Battery on iphone 3g s drains very fast.

[bidgoodr]

My phone battery drains very fast after a full charge even though I don't use it constantly. I typically surf the net, check email on wifi or 3g for 5 minutes every hour and the battery almost drains after 3-4 hours.

Anyone has the same problem?

I've had the same problem, and my phone gets very hot compared to my motorola krazor. I noticed all of my settings were "on". So I'll monitor how switching them off changes the drainoff.

 

[freelander]

Restored as a new phone and got much better battery life today.

-3G on all day
-wifi on, but not connected to a network
-A few very brief (<1 min) phone calls
-4 hours of tethered 3G internet usage (screen was off during most of this) over bluetooth to my macbook
-iPod playing during tethering for about 2 hours
-About 20 minutes of watching Braveheart during study break with brightness all the way up
-Bought a song on the iTunes store over 3G too
-brightness at 50% with auto-brightness on
-1 gmail account fetching every 15 min; also pushing contacts/calendars over the air with Google Sync
-no apps with push notifications, so that wasn't enabled (although I do plan to reinstall beejive soon)
-location services on

overall, much better than the crappy ~3 hours I was getting when I was using the 3GS restored from a 3G backup. I was very, very close to calling AppleCare and asking them to send me a replacement. Hopefully it just needed to break-in a bit, and maybe using a 3GS from a 3G backup is just asking for trouble.

Apologies for the dumb question but...
If you restore as new phone, how do you get everything back on there that was backed up?

 

[SephirothXR]

If you restore the 3GS from a 3G backup, does it put the same OS that the 3GS came with (the right one)?? I believe there's a 1.2 for the 3G and a 1.1 for the 3GS or something like that, there are 3 different versions of 3.0 actually.

 

[propropro]

If you restore the 3GS from a 3G backup, does it put the same OS that the 3GS came with (the right one)?? I believe there's a 1.2 for the 3G and a 1.1 for the 3GS or something like that, there are 3 different versions of 3.0 actually.

I have the same exact question.. I restored my new 3GS from a 3G backup and I am having a really horrible battery life. Apart, when in use, my 3GS get hotter than my 3G.
I have seen a drop from 95% to 75% in only 6 hours of stanby time with 3g off, wifi off and MobileMe push on (but only 1 incoming mail). And I can even see how battery drains like 1% every 2 minutes while writting this and reading other answers!
Do you honestly think restoring again and setting it up as a new iPhone will help me with this??

 

[SephirothXR]

I have the same exact question.. I restored my new 3GS from a 3G backup and I am having a really horrible battery life. Apart, when in use, my 3GS get hotter than my 3G.
I have seen a drop from 95% to 75% in only 6 hours of stanby time with 3g off, wifi off and MobileMe push on (but only 1 incoming mail). And I can even see how battery drains like 1% every 2 minutes while writting this and reading other answers!
Do you honestly think restoring again and setting it up as a new iPhone will help me with this??

That's what MBHOCKEY just said above me. I might call Apple about this later but I still have yet to go through a complete discharge to around 0% so I'll wait for my usage statistics, and when the 3.0.1 update comes out, it'll be specific to the 3GS, so I think the problem will be solved right there.

 

[scotland007]

Guys,

I was having the same problems with my 3GS, battery power seemed poor, i was trying to conserve power by adjusting the brightness, limited my 3G surfing time, bluetooth off, location on/off etc. I normally take the phone off the charger at 5am and by 3pm it's pretty much below the 10% mark.

I took my phone into the Apple store, asked for the diagnostics and he did agree it wasn't quite performing as it should, he tried to brush it off as the brightness, but that day was my first day to turn it up the brighntess, normally i am 25% since receiving the phone on the 19th. He swapped it out for a new one and too say the least i am impressed. My other 3GS apparantly had a sticky home button as the new one has a better feel and yesterday taking the phone off charge at 5am and using the regular 3G surfing, listening to Sirius for about a hour and using maps for about 15 minutes, i was still at 30% at 9:30pm last night.

I half contemplated living with the old one and adjusting my phone/surfing habits but heck, i am a new iPhone customer and i just could not believe that the phone was intentially built to provide limited usage for such a fantastic phone.

I am glad i made the change.

 

[bruinsrme]

After doubting the reports of rapid discharge yesterday proved to me that there has to be an issue.
At the Buffett show I met 3 others with 3Gs phones. All have said they are charging more frequently than with the 3G.
Yesterday we arrived at the show around noon, after 15 pictures, checking email about twice an hour, looking up 2 websites, 2 posts to facebook, and 8 checks of the weather channel; a total of 57 minutes my battey was at around 30%

 

[Lenxal]

Is my battery bad?

I took it off at 8:30 this morning..'

edit: I have everything off except for wifi and brightness to atleast 30-40 percent. Atleast 10-15 minutes of gaming and 30-40 minutes of browsing atleast. That's about it.

 

[-aggie-]

Doesn't look to good to me.

 

[RKilbane20]

It depends what that 3 hours of usage was. If it was straight web browsing, games, or apps with 8 hours of standby I can see it being right.

 

[DeusInvictus7]

Yeah, it is totally based off what you are doing...so if you don't mind sharing, that would help us give a better answer

EDIT: Just saw your edit...your 45 min of usage that you said you did doesn't add up to your 3 Hours that your picture shows. But games do drain battery fast depending on the game.

 

[Lenxal]

Your right. Gaming should be the same but I guess I just said 40 minutes for safari because thats how long it felt.. but it still feels wrong. I haven't used anything but safari and a little bit of gaming. Not even one call or text.. but still I should still have more battery from just surfing the web right?

