw my battery life go from 4 1/2 hours > 6 hours. I feel like I can use my phone all day now :). When I went to 3.1, I set my phone "as new", there might be issues when people upgrade, who knows.

I hope you're not talking standby time... Like everyone else is saying, I'd like to see my iPod Touch last all day with heavy usage, (which, I'll admit, does see heavy usage during my carpool thanks to #%!@ addictive TapTap) but I guess compared to what I'm hearing from all you, I'm actually doing pretty good on battery time. I usually don't make it through a day...used to, though - with the same amount of usage...

[Treq]

Here's something Weird. I was having the same battery problems with 3.1. Battery was dead before the end of the day. 0 min of talk time and very little other usage during the day. Then, two or three days ago, it just went back to normal. Phone worked all day, with moderate usage, and still had 60% battery when I went to bed. I didn't do anything different. What's up with that? Still on 3.1 BTW.

[RazHyena]

I just don't think battery tech is up to par with today's devices. Smartphones are energy hogs and right now, they just don't have the battery life we need.

[Barbie]

3.1.1 is running superbly ^___^

[doubleatheman]

The weird thing is since I installed 3.1 I would say my battery life has improved. I'm happy though apple is looking into improving it.

With all the stuff this device does I alwsays would like it to have more life. After push came out I have never been impressed with the battery life.

[iphones4evry1]

I have noticed a slight decrease in battery life also.
I also noticed immediately after loading 3.1 that the screen brightness was dimmer. I used to keep my brightness at about 20%, and now I have to turn it up to about 35% for the same amount of brightness. I'm not sure why Apple did that, but they did. Perhaps the two are related; people have their screens brighter and their batteries are suffering as a result.

[peterdevries]

Can anyone tell me where I can get this battery logger app? My 3G just quit one me with 100% (yeah right) battery life. I was already wondering why it held on for so long...

Thanks..

[The Samurai]

Can anyone tell me where I can get this battery logger app? My 3G just quit one me with 100% (yeah right) battery life. I was already wondering why it held on for so long...

Thanks..

Send me your e-mail addy and visit this (http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=790380) thread for more.

[synth3tik]

Yet another reason I never update anything.

At least with this Apple seems to be trying to figure it out. I wish non-iphone/iPod products got this much attention from Apple.

[joemama]

I can't go one day without recharging mine - ever since taking it out of the box (3.0)! Can someone tell me if this is normal or is my battery faulty?

- wifi and bluetooth are off
- mail only connects when I tell it to
- no push notifications

So what else can I do? I don't want to keep the 3G off, nor should I have to. I guess I wont be updating to 3.1.

Any recommendations?

[NewSc2]

I had this exact problem on my iPhone 3GS using vanilla iPhone 3.0. My battery life would fluctuate throughout the day, dying down to 20% in a matter of a few hours, then jumping up to 80%, then dying within 30 minutes. I brought it to the Apple Store, but the Genius looked at me like I was crazy. He said it was because I had Push Notifications on. Didn't appreciate being talked down to like that.

Anyway, the matter sorted itself out after a couple weeks. It seemed like a few rounds of battery conditioning was all my phone needed. Now my phone rarely goes below 50%, and I just charge it when I go to sleep.

[*LTD*]

Try restoring your iPhone from iTunes. But back everything up first.

Worked for me. Called Apple and a rep advised me to try it.

[MattInOz]

Maybe un related maybe related....

Is the iPhone Louder now with 3.1?
Before I was always full volume and wanting more, especially on the train.
now i have room at the top end of the volume slider for the times i need it but can pull back most the time.

[Dustman]

I was just starting to think that 3.1 has been the best iPhoneOS yet. 3.0 was a disaster for me. Constant freezing, no wifi. I'll take a slightly shorter battery life for sure lol. It would be great if we could have a release without some kind of trade off though.

[joemama]

Maybe un related maybe related....

Is the iPhone Louder now with 3.1?
Before I was always full volume and wanting more, especially on the train.
now i have room at the top end of the volume slider for the times i need it but can pull back most the time.

