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3G 100% - 10% in twenty hours of standby is this normal?

T

teadigger

macrumors member
Original poster
Jan 15, 2009
50
0
Hi I am new to iphones and my 3g phone seems to have a short battery life. The location service is turned off, as is wifi, bluetooth. It has gone from full battery to 10% in twenty hours, with perhaps 2min call.
I have reset and seems to make no difference.

The phone was bought new on e-bay and arrived as an O2 (UK carrier) Refurb with apple warranty ect. The phone looked unused and I have had it about a month. Is it time to go and see the Apple guys before warranty is out or is this the normal.?
 
teadigger said:
Hi I am new to iphones and my 3g phone seems to have a short battery life. The location service is turned off, as is wifi, bluetooth. It has gone from full battery to 10% in twenty hours, with perhaps 2min call.
I have reset and seems to make no difference.

The phone was bought new on e-bay and arrived as an O2 (UK carrier) Refurb with apple warranty ect. The phone looked unused and I have had it about a month. Is it time to go and see the Apple guys before warranty is out or is this the normal.?
Click to expand...

How is your signal? Do you have push or fetch? 3G on? It actually isn't that bad, but it matters on what I asked as to how bad.
 
Ouch! what happened to 300hrs

Apple quote 300hrs standby it is not even close to 1/4 of that.
signal is good 3-5 bars with GPR symbol on screen although location service is turned off. Could it be I am on a basic contract until and up grade next month that way I have got a far cheaper deal and bought phone for less as only O2 are sole providers of iphone in uk.
Could it be that although services are turned off the phone is still searching for a service that I am not yet getting, hence the battery drain. The problem seems to have got worse over the month I have had it. It has replaced a 2nd gen itouch which would be on standby in to weeks when I was busy, theirs not that much going on or am I being tec stupid. thanks for the quick reply.
teadigger
 
teadigger said:
Apple quote 300hrs standby it is not even close to 1/4 of that.
signal is good 3-5 bars with GPR symbol on screen although location service is turned off. Could it be I am on a basic contract until and up grade next month that way I have got a far cheaper deal and bought phone for less as only O2 are sole providers of iphone in uk.
Could it be that although services are turned off the phone is still searching for a service that I am not yet getting, hence the battery drain. The problem seems to have got worse over the month I have had it. It has replaced a 2nd gen itouch which would be on standby in to weeks when I was busy, theirs not that much going on or am I being tec stupid. thanks for the quick reply.
teadigger
Click to expand...

Well, first Apple's testing was not done in the kinds of conditions that you would see in normal use. You're not going to get 300 hours under normal use. See the website for the battery tests they did.:

http://www.apple.com/iphone/battery.html

I don't understand what you're asking in the bold.

Yes, searching for a service could be the source of battery drain. Lots of things could be, but I normally get a day of standby, so that's not unusual for a 3G (especially if it's fairly new). You may just need to calibrate your battery. Let it die totally and then recharge fully (you shouldn't do this more often than monthly). You should also look through the multitude of threads on battery life for the 3G and 3GS. They'll give you a better idea as to what people are getting normally.
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_0_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7A400 Safari/528.16)

Seems normal if you are pushing or fetching email.
 
iphone.aggie said:
Well, first Apple's testing was not done in the kinds of conditions that you would see in normal use. You're not going to get 300 hours under normal use. See the website for the battery tests they did.:

http://www.apple.com/iphone/battery.html
Click to expand...

I hate when people say that. Did you actually read the testing conditions? All settings were default except for a few settings, the most important factor being call-forwarding turned on. If you don't receive any calls, however, (and I can't imagine a person receiving many calls and talking only 2 minutes in 20 hours), call-forwarding won't make a difference.

To answer the OP's question, that battery life is terrible - unless you were using the phone aside from calls. Check your usage/standby time in Settings > General > Usage. You should be seeing a 1% decrease in battery every 2-3 hours. IMO 1% drain in standby per hour is poor, and you are getting over 4% drained per hours - that's horrendous.
 
teadigger said:
Hi I am new to iphones and my 3g phone seems to have a short battery life. The location service is turned off, as is wifi, bluetooth. It has gone from full battery to 10% in twenty hours, with perhaps 2min call.
I have reset and seems to make no difference.

The phone was bought new on e-bay and arrived as an O2 (UK carrier) Refurb with apple warranty ect. The phone looked unused and I have had it about a month. Is it time to go and see the Apple guys before warranty is out or is this the normal.?
Click to expand...

