Battery life on iPhone 4

pango1in · Jun 27, 2010

Love the iPhone 4 - hope they sort out the signal problem - but that's not my question.

Since receiving my iPhone, I have fully charged and discharged the battery (took some time to discharge

). I then charged it to 100% again.

It was 100% charged by yesterday evening. I caught up on Angry birds for a 1-2 hours, then went to bed. When I woke up this morning, the charge was down to 42%. Ok, why's that?

I checked the "Usage" section and the phone has been on standby for 12 hours and being used for 11 hours. Eh? How come? It has been about 12 hours since full charge. This did not happen with my iPhone 3G.

I have some push notifications on, I think, FarmVille (pls don't flame for that....), Facebook, ebay, MSN Messanger and perhaps a couple more. I'm also in a poor signal area, but I don't think my phone was struggling to get a signal all night (had one to two bars GPRS).

Any ideas what's "using" my phone and eating battery life?

I don't want to have to restart my phone every time I go to bed... just to maintain battery.

cperchard · Jun 27, 2010

if it's actually been in use 11 of the 12 hours then i'm not surprised it's down to 42%!! Mine's been standby for 1 day and 11 hours.....of which it's been in use for 6 hours (most of that being wifi and games) and i am down to 20% now which i am extatic about.....i've been trying to kill it so i can do a full discharge but the thing just wont die quickly for me at all, which is awesome!!

gehrbox · Jun 27, 2010

pango1in said:
I don't want to have to restart my phone every time I go to bed... just to maintain battery.

I put mine on the charger every night. Notifications will eat into battery life, as will location services and mail checking interval.

gehrbox · Jun 27, 2010

cperchard said:
if it's actually been in use 11 of the 12 hours then i'm not surprised it's down to 42%!! Mine's been standby for 1 day and 11 hours.....of which it's been in use for 6 hours (most of that being wifi and games) and i am down to 20% now which i am extatic about.....i've been trying to kill it so i can do a full discharge but the thing just wont die quickly for me at all, which is awesome!!

His original post said he had a full charge, played angry birds for a couple of hours then went to bed. When he woke up it showed 11 hours of usage.

cperchard · Jun 27, 2010

gehrbox said:
His original post said he had a full charge, played angry birds for a couple of hours then went to bed. When he woke up it showed 11 hours of usage.

yea guess i misunderstood a lil bit......does seem strange tho....i've had no problems where the usage goes up over night even if i keep everything in the multitasking running.....but i do tend to close them all after i've finished using it, just in case.

Zaft · Jun 27, 2010

you have 4 apps using push and are wondering why your batt life went down?

JonB3Z · Jun 27, 2010

Did you leave an app running?

My IP4 was at 100% when I went to bed last night. Now, 8 hours later, it's at 99%. So it's not an inherent problem.

germanjulian · Jun 27, 2010

strange no ideal. Try again

I have push on and location services. I do switch 3g of every night as my room has very poor reception and does suck battery but when I woke up this morning after 6 hours standby and 30 minutes usage I have 98% battery left

cperchard · Jun 27, 2010

JonB3Z said:
Did you leave an app running?

My IP4 was at 100% when I went to bed last night. Now, 8 hours later, it's at 99%. So it's not an inherent problem.

wow cool.....i think mine goes down about 4% but i leave push on....do u turn yours off? or any other tips?

gehrbox · Jun 27, 2010

cperchard said:
yea guess i misunderstood a lil bit......does seem strange tho....i've had no problems where the usage goes up over night even if i keep everything in the multitasking running.....but i do tend to close them all after i've finished using it, just in case.

The multitasking in iOS 4 is pretty limited. Apps have a max of 10 minutes to finish what they are doing when they lose the screen before they are put to sleep. Audio streaming and nav apps are the only major exceptions. If it was a nav app his battery would have been dead long before morning. An audio streaming app is about the only kind that would roll up that much usage indicated unless messages or notifications are coming in volume.

JonB3Z · Jun 27, 2010

cperchard said:
wow cool.....i think mine goes down about 4% but i leave push on....do u turn yours off? or any other tips?

I live practically underneath a cell tower, so it takes like no power to operate the phone unless an app is running or the screen is on.

Eso · Jun 27, 2010

pango1in said:
I checked the "Usage" section and the phone has been on standby for 12 hours and being used for 11 hours. Eh? How come? It has been about 12 hours since full charge. This did not happen with my iPhone 3G.

This was a well-documented issue at the release of the iPhone 3GS.

You need to restore the iPhone and set it up as a new phone (do not restore from a backup).

pango1in · Jun 27, 2010

Zaft said:
you have 4 apps using push and are wondering why your batt life went down?

Constructive comments please.

I understand that push apps eat battery, but not 58% in 12 hours. I understand that fetch eats battery life, but not 58% in 12 hours, especially as I have wifi on in the house. If you read my OP then you'll see that the phone has been in use 11 out of 12 hours - all the time I was asleep. That's the problem...

