iPhone 3G's with 2.1 software battery life

[jfong425]

Hey everyone. I know it's a little to early to tell but what do you think of your "Significantly better battery life for most users" that apple has stated? It's only been a few hours since the update and I'm still not sure about this one.

My battery is still draining fast, but I'll wait and see. I've been surfing safari for about 40 minutes and listening to music for about an hour. Please post your experiences with your new 2.1 software battery.

 

[plinden]

First generation iPhone, now with 2.1 firmware - with 2.0.1 I would get 8-10 hours listening to my iPod, and I would notice the drain on the battery meter by now.

With version 1.1.4 I could go two days with 8 hours per day iPod use, without needing to charge (and would hardly ever get the 20% warning, never mind the 10% warning).

My usage is generally one or two five minute calls a day, a couple of SMS, WiFi on with 30-60 minutes surfing, mail pushed from Exchange server, location services on.

I've been listening to the iPod since about 10am this morning (two hours so far). I'm sure the battery bar must have moved but I can't distinguish it from full charge. I'll know more by the time I leave for home in about five hours.

 

[cere]

Hey everyone. I know it's a little to early to tell but what do you think of your "Significantly better battery life for most users" that apple has stated? It's only been a few hours since the update and I'm still not sure about this one.

My battery is still draining fast, but I'll wait and see. I've been surfing safari for about 40 minutes and listening to music for about an hour. Please post your experiences with your new 2.1 software battery.

I disconnected mine immediately after the update was done, so around 8:30 this morning. I have push email and wifi on and by this time normally, I would expect the to be a significant drop on the battery indicator. Up until 1.5 hours ago, my indicator still showed full strength. Now it shows a slight drop. I would say it is greatly improved, assuming the indicator is accurate and won't just suddenly drop to 20%. I will know better by this evening. By early evening my battery is usually under 50% and sometime I even get the 20% warning as I arrive home, after having charged it as soon as I got to work in the morning. If by 7 or 8 this evening I haven't had a battery warning, I will say it is massively improved.

 

[ClemTiger0408]

I had a 20 minute phone call, about an hours use of Pandora and random email checking (Fetch is on every 15 minutes) and my battery still shows full charge.

Assuming the indicator is correct, that's a noticeable improvement.

I'm on 3g with 3g on.

EDIT: that was 2 20 minute phone calls.

 

[Trajectory]

I reset all my Usage stats after upgrading and letting the battery fully charge. So now I'll see how long this charge lasts over the next 24 hours.

 

[Jayden0606]

One thing I do notice, probably will never change, is that Bluetooth utilizes a lot of your battery power. When I say a lot, it kills it quickly. I have bluetooth, wifi and 3g on. It's hard for me to tell, but I am already under 50%.

 

[plinden]

I've been listening to the iPod since about 10am this morning (two hours so far). I'm sure the battery bar must have moved but I can't distinguish it from full charge. I'll know more by the time I leave for home in about five hours.

Update - it's now 5pm - after 7 hours of listening to music nonstop on my iPhone (the things I do for research). The battery is maybe 1/4 discharged, so it might even be better than 1.1.4.

Of course, since I have a first gen iPhone, that's not including GPS or 3G, but it's an impressive improvement - about 1/3 the battery use of 2.0.1

 

[DaZe3]

Hey everyone. I know it's a little to early to tell but what do you think of your "Significantly better battery life for most users" that apple has stated? It's only been a few hours since the update and I'm still not sure about this one.

My battery is still draining fast, but I'll wait and see. I've been surfing safari for about 40 minutes and listening to music for about an hour. Please post your experiences with your new 2.1 software battery.

my battery has been alot better.. and like it says.. for some users

 

[cere]

I will say a great improvement. After 13 hours I still has well over 50% charge. This time includes about 30 mins of calls, about 200 email (push & fetch, work and spam), about an hour of browsing, wifi and G3 on and just over an hour of streaming from Simplify. I threw it on the charger at about 10pm, mostly out of habit and because I will be leave the house early and don't quite fully trust the charge indicator yet. Normally, by 7 or 8 I would have certainly had a 10% warning.

 

[Wishkid]

I intalled the 2.1 software and I havent seen any improvement on the battery life. On the 2G iphone i only charge it may once every day and half, this 3G i have to charge it twice a day just not working for me. I laso an adapter for my car stereo and it doesnt charge the 3G but it works fine with the 2G sucks im really thinking about returning this 3G only had it for 3 days.

