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Well I could see on the 2G and 3G iPhone it could have some very slight affect since the OS has to do some work when things get constrained as could easily happen on those models and of course the work the OS is doing is highly marginal. The 3GS has so much more room in that sense that it is very rare for a critically low memory situation to occur and when it does it would be mostly likely caused by a 3rd party app running in the foreground which would be using more CPU/Radio/LocationServices/etc anyway. The large power drains on any mobile phone are the cell radios. Low signal or areas on the 3G/Edge line cause the battery to drain faster since the phone constantly tries to reconnect. LocationServices shouldn't have any effect when just on since they are on demand and therefore have to be used by an app.

Yeah, "slight." But a poster above was stating 20-25%, which sounds way too much. Also, he was talking about 80 MB of RAM taken up by safari causing that.
 
Yeah, "slight." But a poster above was stating 20-25%, which sounds way too much. Also, he was talking about 80 MB of RAM taken up by safari causing that.

In his example the 80MB was the delta between what he had and a restart. His Safari test of opening one page caused a drop of ~16 MB and then closing that page regained that ~16 MB. That 80MB that he regained by restarting if left there will not cause a 20-25% drop in battery. The only way I could see that happening is there being a bug in MobileSafari that it keeps processing things when pages are open and in the background and therefore would use battery.

I'd charge the phone 100% then stick it in Airplane mode and start playing iTunes and let it just go until it dies. It should make Apple's 30 hours no problem and should truthfully outlast that by a good margin since Apple's tests had the radios enabled. If it dies faster than that the unit and or battery is defective.
 
In his example the 80MB was the delta between what he had and a restart. His Safari test of opening one page caused a drop of ~16 MB and then closing that page regained that ~16 MB. That 80MB that he regained by restarting if left there will not cause a 20-25% drop in battery. The only way I could see that happening is there being a bug in MobileSafari that it keeps processing things when pages are open and in the background and therefore would use battery.

I'd charge the phone 100% then stick it in Airplane mode and start playing iTunes and let it just go until it dies. It should make Apple's 30 hours no problem and should truthfully outlast that by a good margin since Apple's tests had the radios enabled. If it dies faster than that the unit and or battery is defective.

Thanks for clearing some of this up. I'm really shocked that this memory issue doesn't affect the battery more, because I have always noticed a quicker drain in battery when I haven't restarted recently. Apparently there's another catalyst in there somewhere too, but I always assumed it was the lack of memory.

So is there no real benefit to clearing up the memory?
 
Thanks for clearing some of this up. I'm really shocked that this memory issue doesn't affect the battery more, because I have always noticed a quicker drain in battery when I haven't restarted recently. Apparently there's another catalyst in there somewhere too, but I always assumed it was the lack of memory.

So is there no real benefit to clearing up the memory?

You're welcome. On the 3GS the greater amount of memory really makes the restarts unnecessary. Memory on the older models was so bad it forced many devs to write in their apps. "If it crashes on launch just restart!" since free memory could drop so low at times. A phone with this many features really makes it hard to pin point exact battery drains since there can be so many use cases and exceptions.
 
I thought charge cycles = 100 percent charge. So if you use down to 50 Percent on day 1 and then charge and then the same on day 2 the total = 1 charge cycle (50 percent + 50 percent = 100 percent = 1 cycle)

I believe there are several posts/documents explaining this. Am I mistaken? Or is a charge "cycle" just anytime to go to 100 percent from wherever you are battery wise (90 percent or 10 percent)

I thought a charge cycle is no matter how long you have it plugged in for. I can plug it in for 5 mins and it should count and a charge cycle unless it's programmed to only count it until it's fully charged....


James
 
Thanks for clearing some of this up. I'm really shocked that this memory issue doesn't affect the battery more, because I have always noticed a quicker drain in battery when I haven't restarted recently. Apparently there's another catalyst in there somewhere too, but I always assumed it was the lack of memory.

So is there no real benefit to clearing up the memory?

I remembered you from another thread and thought your battery issue was more due to your signal reception since you have such a bad download speed test in the DC area.
 
I remembered you from another thread and thought your battery issue was more due to your signal reception since you have such a bad download speed test in the DC area.