I heard the speakerphone is lower. I'm still waiting for confirmation before I upgrade to 3.1.

[MadIvan]

Yes, I've noticed 3.x reduce my battery. I used to safely get a full day out of my phone, than I'd have to charge when going to sleep.

WHEN IS BATTERY TECHNOLOGY GOING TO ADVANCE! This is STUPID! Whoever is able to develop mobile battery technology that can keep up with demands of powering high-power consumption devices with a long period of time without recharging is going to be a real RICH MAN. Right now I see this battery technology really holding back the advancement mobile devices.

Sadly, battery density is already pretty close to maxed out. There are only so many electrons you can cram into a given battery mass. You can expect to see some improvement, but if you want 100-fold increases, it's just not physically possible. Reducing device power consumption can help too, but again you are up against physics. You can only reduce the power so much and still be able to get a radio signal to the tower.

[MadIvan]

During the last stages of the 2.0 Enterprise beta a change was made that started my battery life randomly nosediving on an original iPhone with 2003 exchange servers. I had a quite detailed bug report and the final recommendation was that the exchange servers needed a patch that was known to have helped. The whole issue had to do with the frequency of the phone and the exchange server talking. There was no desire to have the patch applied from our admins and we're still running the same Exchange 2003 today. I have this happen sometimes on my 3GS as well. It helps if I switch exchange ssl proxies sometimes. On weekends when I receive far less exchange mail my battery life is considerably improved.

I wonder if any of the users having the worst experience are connecting to Exchange 2003, 2007 or umm 2010 beta?


I synch mail and calendars over outlook web access instead of straight into the exchange server. After the update, I noticed battery issues as well. I rebooted my phone a couple of times which didn't seem to fix it. I noticed that my outlook calendar was not showing some of my appointments. I removed it and added it back to the phone. Since then, the calendar has been working fine and the battery life is back to normal. Point of all this? Bad battery life might be a result of something you are running that is having trouble synching and so is using the radio much more than normal.

[flyfish29]

This should be interesting. I think it is funny how it mentions they ask about wifi bluetooth and push. I went to the genius bar asking about my battery life and he told me that I should have wifi location services bluetooth and push turned off until I have to use it.

I just think it is sad that other cheaper and much less advanced phones can have all of these things on and enabled and last days on a single full charge.

It is clear there is an issue, but at the same time- the iPhone is doing WAY more than those "cheaper and much less advanced phones" you speak of.....very large LCD screen to name one major battery drain. And those phones are much less advanced....just like you said...the more advanced a phone is the more it tends to drain battery life.

HOpefully they get the fix soon though!

[wackymacky]

At least Apple is getting more responcive addressing user complaints.

[Full of Win]

You call yourselves Apple users?

If battery life is low, this is not a problem.... its a feature. :)

Given this, we need to ask ourselves how to adapt to the features so graciously given to us by Apple! For example, if battery life is low, then buy an external battery and/or several (:apple: branded of course) USB AC/DC converters and :apple: branded iPod/iPhone cables to make a series of 'power stations' around your work area.

Make sure it has the Apple logo, or it will be an affront to Jesus Jobs!

[*LTD*]

You call yourselves Apple users?

If battery life is low, this is not a problem.... its a feature. :)

Given this, we need to ask ourselves how to adapt to the features so graciously given to us by Apple! For example, if battery life is low, then buy an external battery and/or several (:apple: branded of course) USB AC/DC converters and :apple: branded iPod/iPhone cables to make a series of 'power stations' around your work area.

Make sure it has the Apple logo, or it will be an affront to Jesus Jobs!

Or you could just call Apple and get it resolved.

[X38]

I've definitely noticed a lot faster battery drain on my 3GS lately. I'm not sure though if it's due to 3.1 or to Battle Bears and my new insatiable desire to gun down teddy bears.

[iMaggot]

I have not noticed any problems with my iPhone 3G sine upgrading to 3.1, but iTunes 9 keeps crashing on me :mad:

[bydandie]

I've found everything OK since upgrading to 3.1 and iTunes 9.