 

[Anuba]

Gave the iPhone a full recharge last night.
Woke up this morning and the battery was down to 50%.

WHAT??? With previous firmware versions it used to be 100%. Once I was up to 4 days of standby time.

So... went into Settings/Usage and it says

Usage 10 Hours, 19 Minutes
Standby 12 Hours, 35 Minutes

WHAT EFFING "USAGE"??? 3G is off. Bluetooth is off. Location Services is off. Fetch is off. Push is off. In short, everything that could have made the iPhone a real smartphone has been disabled to preserve its microscopic battery. So where the hell is this "usage" coming from, and how can it be combined with Standby time? I took the phone from the charger 12 hours and 35 minutes ago. Not 22 hours 54 minutes ago. It's either on standby or it's not. I didn't use it for anything after recharging, I received no calls or text messages during the night, didn't listen to music, didn't fetch mail.

Apparently "Standby" is a relative term in Cupertino. Newsflash: If I tell the phone to stand by, it should STAND THE F**K BY and not suck up battery for some unknown arbitrary purpose.

 

[Foggy]

Gave the iPhone a full recharge last night.
Woke up this morning and the battery was down to 50%.

WHAT??? With previous firmware versions it used to be 100%. Once I was up to 4 days of standby time.

So... went into Settings/Usage and it says

Usage 10 Hours, 19 Minutes
Standby 12 Hours, 35 Minutes

WHAT EFFING "USAGE"??? 3G is off. Bluetooth is off. Location Services is off. Fetch is off. Push is off. In short, everything that could have made the iPhone a real smartphone has been disabled to preserve its microscopic battery. So where the hell is this "usage" coming from, and how can it be combined with Standby time? I took the phone from the charger 12 hours and 35 minutes ago. Not 22 hours 54 minutes ago. It's either on standby or it's not. I didn't use it for anything after recharging, I received no calls or text messages during the night, didn't listen to music, didn't fetch mail.

Apparently "Standby" is a relative term in Cupertino. Newsflash: If I tell the phone to stand by, it should STAND THE F**K BY and not suck up battery for some unknown arbitrary purpose.

Oddly enough I experienced the exact same issue - updated yesterday and fully charged it, battery half dead this morning, usage figures in the double figures when I have used it at most for half an hour. Have powered down and back up and am charging it now, will see if it happens again.

 

[DenniZ]

Oddly enough I experienced the exact same issue - updated yesterday and fully charged it, battery half dead this morning, usage figures in the double figures when I have used it at most for half an hour. Have powered down and back up and am charging it now, will see if it happens again.

Usually happens when a stray application just is left running in the background. Could be its crashed in a loop or just idle. But these usually add to the usage.

 

[Foggy]

Usually happens when a stray application just is left running in the background. Could be its crashed in a loop or just idle. But these usually add to the usage.

Thats what I figured hence the reboot - it happened once whilst my phone was on charge, it was actually using power faster than it was charging!

 

[Anuba]

Usually happens when a stray application just is left running in the background. Could be its crashed in a loop or just idle. But these usually add to the usage.

So is there any way to kill apps manually?

I never liked Apple's concept of not quitting OS X applications when you close the last window, but on a computer I can live with it. On the iPhone, however, it's downright dangerous. What if I go hiking in the mountains, thinking a full charge will be plenty, then I break my leg and pull out the phone to call for help -- nope, sorry, battery's dead because that Solitaire game you played yesterday happened to crash on exit and has been drawing power like crazy ever since.

iPhone should automatically force quit apps that didn't shut down properly...

 

[soLoredd]

So is there any way to kill apps manually?

I never liked Apple's concept of not quitting OS X applications when you close the last window, but on a computer I can live with it. On the iPhone, however, it's downright dangerous. What if I go hiking in the mountains, thinking a full charge will be plenty, then I break my leg and pull out the phone to call for help -- nope, sorry, battery's dead because that Solitaire game you played yesterday happened to crash on exit and has been drawing power like crazy ever since.

iPhone should automatically force quit apps that didn't shut down properly...

I know it's not ideal but this is why I usually power-cycle my cell phones before charging. For example, before bed I always have iPhone in the charger next to my bed (I use it as an alarm). I turn it off then on before putting it in the charger. This has become a habit because my old Motorola v635 had some defect in the battery charge - it would discharge after something like 10 hours STANDBY if I didn't power-cycle it.