 

[DeusInvictus7]

Well, it's hard to say, I get about 5 or 6 hours of Usage, but I text a lot and don't game at all really. But comparing yours to mine...yes its not as good. But you have to remember, games are the real culprit in this.

 

[NYCphone]

Well, it's hard to say, I get about 5 or 6 hours of Usage, but I text a lot and don't game at all really. But comparing yours to mine...yes its not as good. But you have to remember, games are the real culprit in this.

My usage is similar to OP - was hoping for 5-6 hours. I have several push accounts including Microsoft Exchange for work. Do you have a lot of data being pushed to you and still getting 5-6 hours of usage?

 

[DeusInvictus7]

My usage is similar to OP - was hoping for 5-6 hours. I have several push accounts including Microsoft Exchange for work. Do you have a lot of data being pushed to you and still getting 5-6 hours of usage?

I have AIM pushing all day...but that's about it, other than my Yahoo mail account, which chooses to push when it feels it wants to. But still, I text quite a bit, and I have my phone on vibrate all the time. I would figure Push still uses a bit more power though.

Also, I do get 1.5 days or so worth of Standby in addition to 5-6 hours of Usage, so basically I get two good days of use without having to charge.

 

[montecarloss919]

anyone try to do restore their phone as a new phone and not pull from a an existing backup?

 

[SpaceKitty]

anyone try to do restore their phone as a new phone and not pull from a an existing backup?

That is what I have done. I've been running my iPhone this way for the past two days. Battery life seems to be doing very good.

 

[dagomike]

I did a full redo restore and it didn't seem to do any difference. Overall though I think the battery is doing better. Judging from the reduction of threads I'd guess others are finding similar things. That and people aren't constantly using the phonemaiking it seem worse than it is.

 

[trssho]

Anyone know????????????

Anyone know the actual specs on the 3GS battery. Am curious if the battery is different, or the hardware is supposed to make it more efficient.

 

[Luigi239]

After two charge cycles, my battery is terrible.

I've used it for 1 hour 14 minutes today, just doing light web browsing on WiFi, using it as a remote for an Apple TV (briefly) and a 5 minute phone call with 10:30 of standby. The battery is at 75%. For a device that is supposed to get 9 hours of battery life with WiFi browsing, the current 4-5 that I'm seeming to get is way off.

I made a genius bar appointment tomorrow since I'm going to be right near the store (which is unusual). Do you think it is worth it? The past two days I haven't been able to break 5 hours of usage with my phone.

Please help me, I really can't decide whether or not to go, or cancel the appointment.

 

[trina27]

I posted this in the other battery compare thread, but I'll do so here too:

Reminder: I'm a new iphone owner, so no restore was done...
*********************
So, I'm actually fine with my battery life. However, as compared to many of you apparently I am turning out to be a very light user.

3G on (didn't seem to wander to Edge); BT off; WiFi off; Push off; 1 hr Fetch; brightness around 1/3; Usage is mostly music via wired headphones; a hand-full or so (less than 10 for sure) of short calls; a hand-full of text messages; some emails read and deleted but no responses; location services on; fandango used; phone was last charged Wednesday night/Thursday a.m.; unplugged about 8:30 a.m. Thursday a.m.; was never plugged in to electric or USB to "top off".

 

[tmill56]

ive had my 3gs for just about a week now i get some emails throughout the day. Im not a gamer. but it seems like i loose about 15% of my battery life per hour. so i now have charging cables everywhere i go... oh well.. looks like not much has changed with battery life. just to save some i do leave it on airport mode so its not pushing emails or searching for signal while im working kinda a bummer but its not like at@t gets any signal where i work anyway.

 

[Ronnoco]

After two charge cycles, my battery is terrible.

I've used it for 1 hour 14 minutes today, just doing light web browsing on WiFi, using it as a remote for an Apple TV (briefly) and a 5 minute phone call with 10:30 of standby. The battery is at 75%. For a device that is supposed to get 9 hours of battery life with WiFi browsing, the current 4-5 that I'm seeming to get is way off.

I made a genius bar appointment tomorrow since I'm going to be right near the store (which is unusual). Do you think it is worth it? The past two days I haven't been able to break 5 hours of usage with my phone.

Please help me, I really can't decide whether or not to go, or cancel the appointment.

Keep the appointment, see what they say...

Just a quick observation...I was having similar crappy battery life seemingly no matter what i had on or off (I could watch the percentage go down about 1% every two minutes in usage and every four of five in standby with brightness at about 45%)...I just put it in Airplane mode and it hasn't moved off 57% in over 15 minutes of standby...interesting...
Edit: now 25 minutes, still 57%...

 

[Ronnoco]

Keep the appointment, see what they say...

Just a quick observation...I was having similar crappy battery life seemingly no matter what i had on or off (I could watch the percentage go down about 1% every two minutes in usage and every four of five in standby with brightness at about 45%)...I just put it in Airplane mode and it hasn't moved off 57% in over 15 minutes of standby...interesting...
Edit: now 25 minutes, still 57%...

Now nearly 45 minutes and still at 57% on Airplane Mode
I guess my battery is fine, but it seems the poor Edge 2G signal is quite a drain on the battery here...I usually was keeping 3G off (even though I have a better 3G signal here) except in cases I needed the 3G data network...wow!

 

[army91c]

3gs Longer battery life my $%@

Much less battery life than my 3g.... heats when charging, not 100% after being on the charger for aprox 9 hours. Hardly used and battery down to 50%. Screen brightness on 50% auto, don't have any games so can't play those. All the use is texting the little lady and some web surfing. The rest was taking pictures of my fast draining battery and emailing to myself so I can post....

Guess I got one of the lemons!
Had push on until about 80% charge and thought that may be it... NOPE
wifi on
BT off
Location off

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