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Singin Hobo

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jan 16, 2008
168
37
Texas
I'm used to my 3G not having the best battery life... and I'm used to it having a much lower battery life than the 2G. My day usually consists of driving around for a few hours, listening to the iPod for 4 or 5 hours, checking maps every now-and-then, and using a handful of apps, (Facebook, AcroBible, MyWeather)... I'm certain that the specs shown on the iPhone tech specs page are padded quite a bit, but I make it through the day.

However, yesterday I used it sparingly, as you can guess by now from the title, my usage since last charge showed 2 hours 46 minutes, most of it in AcroBible (being at church and all) which is basically just an ebook reader with a Bible built-in. I didn't use maps/GPS at all, and I didn't use the iPod, video or audio. I left it off the charger last night at over half a charge remaining and woke up this morning to a 20% battery life warning.

Is there something wrong with my iPhone or is this just the lot we've been dealt?
 

kornyboy

macrumors 68000
Sep 27, 2004
1,529
0
Knoxville, TN (USA)
Wirelessly posted (iPhone: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 2_0_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.1 Mobile/5C1 Safari/525.20)

I pretty much have to charge my 3G every night. It doesn't matter if I use it a lot or not, it is a fact that I will not make of through the first half of the next day if I don't. I don't think there is anything wrong with your phone but you can keep an eye on it and get tech support if you think it is not normal.
 

aepple

macrumors member
Aug 13, 2008
40
0
Welcome to the world of iPhone 3G

Battery life is poor period, buy 2 or 3 batteries for a day use if you are a heavy user.
 

DoFoT9

macrumors P6
Jun 11, 2007
17,586
99
London, United Kingdom
one of my main concerns with the move to 3G was the increased power consumptions. tests revealed that it uses nearly twice the power as the older EDGE iPhones. i think id rather battery life over download speed.
 

Lexoticstylez02

macrumors 6502a
Oct 11, 2007
539
0
Orlando, Florida
My battery life is much better than I had with my 2g phone.. I leave 3G on at all times, GPS off unless I'm using it, brightness around 40%, manual e-mail check, bluetooth off when I don't have my headset with me and iPod EQ's off.. I'm getting about 6-7 hours of usage and 2 days standby, I'm sure it would be MUCH greater if I turned 3G off, but I bought the phone for the 3G capabilities.
 

waw74

macrumors 601
May 27, 2008
4,682
949
You can get extra batteries, just have to use them externally
I have one from Macally, it's about the size of the phone, and almost triples the battery life.
Went on a trip, stuck the battery in the seat back in front of me with just my regular dock cable, and did 5 or 6 hours of video, when i got there the phone was full, and the battery was at 1/2.
I've also used it for a quick recharge on the subway, and had friends use it for a quick refill when we were out.

Got mine at B&H here in New York for about $45.
there is also a similar but smaller battery, and a really small one that can act as a sync "cable" and has a built in flash drive (only accessible from computer)

http://www.macally.com/EN/Product/ArticleShow.asp?ArticleID=32
 
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