Unusually high usage?

[jjk454ss]

OK, I have always had poor battery life with my 3G iPhone. Waited until 2.1 was out hoping to fix things. I have not done all the tweaks and things to try and improve it, thought 2.1 would take care of it. I am going to change some settings, and even drain the battery tonight to try and recalibrate it. I do have Push on, I do have location services on, bluetooth is off, wifi in on.

But my main question, and what could be the issue, is right now I have 4 hrs and 50 min or Usage, and 10 hrs and 49 min of Standby. There is no way I used my phone for almost 5 hrs today. I was working for half these hours and there is no way I was actually using the phone this much. Is this something to do with Push mail? It shouldn't be any app, right? Any thoughts on this high usage?

Thanks

 

[Anuba]

I think we're up to something like a hundred reports about this issue on the forum...

There are many theories, but phantom usage is believed to come from applications that crashed on exit, got stuck in a loop and just sit there bleeding the battery dry.

I had decent battery life with 2.0.2. After installing 2.1, the battery was down to red after 12 hours (out of which I had been sleeping for about 9), and reported 10+ hours of usage.

After that, I made a habit out of rebooting the phone regularly to kill all apps (you shouldn't have to, but it's the only known workaround), and now the battery life looks like this:

 

[jjk454ss]

Sorry, didn't mean to start another thread if I didn't need to. But the search didn't find too much useful info for me, it just wouldn't narrow it down enough.

Anyway, I will try and reset more often to see if this helps. I was going to try and remove all apps for a day or two anyway and see if that changed anything.

Thanks, and any other ideas, please keep posting.

 

[ribenaberrie]

No idea why but I had the same problem the other day. My iphone was saying I had 23hours usage and 1 days 12 hours standby but there is no way I used it for 23 hours!!

Would be interested to see if anyone knows why its happening. This is the first time its ever happened and I have 2.1 as well.

I've recharged since and rebooted and seems OK so far.

 

[icewing]

Is there any difference between a hard reboot (hold power and home buttons down) and just turning it off (hold power button until slide to power off appears) and then turning it back on? Would the normal power off kill any runaway apps?

 

[hazza.jockel]

this happened to me aswell but i didnt get anywhere near 5 days use. I don't think i have ever gone 5 days with out charging my iPhone

 

[Anuba]

this happened to me aswell but i didnt get anywhere near 5 days use. I don't think i have ever gone 5 days with out charging my iPhone

It's easy for me to get 5 days because I also have an iPod Touch, so I can use that one for all the fun, power-draining stuff while leaving the iPhone on standby. They do advertise 250 (or was it 300?) hours of standby time, and 250 hours is over 10 days. But in order to test if that's even possible, you'd have to leave your phone on standby, switch everything off except EDGE, never use it for anything, and hope that nobody calls in up to 10 days...

Note also that temperature has a major effect on battery life. I live in Sweden where it's fairly cold, which is a good environment for Li-Ion batteries... people who live in California and hang out on the beach all day will have short-lived iPhone batteries.

 

[bigscotal]

I have been suffering from similar issues since updating to 2.1.

Charged my handset fully yesterday morning, and unplugged it around lunchtime. I have it set to fetch my mail every hour, but other than that I didn't use it at all. By 9am this morning the battery was all but dead, and the counter claimed that it had 15 hours usage. Absolutely not possible.

I have done a complete restore on it this morning, and set it up as new, rather than restoring from a backup. Also haven't put any additional Apps on it at all. I'll just leave it like that until I see if it helps at all.

I really love my iPhone, however I am becoming increasingly frustrated with the sheer amount of "maintenance" the damn thing seems to need just to keep it running acceptably.

 

[Anuba]

Also haven't put any additional Apps on it at all. I'll just leave it like that until I see if it helps at all.

The app that crashes on exit and drains the battery may very well be one of Apple's own, for example Safari. I'm seeing fewer crashes in Safari in 2.1, but does that mean Safari has stopped crashing, or merely that we no longer see it crash?

 

[Small White Car]

and now the battery life looks like this:

Whoah, there's something REALLY wrong here!

How on earth do you only use your iPhone for 1 hour a day!?

 

[bigscotal]

The app that crashes on exit and drains the battery may very well be one of Apple's own, for example Safari. I'm seeing fewer crashes in Safari in 2.1, but does that mean Safari has stopped crashing, or merely that we no longer see it crash?

That's a fair point, however, with only the standard apps on the phone at least I can see whether the battery life improves. Since this morning, when I restored the firmware and set up as "new" at least it has only ramped up the proper amount of usage, and nothing extra which is unaccountable.

If it remains stable I can then add my other apps one by one and see what happens.

That's the plan anyway........

 

[mavis]

Whoah, there's something REALLY wrong here!

How on earth do you only use your iPhone for 1 hour a day!?

Actually, I was wondering the same thing. I blow through 4-5 hours a day easy, so I end up having to recharge the phone every afternoon - I usually can't even make it through the day on one charge.

 

[Rybold]

My battery life is normally very consistent (based on how I use my phone) from day to day. However, every once in a while, I'll observe an anomaly. One day, I did not charge it all the way up (unplugged at about 80%), yet the phone registered it as a full charge. Then, with no GPS and only light usage, the battery flashed 20% after only about an hour and a half of usage and 4 hours of standby. At first I though: 'oh no, I got a bad battery!' BUT, I instead rebooted, plugged it in and charged it all the way up, and it was fine after that. Normally, I get about 5-7 hours usage on average. If I use GPS, the usage plummets quickly.

 

[Rybold]

Whoah, there's something REALLY wrong here!
How on earth do you only use your iPhone for 1 hour a day!?

When everyone was posting the battery screen shots right after 2.1 came out, I wanted to see how long it could go with minimum usage and maximum standby. I COULDN'T DO IT!!! IMPOSSIBLE!!! The only way we can find out is if someone accidentally leaves their phone somewhere [safe] and can't get to it for several days.

 

[jjk454ss]

Well, I calibrated the battery, I removed a couple apps I didn't use, I turned of PUSH, I turned off WiFi, and I turned off Location Services.

Today I didn't use my phone much, but my battery is still fully charged. I have over 12 hrs of standby and almost 1 hr of usage. I know if it not much, but I know that my battery would be somewhat low before I changed anything.

Thanks for all the advice.

 

[samiwas]

Whoah, there's something REALLY wrong here!

How on earth do you only use your iPhone for 1 hour a day!?

Wow...I'd be surprised if my usage was even near one hour a day. I don't make that many phone calls, I'm not a texting addict, and most of the time I'm near my laptop. I've never been a phone junkie, so it just follows that way...