[bydandie]

Send me your e-mail addy and visit this (http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=790380) thread for more.

I'd love to partake, but I have to wait until tomorrow to PM you my email addy.

[Azmontana]

Well it's good Apple has decided to look into the battery life issue but what about all the other crap associated with 3.1, unresponsive, when it is responsive delays with input, youtube hardly ever works etc.

BTW I have a 3G, never been jailbroken.

[Le Big Mac]

Has anyone here actually been contacted by apple yet on this ?

Yes. I posted in the apple discussions thread and received the email described in the macrumors article including the software.

I was losing a full charge within 10 hours (8a to 6p). Oddly, it seems to have gotten somewhat better the last couple of days . . . but my usage hasn't changed in a meaningful way.

My feeling is that there's something in some apps that isn't working with 3.1 very well and keeping processes running.

[peterdevries]

WHEN IS BATTERY TECHNOLOGY GOING TO ADVANCE! This is STUPID!

It is. The problem is that technology surrounding the features and use of the phones is advancing more rapidly. If your old Nokia 5110 had the same quality battery the iPhone has, it would be able to run for weeks.

[mangis]

My battery seems to have gotten better since the upgrade to 3.1.

Running 3g that has never been jailbroken.

Hope it continues.

[bydandie]

As a matter of interest, is this affecting customers in HSDPA areas more? The reason I ask is that AFAIK HSDPA was only enabled in 3.1, this eats more battery although doesn't show as 3G+ on the iPhone. I've found that having HSDPA enabled in WM phones can eat battery as it switches between 3G (UMTS) and HDSPA.

[Marvin1379]

As a matter of interest, is this affecting customers in HSDPA areas more? The reason I ask is that AFAIK HSDPA was only enabled in 3.1, this eats more battery although doesn't show as 3G+ on the iPhone. I've found that having HSDPA enabled in WM phones can eat battery as it switches between 3G (UMTS) and HDSPA.

Interesting point. I for one am in NYC but I don't think that's one of the places that is rolling out first (AT&T is still patching their edge network in NY)

[icodemac]

I too have been experiencing very poor battery life with my iPhone 3GS :(

The battery life of my iPhone 3GS is nowhere near what Apple advertise :( The iPhone tech specs on Apple's website http://www.apple.com/iphone/specs.html state:
- "up to 300 hours" standby time
- "up to 5 hours" Internet use on 3G
- "up to 9 hours" Internet use on WiFi
- "up to 10 hours" video playback
- "up to 30 hours" audio playback

The battery life of my iPhone 3GS has never been near anything like that, not even when it was brand new. And this while I turn off Bluetooth, location based services, 3G, wifi and push notifications whenever I do not need them, i.e. most of the time :(

What should I do?

Any suggestions, comments or solutions for this problem would be greatly appreciated.

I am looking forward to any kind of improvement in the battery life of my iPhone 3GS.

[icodemac]

I too have been experiencing very poor battery life with my iPhone 3GS

The battery life of my iPhone 3GS is nowhere near what Apple advertise The iPhone tech specs on Apple's website http://www.apple.com/iphone/specs.html state:
- "up to 300 hours" standby time
- "up to 5 hours" Internet use on 3G
- "up to 9 hours" Internet use on WiFi
- "up to 10 hours" video playback
- "up to 30 hours" audio playback

The battery life of my iPhone 3GS has never been near anything like that, not even when it was brand new. And this while I turn off Bluetooth, location based services, 3G, wifi and push notifications whenever I do not need them, i.e. most of the time

What should I do?

Any suggestions, comments or solutions for this problem would be greatly appreciated.

I am looking forward to any kind of improvement in the battery life of my iPhone 3GS.

[iphones4evry1]

Someone needs to add a poll to this thread. "Are you experience less battery life after updating to 3.1?"

I have DEFINITELY been noticing decreased battery life.

[rye9]

No news since?