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rapid battery drain/hot iphone

R

renault4

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jul 5, 2007
121
2
without loading anything new recently, my iPhone today started to loose battery very quickly--down to 10% by midday with only a couple of short calls. I recharged it to full and it was down again by 7pm. Also the unit seemed to be quite warm.

I think I had this happen once before and figured that something had grabbed hold of the GPS--a restore cleared it and brought it back to normal battery behaviour.

I can do that again, obviously, but I was wondering whether others have seen this behaviour before?

thanks
 
M

megamanbnmaster

macrumors 6502
Jan 26, 2008
370
0
My friend's iPhone heated up VERY fast and then suddenly it made a flash on the screen. Now its an iBrick. Nothing could fix it. It was out of warranty though. Granted its an iPhone Edge.

I remember him saying a certain program won't close, and he didn't force reboot the thing. I think the cpu overloaded and overheated the phone.

It's probably a good idea to do a force reboot if this happens in order to save it from overheating.
 
eyefoniac

eyefoniac

macrumors demi-god
Nov 21, 2008
413
21
Everywhere and nowhere
This same situation happened to my 3g once. I just had the phone in my pocket, had just taken it off the charger about 2 hrs ago and no calls made. I put my hand in my pocket and the phone was really hot. I pulled it out and checked it and I had the 20% low battery warning. I turned it off for a while and then turned it back on once it had cooled off. It hasn't occurred again.
 
R

renault4

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jul 5, 2007
121
2
Aaleck said:
do you have 3g on, location services and everything? even with it on, i don't think it would drain that much
Click to expand...

when I noticed the battery draining faster than usual, I checked that location services, wireless, bluetooth and even 3G were turned off to conserve power; it didn't help that much.

one thing, I was in a set of buildings where reception was not great, down around one bar, sometimes 3G, sometimes EDGE; I know that in this situation the cell radio can consume additional power when it is constantly in signal hunting mode.

--p
 
jarjarblinks

jarjarblinks

macrumors 6502
Nov 15, 2008
336
0
renault4 said:
when I noticed the battery draining faster than usual, I checked that location services, wireless, bluetooth and even 3G were turned off to conserve power; it didn't help that much.

one thing, I was in a set of buildings where reception was not great, down around one bar, sometimes 3G, sometimes EDGE; I know that in this situation the cell radio can consume additional power when it is constantly in signal hunting mode.

--p
Click to expand...

I have noticed that some iPhone users indicated that there is a persistant background processing occuring even when the iPhone is in sleep mode. Through the night, the hours are clocked as "in use" rather than "stand by". Identify if you have this sympton. If you do, obviously it should be something that has been added recently. Recommend that you do a clean restore.
 
R

renault4

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jul 5, 2007
121
2
so now I have done a complete restore twice. first time I just reloaded the backed up iPhone. No change. second time, I backed out all apps that had been added recently, say in the last few months (I really had only two pages of apps). No change. I have now backed out all apps and am watching what will happen once I recharge (it was down to 25% after three hours, with no phone calls, 3G on, wireless, bluetooth, GPS off).

I am still loading backed up settings (email), so my next step will be to do a completely clean restore.

but this is still very strange behaviour indeed.
 
jarjarblinks

jarjarblinks

macrumors 6502
Nov 15, 2008
336
0
renault4 said:
so now I have done a complete restore twice. first time I just reloaded the backed up iPhone. No change. second time, I backed out all apps that had been added recently, say in the last few months (I really had only two pages of apps). No change. I have now backed out all apps and am watching what will happen once I recharge (it was down to 25% after three hours, with no phone calls, 3G on, wireless, bluetooth, GPS off).

I am still loading backed up settings (email), so my next step will be to do a completely clean restore.

but this is still very strange behaviour indeed.
Click to expand...

Your post is confusing. You did a "complete restore" twice. Lastly you mentioned a "completely clean restore".

You lost me there a little while but I figured it out after a while.

In iTunes lexicon, I recommend, strongly, a "set up from new iPhone", then back up from selected date. That should clear the ambiguity.
 
R

renault4

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jul 5, 2007
121
2
ok, will try that in a little bit, thanks and apologies for the semantic confusion!.

--p
 
L

Legolai

macrumors member
Apr 3, 2009
71
0
jarjarblinks said:
You will also want to pursue http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1490 after you have set up your new 2.2.1 firmware.
Click to expand...

where on that article does it say anything about it applying for an iPhone

Incidentally this happened to me last night and i was just coming on here to investigate,

Yesterday i charged my phone to full, took it off charge when i received a call, was on the phone for 10 mins or so, checked facebook and sent about 5 txts, set my alarm when i went to bed. Woke up this morning and i had 20% battery left, i hadnt left an app open all night and im not sure about it getting hot, i was very annoyed though as i had a family engagement today and not a lot of battery to take photos.

Does anyone know the cause of this? id rather not do a restore if possible
 
jarjarblinks

jarjarblinks

macrumors 6502
Nov 15, 2008
336
0
Legolai said:
where on that article does it say anything about it applying for an iPhone

Incidentally this happened to me last night and i was just coming on here to investigate,

Yesterday i charged my phone to full, took it off charge when i received a call, was on the phone for 10 mins or so, checked facebook and sent about 5 txts, set my alarm when i went to bed. Woke up this morning and i had 20% battery left, i hadnt left an app open all night and im not sure about it getting hot, i was very annoyed though as i had a family engagement today and not a lot of battery to take photos.

