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Battery GOD Awful or Defective iPhone 3G?

J

jw nyc

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jan 31, 2008
854
0
Okay this has got to be the worst battery in the history of cell phones. I FULLY charged the battery before I left for dinner at 7:30pm EST tonight. BARELY used it the entire night but left 3G on and turned location services off. Wrote 1 email maybe 3 SMS messages and a note in the memo pad app. After dinner went to see a movie and just got home. It's not 12:05am EST (4:35 min since it was fully charged) and I got the 20% battery warning.

Now I know you're supposed to calibrate it over a few days but I know it won't make THAT big a difference. I didn't even make ONE phone call and the phone can't go 5 hours with 3G active!! Now I know some of you are going to say I'm exaggerating but I made sure to note the exact times bc I wanted to see how long it would last b/c I have been having these battery issues since I got it. I don't know what to do besides turn 3G off which I really don't want to do. I also live in Manhattan which is supposed to have great 3G service so it shouldn't be looking for signal too hard and wasting battery. This is sooo frustrating and disappointing. Is it possible I have a defective battery?
 
That definitely has not been my experience with the 3G. You should get it looked at.
 
yea.. something is wrong.. Took me more than a day to run the battery down. And thats playing with it nearly all day. 3G, WiFi, and edge usage..
 
im having the same problem...it lasts pretty much all day, but my girlfriend has the same phone with the same stuff on it, and her battery was still full when mine was half empty. We used pretty much the same stuff throughout the day...planning on getting it checked when I get home next week.
 
I dont know how defective that is.... I read one of the reviews this week (i think it was david pogue's) that said some days he couldn't make it through the whole day without charging.... I unplugged my phone fully charged at about 2pm, and at 6pm i was down to 20% and it died at about 10pm (with not much usage from 6-10). I was using the internet a lot between 2 and 6, with only a few minutes of real voice usage.

I think this battery issue will become much more of a problem, especially after we get the cycle count up and the capacity starts to decrease. I NEVER had a problem with my old iphone, FWIW....

EDIT: just read the new posts... Interesting... wondering if this is more widespread than the two of us. I was very unhappy today...
 
pianos101 said:
I dont know how defective that is.... I read one of the reviews this week (i think it was david pogue's) that said some days he couldn't make it through the whole day without charging.... I unplugged my phone fully charged at about 2pm, and at 6pm i was down to 20% and it died at about 10pm (with not much usage from 6-10). I was using the internet a lot between 2 and 6, with only a few minutes of real voice usage.

I think this battery issue will become much more of a problem, especially after we get the cycle count up and the capacity starts to decrease. I NEVER had a problem with my old iphone, FWIW....

EDIT: just read the new posts... Interesting... wondering if this is more widespread than the two of us. I was very unhappy today...
Click to expand...

I can't begin to describe how frustrating it is having to worry about the battery every few minutes even if you're not using it!! I LOVE this phone right now but the battery is killing the enjoyment and making it a HUGE pain to use.
 
jmwein said:
I can't begin to describe how frustrating it is having to worry about the battery every few minutes even if you're not using it!! I LOVE this phone right now but the battery is killing the enjoyment and making it a HUGE pain to use.
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I think you've got a lemon dude. Sounds like my original iPhone. Not even with light use and maybe a couple text messages and checking out the weather, etc KILLED the battery before the day even ended!

Wait until the frenzy at the stores dies down and get it looked at. I wish I had done that with my original iPhone :( Also while you're waiting, invest in a car charger! I was so glad I had one because I was caught in a snow storm and I couldn't see anything so I pulled over and made a few phone calls.

:cool:
 
I didn't read all the other posts, but you really should calibrate your battery. Mine ran for over an hour in super monkey ball after I got the 20% warning. Let it fully die, and charge it over night. Make sure it charges for at least 5 hours.

I know it sound arbitrary, but that's what I've read that it's good to do with a battery in a cell phone. I don't want to open a debate, I'm just saying that I have had success doing it this way.
 
definately defective phone. i charged my phone ALMOST the full way at around 7 pm today, got home and now it looks like i still have 60 or 70% battery and i SMS'd consistently, checked myspace, ebay, youtube vid... not heavy use but decent usage. id get yours looked at.
 
KMK420 said:
definately defective phone. i charged my phone ALMOST the full way at around 7 pm today, got home and now it looks like i still have 60 or 70% battery and i SMS'd consistently, checked myspace, ebay, youtube vid... not heavy use but decent usage. id get yours looked at.
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I just played with it until it fully died...took another 15 min from 20% lol and now I just plugged it into the wall to charge. I'm gonna let it charge overnight and we'll see how it runs tomorrow. If I still have issues tomorrow I'm going to bring it to the genius bar on Monday morning.
 
Stangs55 said:
Fully charged at 4pm today...by 11pm after some light use...i'm under 10%.