I expect it is down to some application not quitting. Since I only really used Safari, Mail, Messages and Angry Birds before bed, one of them can't be quitting properly (regardless of how multitasking is putting it to sleep).

I will check and report back.

Eso · Jun 27, 2010

pango1in said:
I expect it is down to some application not quitting. Since I only really used Safari, Mail, Messages and Angry Birds before bed, one of them can't be quitting properly (regardless of how multitasking is putting it to sleep).

Again, this was a problem with the 3GS before there was even such a thing as multitasking on the iPhone. This will stop the moment you restore the phone as new.

You might also try to "reset all settings" in the settings app. I seem to recall this working for some users, but not all. This has the benefit of being quicker and preserving all the app data, but it may not reset the issue that is causing the usage times.

pango1in · Jun 27, 2010

Eso said:
Again, this was a problem with the 3GS before there was even such a thing as multitasking on the iPhone. This will stop the moment you restore the phone as new.

You might also try to "reset all settings" in the settings app. I seem to recall this working for some users, but not all. This has the benefit of being quicker and preserving all the app data, but it may not reset the issue that is causing the usage times.

Sorry, didn't see your response before posting - was posting my own...

I did find something on that on the internet, but was reluctant to do it, as it would mean losing texts, settings etc and take up a lot of my time!

alecgold · Jun 27, 2010

pango1in said:
Constructive comments please.

I expect it is down to some application not quitting. Since I only really used Safari, Mail, Messages and Angry Birds before bed, one of them can't be quitting properly (regardless of how multitasking is putting it to sleep).

first, you didn't have play/gps in the bar active I guess?
If so, you had an active app that didn't quit all night.

otherwise, there would have been an app that got hung.
I would try a restart right now and then charge it up to 100% and look
again tomorrow. If it does do it again, it looks like something you use pretty often gets stuck somewhere.
Also, you can download iInfo and look what is still active. I have bejeweled2 that keeps active and omnifocus that keeps up. I would suspect one of those programs to be responsible.

pango1in · Jun 27, 2010

Eso said:
Again, this was a problem with the 3GS before there was even such a thing as multitasking on the iPhone. This will stop the moment you restore the phone as new.

You might also try to "reset all settings" in the settings app. I seem to recall this working for some users, but not all. This has the benefit of being quicker and preserving all the app data, but it may not reset the issue that is causing the usage times.

Resetting all the settings seems to have worked. I think Angry Birds wasn't quitting properly...

Thanks for the help.

Stankonia · Jun 27, 2010

I've been having the same problem even with notifications/push turned off. Just tried resetting all settings, so let's see if this helps.

Restoring as a new phone will be a last resort since I've got some text messages that are sentimental that I really don't want to lose (from my mom before she died)

jbachandouris · Jun 27, 2010

I have battery issues as well. I charge the phone, unplug the charger, power off (not standby) the phone, and go to sleep. When I power it on, morning one=56% and morning two=61%. Notifications are not turned on and shouldn't a full power off prevent those anyway?

I have tried a reset, then a restore as directed by Apple Tech Support.

Question is erase all settings included in a restore or do I have to do an erase all settings before I perform a restore. Call me crazy, but I want to keep my Launch Day phone if possible.

PhoneI · Jun 27, 2010

Zaft said:
you have 4 apps using push and are wondering why your batt life went down?

Hmm, why would 4 apps use any more bandwidth than 1 app? There is only 1 connection maintained to the apple push server.

telarmago · Jun 27, 2010

I'm losing 20% per night in standby; this is the 3rd straight night this has happened. This happened after a complete restore in airplane mode, no wifi, no exchange or email, no notifications, zero 3rd party apps, and only settings and phone in the tray. The only thing I can think of is when I go to general->settings->network, internet tethering is spinning... Anyone else experiencing this? Even better, anyone else found a solution?

Hans Brix · Jun 27, 2010

My wife's phone is experiencing the same issue. I just tried "Reset All Settings". Hope that works.

M.Capz · Jun 27, 2010

telarmago said:
I'm losing 20% per night in standby; this is the 3rd straight night this has happened. This happened after a complete restore in airplane mode, no wifi, no exchange or email, no notifications, zero 3rd party apps, and only settings and phone in the tray. The only thing I can think of is when I go to general->settings->network, internet tethering is spinning... Anyone else experiencing this? Even better, anyone else found a solution?

I'm in the same boat... Very annoying.

hockeydude35 · Jun 27, 2010

Yeah, I feel like my battery is draining quicker than it should be and is also reporting a higher usage time than I actually had. Yesterday, my battery dropped to around 42% by the evening and it was reporting just over 3.5 hours of usage. I don't really think I used the phone more than an hour throughout the day, so I'm a bit concerned.

ntrigue · Jun 27, 2010

Just chiming-in to make sure everyone with issues does a Restore as New.

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