Does anyone know the cause of this? id rather not do a restore if possible
Click to expand...

Sorry, wrong link. Try http://www.apple.com/batteries/ and http://www.apple.com/batteries/iphone.html

I have had and isolated experience with a specific iPhone 3G that had trouble holding its charges. Turned out that it had water damage because the sticker was pink. Perhaps just check as a precautionary measure.
 
L

Legolai

macrumors member
Apr 3, 2009
71
0
jarjarblinks said:
Sorry, wrong link. Try http://www.apple.com/batteries/ and http://www.apple.com/batteries/iphone.html

I have had and isolated experience with a specific iPhone 3G that had trouble holding its charges. Turned out that it had water damage because the sticker was pink. Perhaps just check as a precautionary measure.
Click to expand...

yeah ive recently checked that as im (hopefully) taking my 3G back due to cracking on the case near the headphone jack, but i cant say ive ever got it wet, so unless its moisture in the air i cant see that, im gonna keep an eye on it until i can get to an apple store to exchange anyways
 
bruinsrme

bruinsrme

macrumors 604
Oct 26, 2008
7,174
3,036
Well you an I have the same thing going on with the battery.

The other thing we have in common is the use of Facebook. I just started usign FB on the iPhone last week and the fast discharge started about 5 days ago. I wonder if FB isn't shutting down
 
R

renault4

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jul 5, 2007
121
2
so at the moment, it looks like I have gotten over the problem; by restoring and setting it up as a new iPhone, which I'll call a clean install, the battery is running on "normal" where I would expect it to last a day with routine usage (I always plug in at night) and there is no sign of the iPhone heating up.

I will carefully load back the external apps and watch for a reappearance (I am suspicious of skype, no evidence, but it was one of the more recently loaded apps)

Since email, contacts and calendar were served by an exchange server, I was able to get back everything on that front, however I "lost" some data from the iPhone in the process, for example any information I had in the notes app. I know it is backed up somewhere as my previous iPhone backup--any idea how I could get at those data?

then remains the diagnosis of the original problem. It looks like something didnt quit properly and kept hold of either one of the radios or the CPU.
 
jarjarblinks

jarjarblinks

macrumors 6502
Nov 15, 2008
336
0
There are a few memory apps if you want to know which is the culprit app that's hogging the processes. Might help you in this instance of snooping around your iPhone. :D
 
L

Luminator

macrumors member
Jul 24, 2008
68
0
I just had the same thing happen to my iphone. One thing I noticed was that when charging, the lower back of the iphone would heat up. This is a indication that the battery is bad. I brought it to an Apple store and they exchanged it with a new one. This was a referbished 16gig that I purchased through AT&T :)
 
L

lfc200

macrumors member
Feb 24, 2007
50
0
Cork, Ireland
Im having the same problem on my 1st gen iphone. I charge it completely overnight yet the battery still needs charging come about 1 in the afternoon. In that time if I send 5 texts and make a 2 min call I have done a lot. Its driving me nuts i love the phone but this battery is going to drive me away from it.
 
M

malsch

macrumors newbie
Oct 7, 2008
19
0
I've had this happen as well with my 3G. It doesn't happen all the time, I'd say it's happened about 3 times in the past 10 months.

Symptoms are:
zero bars, or maybe 1 bar, either 3G or Edge.
phone warm to the touch where the battery is.
Turning off GPS, 3G, etc doesn't seem to stop it

I'm thinking that someone hit on it with the constant cell tower searching. Next time I'll try putting it into airplane mode and see what happens.

I also like the idea of getting one of the memory apps so I can see what's eating resources.
 
con500

con500

macrumors regular
May 9, 2009
136
12
I was having this problem recently with the battery draining very quick from full charge...I also saw that my Usage and Standby times were both the same. I tried removing apps, resetting network settings, rebooting. All to no avail.

Long story short...i was about to do a restore, when i went into the itunes app (on the iphone) and there was a wee flashing icon On the Downloads tab, allerting me that i had 2 D/Ls pending, but coldnt be downloaded as i did not have a wifi connection. I dont know if this was the cause but it makes sense that the phone would try to continually connect to network to perform the D/L, and after thinking, my battery problems were probably noticed after i had used the itunes to attempt to D/load some podcasts.

I cancelled and deleted the pending dwnloads, rebooted and battery is back to normal as are Usage and Standby times
 
javaGuru

javaGuru

macrumors 6502a
Jul 15, 2007
922
343
The same thing happened to me over this past weekend. I noticed that my iPhone was getting hotter and hotter in my pocket and my battery was being drained very quickly. I realized that the problem was that I had left open a webpage that was refreshing the page over and over so this was causing my phone to get hot and drain the battery. Once I x'ed out the webpage my iPhone began to cool down and the battery didn't drain nearly as quickly.

I was on vacation and had set up a wireless camera so I could monitor my home. I can access the video via a url on my iPhone. The image of the video being refreshed over and over was causing it to heat up and drain my battery. I would recommend closing all webpages etc before putting it back into your pocket etc. Simply hitting the home button isn't enough. You have to 'X' out the webpage that might be refreshing over and over.
 
S

sabosan

macrumors newbie
Jan 4, 2010
1
0
Hi,

Same problems here in France.

"Use Time" Stat is too high than Idle time....

Battery drain very fast and back is heating up.

Jailbreaked, I have installed Backgrounder, there is no application running on background, after reboot.

May be a process ?

A restoring is borring me... if anyone have the solution
 
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