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Tethering 3g while plugged into the wall, drains and dies!

Diversion

Diversion

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Oct 5, 2007
773
142
Jacksonville, Florida
Yeap.. You can't tether with 3g for very long before the phone dies, even when plugged in. The phone can't charge itself faster than tethering drains..

I tried USB and the wall charger.. both the same thing, I was around 40% battery life and tethered for fun with 4-5 bars of 3g signal strength.. I fired up World of Warcraft and about 20 minutes later I get disconnected from WoW.. Look over at my iphone and it's completely dead... Battery icon showing it's too low to do anything.

5 minutes later it boots up again with 8% battery.. I thought it was a fluke and tethered again and same thing after about 10 minutes.. iPhone died.

So yeah, seems the iPhone can't handle holding a WiFi connection and 3g connection at the same time - even under a charging source.

I believe this to only be true when you're tethering an app (such as WoW) that has a constant stream of data and never rests... I found that if I was just surfing the Web.. it might actually gain some battery life in the interim of pausing and reading webpages.

This is a huge disappointment to me.. I can't even rely on the iPhone to provide me internet for more than an hour, even when charged up to 100%.

And no, don't tell me my battery is broke cause I get 5+ hours usage and 2 days standby time.. which is a lot more than a lot of people get. This is with half brightness, 3g on, and WiFi.. 50% 3g and 50% wifi everyday.

My battery is more than fine. On the other hand, my phone *might* have a problem charging though.. but it charges to 100% in about 1.5 hours on a normal day... that seems pretty normal.

Anybody else experience this?
 
This issue has been well documented. The iPhone simply wasn't made to run an app (NetShare in this case or 3Proxy/Terminal runing in the background on a jailbroken iPhone) while simultaneously having the WiFi radio on and the screen backlight always on, as well as the having the 3G radio on if enabled...not to mention the phone working to push the data stream to your computer. It's way too taxing on the phone.
 
Diversion said:
Wow that's terrible news.. so we can't even expect to have a GPS app running while being plugged in and expect it to last us on 1+ hour trip..

This has gotta be a huge oversight on Apple's part..
Click to expand...

Wow I didn't know this. And imagine they want turn by turn on it...
 
I wish that Apple and AT&T would allow tethering using the dock connector. This would alleviate some of the battery drain as it would no longer require using WiFi.

I managed to get netshare whilst it was available but have never taken the time to even set it up. I only got it because I am the IT manager at my office and if I am on the road and an emergency arises I may need the ability to tether. I haven't traveled since I got netshare thus I have had no reason to set it up.
 
The first time I used the GPS extensively it drained my battery while charging on my car charger. Afterward, I read a post here that told me the charging automatically kicks off if the temp of the iPhone gets hot, which it was that day. The second time I used GPS for a long period of time I made sure to keep it cool (kept it in direct flow of the AC, and out of the sunlight.) I also periodically unplugged the charger for a few minutes, and then reconnected it. I did not drain the battery this time doing this. Both times I was using the iPod functions as well.
sue
 
affenage said:
The first time I used the GPS extensively it drained my battery while charging on my car charger. Afterward, I read a post here that told me the charging automatically kicks off if the temp of the iPhone gets hot, which it was that day. The second time I used GPS for a long period of time I made sure to keep it cool (kept it in direct flow of the AC, and out of the sunlight.) I also periodically unplugged the charger for a few minutes, and then reconnected it. I did not drain the battery this time doing this. Both times I was using the iPod functions as well.
sue
Click to expand...

WOW exact same thing I figured out

i was driving down to San Diego and sure enough my charger stopped charging my very warm iPhone... I turned on my ac and hit the back of the iPhone with it for a few minutes.. sure enough it started charging again
 
MatthewStorm said:
Ahem.....maybe THIS is why there is no turn-by-turn.......hmmmm.....
Click to expand...

Turn by turn on mobile phones do not maintain a permanent connection. It will connect periodically to download the next map section and traffic report. Additionally, there is an option to only turn the backlight on when approaching a junction or turn.

I've happily used Telenav on my BlackBerry for trips over 2 hours and still had plenty of battery left for a normal days usage.
 
GPS itself will eat batteries, I have a "jailbroken/hacked" Navigon GPS that runs under Windows CE. When I use it to play movies or music the battery will last a while, as soon as I turn on the Navigon GPS software (its original software) the battery goes within a few hours. So I think GPS in general eats batteries.
 
are you guys serious...?

I was so shocked reading this thread. then how do I survive a 3+ hour trip needing GPS??
 
wow. This thread certainly changed my view of my iPhone. This is extremely disappointing that even while under charge my iphone will still lose more power than it's capable of charging.
 
i thought when you're running anything plugged in, you're using ac power, not battery power.
 
I imagine that it's a good idea to quit Maps on the iPhone or to turn off your standalone GPS if you're gonna be on the same freeway for longer than half an hour or so. Just remember/write down where you have to exit and then turn on your GPS.
 
There's no direct power bypass? You can run a laptop with the battery pulled out, you would think the iphone could run off external power whether or not the battery was charging.
 
Um yeah

You're using the iPhone in a way it wasn't designed to be. No one should be surprised by this.
 
Sean Dempsey said:
There's no direct power bypass? You can run a laptop with the battery pulled out, you would think the iphone could run off external power whether or not the battery was charging.
Click to expand...

i think the problem is that the iphone can theoretically draw more than 5v @ 1amp, unfortunately this is the maximum output via any charger
 
Hmm this isn't good news is it? Looks like I need to buy a used 8525 or something so I can tether when I need to.

Shucks.
 
Wirelessly posted (iPhone 16GB: 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've seen this with other phones (samsung windows mobile device for one) so it doesn't really surprise me. Still a bit disappointing though...
 
Do you think its a power supply problem? Has anyone tried to supply it from more than the USB 500mA source?
 
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