I think you're thinking about someone else. I may have posted in that thread also though because that sounds familiar. I have good signal here and good battery life, so no complaints about battery from me, I was just contributing to the discussion. Seems like there are a lot of DC people on this forum though.
 
here is my average battery life after a full charge, 30 -40 minutes of calls daily, 3g on, location services on, display auto and about 50%, .mac account on push.



Going by Apples wording my battery will be unusable in less than a year.

Question is; is this usage normal?
 

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here is my average battery life after a full charge, 30 -40 minutes of calls daily, 3g on, location services on, display auto and about 50%, .mac account on push.



Going by Apples wording my battery will be unusable in less than a year.

Question is; is this usage normal?

Incorrect. It's not that the battery will be unsuable. It's that after 300 cycles the battery will hold less than (what percentage is it? Don't remember) point is - it's not going to be unusable - you just wont have full capacity...
 
It's that after 300 cycles the battery will hold less than (what percentage is it? Don't remember) point is - it's not going to be unusable - you just wont have full capacity...

Agreed and that would mean that I would need to charge it probably twice daily which is not always possible, therefore for me unusable. if you get what I mean.

Is my usage within the specs or is it defective in some way?
 
Incorrect. It's not that the battery will be unsuable. It's that after 300 cycles the battery will hold less than (what percentage is it? Don't remember) point is - it's not going to be unusable - you just wont have full capacity...

it's 80%, IiRC

I think you're thinking about someone else. I may have posted in that thread also though because that sounds familiar. I have good signal here and good battery life, so no complaints about battery from me, I was just contributing to the discussion. Seems like there are a lot of DC people on this forum though.

Yeah, it wasn't you. I went back to the post. Oh well, I don't have any other ideas as to what it might be.
 
Just got back from the Genius Bar. The guy told me that 3G will use more battery life than EDGE (I upgraded from the original). He plugged my phone into their diagnostic tools and told me my battery life was "normal" and that I could expect about 1 day's worth of usage.

The longest I've ever had it last is 5.5 hours when 90% of my usage is WiFi browsing which it's rated at 9 hours for. IMO this battery has 60% of the capacity it should but apparently that's "normal".

These things are built like crap.
 
but that isn't really an option for me as I have quite a bit of information in 3rd party app backups (as well as call history, text messages, etc.) that I can not sync to my desktop and I don't want to lose it.



iTunes backs up all the details of your 3rd party apps, text, everything.

You don't have to worry, I always restore from back up and all my info is still saved in my 3rd parties
 
Update

Just for all of those who thought that performance was "normal", I restored my 3GS as a new iPhone based on a tip from another thread and am currently running the test again.

At the moment, it's at 71% battery life and 11 hours of usage. Obviously there is a problem with restoring from a previous iPhone model's backup. FYI the test is running the iPod continuously with the screen locked from the moment it is unplugged with 3G, WiFi, Location services on.
 
Just for all of those who thought that performance was "normal", I restored my 3GS as a new iPhone based on a tip from another thread and am currently running the test again.

At the moment, it's at 71% battery life and 11 hours of usage. Obviously there is a problem with restoring from a previous iPhone model's backup. FYI the test is running the iPod continuously with the screen locked from the moment it is unplugged with 3G, WiFi, Location services on.

That's pretty amazing, IMO.
 
Even if you're not using the phone, 3G, Wifi and Location left turned on will drain your battery very quickly. Try turning 3G off when you don't need it. Same with WiFI, Location and Bluetooth. You'll notice your battery life will go up quite a bit. I got 1 day and 16 hours out of my 3G earlier this week doing exactly that.

Have some common sense.

And also...if you read Apple's disclaimer when the test the battery, that's exactly what they do. I think they even turn all data fetch/sync services off as well.
 
I would have to say that I think something is wrong too. I can get on average 5-7 days of usage out of my 3G with about 30 min of talking each day. I've gotten a maximum of 9 hours of talking with 20% battery still remaining as well. Dying after 10 hours of mp3 playback doesn't sound right.

As others have mentioned, it IS possible for the battery to drain prematurely if you are in a very weak signal area (2G or 3G, though 3G is worse). Have you tried switching to 2G to see if the problem persists?

Come on now! There is just NO way you're getting these numbers.
 