I agree, though, the way the OS handles the apps is not the best. If we can't have running apps (like Pandora for example) then why not just force quit them everytime? Have the apps coded to always save the last state before quitting. But, I don't know much about coding so not sure how effective that would be.

 

[jmmo20]

for my iphone it's actually worse. A lot worse than with earlier 2.x versions!! I can't believe it.

Historically on weekends my battery drains VERY slowly since I don't use the iphone much at all (i'm home afterall..). I used to be able to go saturday morning to sunday night without recharging.

Well.. i unplugged my iphone this morning. Had no calls, barely played with it. 3 or 4 sms texts.. and it's almost 20% (hasn't shown the popup yet but I guess it's about to).

What's the deal with this?
So 2.1 "improves significantly battery life for most users" .... " while it ****s up the rest of users????????

 

[Saladinos]

I've found the iPhone often doesn't really know how much battery it's got. Some times, I'll charge it for hours, and it'll show 50%. Then I take it out, plug it back in, and it's instantly 100%.

I've also had an issue where it complains of having 10% battery life. I just restart it, and the indicator is back to 50%. I can use it for hours more after that.

 

[sibruk]

So is there any way to kill apps manually?

Hold down the HOME button for 10 seconds. I thought that this just killed the current app, but a Genius at the Apple Store in London recently told me that it kills all running apps.

 

[SFC Archer]

When I was on 1.1.4 on my classic, I had the battery drain without use problems a couple of times. I finally figured it out one day and since have not had that problem again.

For me it was the mail app. I use Gmail and I had checked my email prior to those battery drains and either a large email or one with attachments got stuck thus leaving the mail app running trying to download it.

I found out about it due to that email not being on my iPhone yet it was in my Google mail box and one had picture attachments and the other had some docs attached to it. Either way both files were large and even on wifi the app got stuck downloading it.

One of two fixes with remedy this if email keeps running and you get tired of waiting for it to finish. Either force quit (press and hold home key till home screen comes back) or power down, leave off for about 15 secs (I do this nightly) then I run my music for sleep and have had no battery problems (draining) since.

The same could be for an app...they can get stuck if you are using (games) and then just hit the home key. If you did not exit the game and just go to home screen, you could be leaving something running in the background. Always exit an app if an exit is available.

Just some tidbits of info that MAY help users.

Good Luck

 

[Anuba]

Hold down the HOME button for 10 seconds. I thought that this just killed the current app, but a Genius at the Apple Store in London recently told me that it kills all running apps.

Wow... excellent tip, and it worked too. Mental note taken, thanks.

 

[jfong425]

update

Hey everyone. I know it's a little to early to tell but what do you think of your "Significantly better battery life for most users" that apple has stated? It's only been a few hours since the update and I'm still not sure about this one.

My battery is still draining fast, but I'll wait and see. I've been surfing safari for about 40 minutes and listening to music for about an hour. Please post your experiences with your new 2.1 software battery.

hey everyone. here is a update on my battery life. I charged it yesterday at 10:00 A.M. and now its 10:00 A.M. the next day. My usage is 3 Hours, 44 Minutes. My Standby is 1 Day 0 Hours.

I've used it for surfing for about an hour and ipod for about 3 hours. Checked e-mail quite a bit and just random clicking on my phone. I have about 30% battery life left. I don't think the battery issue has been fixed yet. BOO

 

[tom2517]

So far mine has horrible battery life, only 6 hours gone and it has 20% left. I was only playing with the GPS for about 20 minutes. It's on 3G and email is set on push.

Anyways, I will fully charge it again tonight and see what happens tomorrow.

 

[Anuba]

Hold down the HOME button for 10 seconds. I thought that this just killed the current app, but a Genius at the Apple Store in London recently told me that it kills all running apps.

Hmm... unfortunately I think the Genius was misinformed.

I tried fiddling with this home button trick while playing music in the iPod app. If the iPod app is open on your screen and you hold the button for 10s, the music stops and the home screen appears. However, if the iPod app is minimized but still playing music in the background, the music won't stop after you've held down the home button for 10 seconds (or 20 for that matter). It only kills the app currently in focus.

 

[Libitina]

Oddly enough I experienced the exact same issue - updated yesterday and fully charged it, battery half dead this morning, usage figures in the double figures when I have used it at most for half an hour. Have powered down and back up and am charging it now, will see if it happens again.

mines the same. Gone from nearly 3 days on standby to 17 hours since updating to 2.1. Grrr