Not for me it isn't. I'm in the habit of manually sleeping my phone whenever I set it down, though (LCD backlights chew up power). I have push enabled for accounts that support it; for those that don't, I have fetch set to "manual." WiFi is usually off, bluetooth and location services are on, and I can quite literally go for a couple of days on standby. I don't usually leave apps running (this can be another bit battery drain).

Some threads I've found (here or elsewhere) suggest that if you restored from a previous-gen phone, then that could be the root of your problem, and there was a procedure suggested (DFU restore?) to clear it up. I don't recall the technical details (radio power levels?).
 
try to answer question

In the uk O2 are the only network that can supply iphones and contracts starting at £35pm for little air time ect. I have been with them for years so got a very good sim deal only and bought a O2 locked iphone ON E-BAY, hence i am awaiting my up grade package.

I am currently taking time off work, so push ect is turned off which is my concern. Work is work and holiday is mine.
As regards the calls, the same.

So the phone is running minimal settings and everything turned off wifi ect, so the battery should be lasting way longer. Auto standby after 1 min so it is not powered up for long periods.

Is it a case of taking it back to apple and see what they say.
 
teadigger said:
In the uk O2 are the only network that can supply iphones and contracts starting at £35pm for little air time ect. I have been with them for years so got a very good sim deal only and bought a O2 locked iphone ON E-BAY, hence i am awaiting my up grade package.

I am currently taking time off work, so push ect is turned off which is my concern. Work is work and holiday is mine.
As regards the calls, the same.

So the phone is running minimal settings and everything turned off wifi ect, so the battery should be lasting way longer. Auto standby after 1 min so it is not powered up for long periods.

Is it a case of taking it back to apple and see what they say.
Click to expand...

I can only tell you what my experience has been and many others I've seen. I actually have a 3G, BTW. Anyway, there are many things that can affect battery life. I won't repeat all I said, but being on 3G all the time with a less than great signal could suck your battery down. For me, at home I use wifi, and can go all weekend w/o charging. However, I don't get more than a day of standby EVER in any other conditions. Like I said, read the threads on battery life to see.

I'll let the users getting 300 hours of standby address any other concerns that you have. :)
 
Isn't that good?

I mean 20hrs with -10% battery.

That means in about 200Hours it's fully drained out.

That's as close to the 300hours that you'll get.
 
fireshot91 said:
Isn't that good?

I mean 20hrs with -10% battery.

That means in about 200Hours it's fully drained out.

That's as close to the 300hours that you'll get.
Click to expand...

I don't think you understand OP... his battery went form 100% to 10% in 20 hours of standby..


I would suspect there may be a battery issue.... I have fetch every 15 minutes set on mine and I can get 20 hrs of standby no problem... I don't have a 3GS so I can't say exactly what % I use in 20 hrs of standby but I would say It would be about 10-15% of the battery would be used for 20 hrs of standby.... that's also with location services turned on...
 
Have you calibrated your battery gauge? If not, it may be completely misleading.

How far are you from the nearest cell tower, wifi access point, or bluetooth device (depending on which are enabled)? If far away, then your phone's transmitters are blasting out at max power, and draining the battery far faster than spec.
 
Since you bought your Unit from a 3rd party, I'll recommend you check the sensors for water damage. 20hrs of standby is pathetically pitiful. My 3G sitting for a day on my desk with :

- 50% brightness
- full bar 3G signal (no searching)
- wifi on (connected, no searching)
- bluetooth off
- occasional calls (10 - 15 mins)
- 15 - 20 text's
- no surfing

Which is almost as good as little or negligible usage drops only a bar of battery in 24 hours.

However, I have another 3G which is water damaged and the battery conditions sounds like yours.

Alternatively, do a full restore from a new iPhone, calibrate the battery from 0 - 100%, full discharge and repeat it again, or simply check if you have a rogue app in the background vampiring your battery (check standby VS usage times).
 
no features running, sensor ok

Hi thanks for all the posts

The phone is a 3G from what i can make out most people are running at least wifi and 3G and getting way more battery life.

visual check on water sensor and still white phew! as it stands at moment.

Full signal bar.

GPR symbol on-but location service off.

Wifi turned off.

Push ect turned off.

Bluetooth off.

3G off.

couple of app and as far as i am aware turned off.
Not much of a iphone experience.

Phone has just run out, seems to be spot on with screen symbol; to re calibrate do I wall charge and re-set usage settings and recharge with the phone is turned off.
The phone was restored after adding 3.1 as it spat the dummy while doing the update.

thanks for all the advice. great to get positive help as my couple of other posts have been less than welcoming, faith restored. cheers
 
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