From my understanding the battery settings are completely different between the 2G/3G and the 3GS. So if you restore from a backup, you are getting your 2G or 3G battery settings set up on your 3GS which causes it burn the battery faster.

I know it sucks to have to set up as a new iPhone ... but it is a New iPhone ... Isn't it?
 
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)

xbuddycorex said:
From my understanding the battery settings are completely different between the 2G/3G and the 3GS. So if you restore from a backup, you are getting your 2G or 3G battery settings set up on your 3GS which causes it burn the battery faster.

I know it sucks to have to set up as a new iPhone ... but it is a New iPhone ... Isn't it?

That's false and not true
 
Update

Finished the battery test. Strange thing is the usage time differs from screen to screen. I don't know which one is correct, but either way, I'm MUCH happier after having restored as a new iPhone (once again, phone ran till it died so I snapped this screenshots after it was plugged in and booted up):

IMG_0001.png IMG_0002.png

Best part is I left 3G enabled so now I won't be worried about disabling it overnight or with long periods without use.

Morale of this story is do not set up your iPhone 3GS from a backup of a previous phone!
 
Just a thought.... The battery test that Apple did never stated that they used headphones. When you use headphones, the iPhone has to use its battery to play the headphones. Here's my case: I have the 30gb iPod video. When I use my headphones, my battery life is around 2-3 hours. However, if I simply run an aux cord from the headphone jack to my car stereo, I can get 16 hours of playtime. I tested this because I live in Indiana and went to Texas for a vacation a few years back. After about 8 hours into the trip, I was completely blown away I still had half the battery left, so I started keeping track of time and ended up with 16 hours.

So back to the original point on the iPhone and the 30 hours of music playback. I would bet if you stuck an aux jack in the phone instead of a set of headphones, you would get a lot closer to 30 hours. Yes, I know that's not how anybody hardly ever listens to music on their iPhone or iPod devices, but it might clear up the confusion to that you think your iPhone cause you only get 9 hours or whatever it was.

IMO, I think it is 3g solely that destroys the battery. I'm not much of a talker on the phone, mostly texts and emails. I do play a lot of games on the phone as well. I can go two days on my battery if I either don't make a call or limit them to very short calls. If I make a 30 minute call on my phone while in 3g, it's a done deal for my battery. I have to charge that bad boy that night cause it won't make it through the next day. But like I said, just my opinion.
 
Even if you're not using the phone, 3G, Wifi and Location left turned on will drain your battery very quickly. Try turning 3G off when you don't need it. Same with WiFI, Location and Bluetooth. You'll notice your battery life will go up quite a bit. I got 1 day and 16 hours out of my 3G earlier this week doing exactly that.

Have some common sense.

I hate quotes like this... Why should I have to fiddle with my phone every time I leave the house, the office, the car? Who wants to be bothered even having to remember to go in and change these settings every time your not using one? Common sense would actually dictate that if I read Apples literature, I could expect much more than the OP originally was getting, he solved his problem, and didnt have to disable features.


And also...if you read Apple's disclaimer when the test the battery, that's exactly what they do. I think they even turn all data fetch/sync services off as well.

According to Apple, they dont. They use "default" settings... that doesnt mean that an email account wasnt created at all, but by default, if the service is on, they didnt change it

Apple said:
Testing conducted by Apple in May 2009 using preproduction iPhone 3GS units and software. iPhone 3GS units were connected to a 1900MHz network or an 850MHz network. All settings were default except: Call Forwarding was turned on; Wi-Fi was associated with a network; the Wi-Fi feature Ask to Join Networks was turned off.
 
I hate quotes like this... Why should I have to fiddle with my phone every time I leave the house, the office, the car? Who wants to be bothered even having to remember to go in and change these settings every time your not using one? Common sense would actually dictate that if I read Apples literature, I could expect much more than the OP originally was getting, he solved his problem, and didnt have to disable features.

According to Apple, they dont. They use "default" settings... that doesnt mean that an email account wasnt created at all, but by default, if the service is on, they didnt change it

Yes, but the important thing is that during these tests they had it associated with a wi-fi network. I can go all weekend without charging my 3G, when I'm home and on wi-fi. However, I do what the poster you complained about does when not at home. I normally have 3G off, and only turn it on if I'm impatient.
 
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