Once again, Apple chooses style over function.
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Definitely true, but it's weird. This is the EXACT reason 3G wasn't in the phone last year (according to steve). If he knew it still drained the battery so quickly why'd he do it???
 
pianos101 said:
Definitely true, but it's weird. This is the EXACT reason 3G wasn't in the phone last year (according to steve). If he knew it still drained the battery so quickly why'd he do it???
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Because people were bellyaching that the phone didn't have 3G. Eventually, if enough people demand it, the assumption gets made that people care less about battery life than they do 3G.

I'm not having battery issues at all like this. Seems about on par with my old iPhone. But I'll reserve judgement until I use it for a week.
 
scaredpoet said:
Because people were bellyaching that the phone didn't have 3G. Eventually, if enough people demand it, the assumption gets made that people care less about battery life than they do 3G.

I'm not having battery issues at all like this. Seems about on par with my old iPhone. But I'll reserve judgement until I use it for a week.
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I guess my comment was kind of rhetorical. Obviously a new phone with 3G will rake in craploads of money, but then why didn't he do it in the first place if he still knows the battery life sucks. I don't know... I just hope in time things will improve than the experience i had today...
 
Not sure if this is obvious or not, but you said you're in NYC. Do you take the subway? How often/long were you underground? I usually enable airplane mode when I take the train, especially if I'm planning on transferring and/or taking more than 10-15 minutes before I get to my destination. A simple midtown -> downtown trip can take 20 minutes if you have to wait and/or take a local train. That's a whole lot of searching for a signal...
 
My battery is pretty weak too

One of the first things I noticed. Thought it was because of 3G. I disabled that today, and it still is dying way faster than my old iPhone. I will definitely be taking it to Apple to have it looked over. Maybe it's the GPS? I'll try disabling that tomorrow. They gave you the option to disable GPS and 3G for a reason.
 
jmwein said:
Okay this has got to be the worst battery in the history of cell phones. I FULLY charged the battery before I left for dinner at 7:30pm EST tonight. BARELY used it the entire night but left 3G on and turned location services off. Wrote 1 email maybe 3 SMS messages and a note in the memo pad app. After dinner went to see a movie and just got home. It's not 12:05am EST (4:35 min since it was fully charged) and I got the 20% battery warning.

Now I know you're supposed to calibrate it over a few days but I know it won't make THAT big a difference. I didn't even make ONE phone call and the phone can't go 5 hours with 3G active!! Now I know some of you are going to say I'm exaggerating but I made sure to note the exact times bc I wanted to see how long it would last b/c I have been having these battery issues since I got it. I don't know what to do besides turn 3G off which I really don't want to do. I also live in Manhattan which is supposed to have great 3G service so it shouldn't be looking for signal too hard and wasting battery. This is sooo frustrating and disappointing. Is it possible I have a defective battery?
Click to expand...
*
this is what's going on with my fon...oh man I'm bring it back f! that!!!
 
do you have "push" enabled on any accounts?
I went to bed at about 11:00pm and woke up at 7:00 to find my iphone gasping to be charged. It only had 10% left and I know the battery was nearly full at around 10:00pm.

Location services were off although thinking about it I had bluetooth on and I really didn't think when 3g was enabled if the phone was off it shouldn't hurt the battery that much.
Push was enabled on both .mac and exchange, and I know on a previous windows device that when push is enabled it sucks the battery. Even though they say "push" on the windows handheld I had all it did was poll the server every minute or two so I would be interested to know how push works on the iphone.
as a guess I think they would link in your cell number to the servers so if you had a new email then they would poll your cellphone to start a sync?
anyway I have turned off "push" on all accounts and set them to manual apart from my contacts and calendar in .me.
 
Stangs55 said:
Fully charged at 4pm today...by 11pm after some light use...i'm under 10%.

Once again, Apple chooses style over function.
Click to expand...

7 hours is EXTREMELY good for a pda phone, my windows phone only use to last 3 hours. But the problem can be with the battery meter just like the first gen which was fixed with a software update.
 
This is the worst battery i ever had in a cell phone! I can confirm all the posts above me, i have the same issues!

Is Apple cra?? selling such a battery?
 
i have been having the same problems with the battery life. i let it charge overnight and around noon i removed it from the charger and it died around midnight. my usage time is about 3.5 hours. I thought you were supposed to get at least 5 hours, and thats in talk time or 3g surfing. i have everything turned on except bluetooth. here is a picture of my usage time along with my remaining battery. is this normal use for the 3g iPhone?
 
michlc88 said:
i have been having the same problems with the battery life. i let it charge overnight and around noon i removed it from the charger and it died around midnight. my usage time is about 3.5 hours. I thought you were supposed to get at least 5 hours, and thats in talk time or 3g surfing. i have everything turned on except bluetooth. here is a picture of my usage time along with my remaining battery. is this normal use for the 3g iPhone?
Click to expand...

Ummm check and see how long your phone has been on idle..........
 
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