Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

3GS Battery = crappy?

M

maximus06

macrumors regular
Original poster
Nov 5, 2007
212
0
I'm an ex-2G owner and I just got a 3GS. I have been using it for ~12 hours after charging it full, and have noticed that the battery life is pretty terrible.

I turned off 3G as well as push/fetch, made one 6min call, did not use data, and just played around with a few apps sporadically. The battery life went quickly down to 2% after less than 2.5 hours of light use w/ about 10 hours of standby time in airplane mode.

Specifically, location services seems to have the biggest effect on it. It makes sense when you're in an app that actually uses GPS/Cell to get your position, but why would it eat battery when I'm not using any "location features"? And to be able to use compass/gps you have to go back into settings to turn it on again, very annoying.

I'm impressed with its speed, but the battery life is apparently worse than the 2G iPhone, which was already horrible.

Edit: Some people suggested that there may be a "break-in" period for the battery, so perhaps (hopefully) the battery life will increase significantly in the next few days.
 
I've had great battery life on mine, just plugged it in right now and it had 10% left. 5 hours and 40 minutes of usage and 2 days 14 hours of standby time.
 
Apple is replacing mine after only 4 days of use. I couldnt get the battery to last more than 5 hours, regardless of use.

I should have my new one before Wednesday.
 
Really depends, this is near my 2nd discharge and I love it! Lots of texts, internet, gaming, practically everything. The phone isn't supposed to be 50% better, maybe better in internet usage, but otherwise I'd say it's better because I used to get just 5 hours usage within 2 days, and this is much better.
mail
 
My battery usage had gotten better. Push sucks battery, plus the newness is wearing off so I'm getting back to normal usage. I think I might have had some rogue apps too. I have no complaints anymore.

I'm going to get a car charger and maybe an external battery. I'm not going to fret over battery life and not touch the phone. No big deal.
 
taran420 said:
Wow 5 hours and you're complaining. I average 3 hours and am pretty sure apple won't replace
Click to expand...

that 5 hours on standby, if I made a call or used it it would drop to about 2 - 2.5 hours.

My 3g would make it through the day with normal usage, this one barely makes it to work in the morning.
 
i have a 3GS from a 3G and i have NOTICEABLY better battery life.. i used to have to charge at least 2 times a day on my 3G and now i can go an entire day without seeing the 20% Low battery pop up
 
TapOut said:
i have a 3GS from a 3G and i have NOTICEABLY better battery life.. i used to have to charge at least 2 times a day on my 3G and now i can go an entire day without seeing the 20% Low battery pop up
Click to expand...

I'm the same way. However, I don't live in an area with 3G, so that is never on for me. But then again, I regularly got the 20% notification on my 3G.
 
abiyng87 said:
I'm the same way. However, I don't live in an area with 3G, so that is never on for me. But then again, I regularly got the 20% notification on my 3G.
Click to expand...

yeah i dont have 3G in my area either .. but i guess all the towers are 3G capable and have just been upgraded

freaking ATT needs to turn them on for real
 
Using the same habits I'm getting better battery life so can't complain.
 
I never got this kind of usage from my 3G.

I am fairly happy with it.

This was with mostly email checking, app store checking, phone calls, facebook app, camera and picture uploads and texting. Most importantly, this usage had ZERO iPod usage. (Which is great for inflating your usage number.)
 

Attachments

  • iPhone3GS-Usage.jpg
    iPhone3GS-Usage.jpg
    44.6 KB · Views: 115
I think there's something wrong with Exchange. I've been trying to track down the source of this bad battery bug (I'm convinced it's software related) since the 3GS and 3.0 were released.

I have an exchange account for Gmail (only contacts and calendar) to sync them over the air. But at the start, I just restored from my 3G backup. So I decided to set it up as a new phone; maybe a specific app was draining the batt.

After reinstalling apps 1 by 1 and not finding them depleting the battery worse, I turned off the exchange sync. With that on, it was going from 100% to 79% in 30 minutes of Safari + 3G usage. After turning it off I got ~2 hours before it hit 60%. I think there's something wrong with exchange.

Do you guys with battery issues use exchange accounts?
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_0 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7A341 Safari/528.16)

MBHockey said:
I think there's something wrong with Exchange. I've been trying to track down the source of this bad battery bug (I'm convinced it's software related) since the 3GS and 3.0 were released.

I have an exchange account for Gmail (only contacts and calendar) to sync them over the air. But at the start, I just restored from my 3G backup. So I decided to set it up as a new phone; maybe a specific app was draining the app.

After reinstalling apps 1 by 1 and not finding them depleting the battery worse, I turned off the exchange sync. With that on, it was going from 100% to 79% in 30 minutes of Safari + 3G usage. After turning it off I got ~2 hours before it hit 60%. I think there's something wrong with exchange.

Do you guys with battery issues use exchange accounts?
Click to expand...

Interesting theory. I have an Exchange account and get less than stellar battery life...
 
My 3GS battery is way worse then the 3g. I thought it was my imagination until my phone completly ran out on a normal days use. I had the 3g since day 1 and never completly ran out of battery life.
 
There's definitely something wrong, and I do believe it is software related.

With "push" on my battery life dropped 10% in ~20 minutes, in STANDBY mode, not doing anything!

Similarly, with "location services" on the battery goes to its knees almost as fast as with "push" on...mysteriously. I'd love to know why that is. I look forward to the official jailbreak so that I can easily turn these things on/off using sbsettings when I need them.
 
I've no complaints about battery life on mine, which is on a par with my 2G.
 
MBHockey said:
I think there's something wrong with Exchange. I've been trying to track down the source of this bad battery bug (I'm convinced it's software related) since the 3GS and 3.0 were released.

I have an exchange account for Gmail (only contacts and calendar) to sync them over the air. But at the start, I just restored from my 3G backup. So I decided to set it up as a new phone; maybe a specific app was draining the batt.

After reinstalling apps 1 by 1 and not finding them depleting the battery worse, I turned off the exchange sync. With that on, it was going from 100% to 79% in 30 minutes of Safari + 3G usage. After turning it off I got ~2 hours before it hit 60%. I think there's something wrong with exchange.

Do you guys with battery issues use exchange accounts?
Click to expand...
Nope.

I use Exchange to sync Google Contacts and Calendar, and as you can see from above, I am doing pretty good.

However, I do NOT have PUSH turned on for anything email related. I manually check my email, or, manually update my calendar and contacts by going in to those apps after making changes.

Only the AP app and BeeJive when I log in.
maximus06 said:
With "push" on my battery life dropped 10% in ~20 minutes, in STANDBY mode, not doing anything!
Click to expand...

If that is 100% accurate then there is no way I don't take that phone to Apple and get another one.

There is NO WAY it should drop like that, PUSH on or no PUSH on.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back