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

Chupa Chupa

macrumors G5
Original poster
Jul 16, 2002
14,835
7,396
Just curious if anyone has noticed a change in battery life. Maybe I'm just misremembering but seems I'm getting significantly worse battery life w/ the GM Candidate than w/ 3.1.3.
 
Just curious if anyone has noticed a change in battery life. Maybe I'm just misremembering but seems I'm getting significantly worse battery life w/ the GM Candidate than w/ 3.1.3.

Yeah I've been getting bad battery life ever since switching to iOS 4. My iPhone was is a 3Gs model. A full charge on the phone cannot last a day for me, but then again I am a heavy user. But still, its not comparable to the battery life of the old OS. I am seriously contemplating about switching back to 3.1.3.
 
what kind of usage are you guys getting out of it? 5 hours?

My phone usage is on 1 hour 46 minutes, and 13 hours 32 minute standby with 68% of battery left to go on a January 2010 3GS. Just one phone call, a couple text messages, news reading, etc. Seems a little bit worse than 3.1.3.
 
Battery life is significantly worse if you're in an area with Wi-Fi because under iOS 4, it remains connected to the network while it's "asleep".

The battery in my iPod Touch emptied out almost completely last night.
 
Battery life is significantly worse if you're in an area with Wi-Fi because under iOS 4, it remains connected to the network while it's "asleep".

The battery in my iPod Touch emptied out almost completely last night.

I have wifi disabled on my 3GS. As well as Push, Location Services, screen dimmed and "Auto-Dimming" on, basically the usual battery saving shebang. Messing around with my calendar for a minute brought me down 1-2%.
 
what kind of usage are you guys getting out of it? 5 hours?

I charged up my phone to 100% yesterday before I left to go to a game (about 4:30). I talked for 30 min. Manually fetched email a couple of times. Browsed the web for maybe 10%. When I got home at 10p I had about 54% left.

If this is "normal" for this build, I'm wondering (hoping) this is something they will iron out before the shipping version next week... thought not a huge deal personally since I'll be selling my GS to buy a 4.
 
I haven't changed anything since upgrading from 3.1.2 -> 4.0. Left all the settings as they were.

2h 26m usage, 6h 26m standby. Battery is at 39% already. This is worse for me. In the past I'd still have around 50% by this time.
 
Wifi also unstable???

Battery life is significantly worse if you're in an area with Wi-Fi because under iOS 4, it remains connected to the network while it's "asleep".

The battery in my iPod Touch emptied out almost completely last night.

I have also noticed that wifi signal strength is irregular, the signal strength bars go from three to one even when my iPod is still.
 
Yeah i have same problem with battery issue under iOS 4, what i see it drains the battery very quickly, for example if i had 80% battery remaining in the status bar at iphone and if i plug the phone into my mac it changes quickly to 94%. Plus i used to get at least 7 hrs and now i get only 5 or even less if i start browsing the web and chatting on beejive.
 
Wirelessly posted (iPhone 3GS (OS4.0b3): Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_1_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7E18 Safari/528.16)

No problems on a 3GS restored from a 3.1.2 backup (my wife's phone) ...
 
I think the battery needs to be re-calibrated with a new OS installation.

I let mine discharge to about 5% after it dropped 40% while I was sleeping, then let it charge back to 100%. I haven't had any issues today whatsoever. It seems just as good as I was getting with 3.1.3
 
I think the battery needs to be re-calibrated with a new OS installation.

I let mine discharge to about 5% after it dropped 40% while I was sleeping, then let it charge back to 100%. I haven't had any issues today whatsoever. It seems just as good as I was getting with 3.1.3

Interesting. I'll have to try that too. I'll report back for the curious.
 
My situation:
- iPhone 3Gs and iOs 4 GM
- notifications disabled
- 2 mail accounts, pull every 15 minutes
- 4 calendar accounts sync with Google, pull every 15 minutes
- gps disabled
- apple unlock iphone
- not officially supported carrier (italian Wind)

On standby, with 3G network enabled (weak signal), the battery loses about 14% every hour. Setting the Edge only mode, it drains a 3% battery / hour.

In my case, the trouble seems in the continuous shifting between 3G and edge networks. After iOs4 I've noticed a general weakening of network signal. Moreover, recalibration doesn't fix the problem.
With 3.1.3 firmware my battery in equals conditions (on 3G network) could last up to 2 days.
 
My situation:
- iPhone 3Gs and iOs 4 GM
- notifications disabled
- 2 mail accounts, pull every 15 minutes
- 4 calendar accounts sync with Google, pull every 15 minutes
- gps disabled
- apple unlock iphone
- not officially supported carrier (italian Wind)

apple unlock iphone? tell me more...
 
iOS 4 Battery Life

I have also noticed that IOS 4 sucks the battery much faster.

Did a test today with 2 3gs phones, wifi enabled, 3g, no apps running, sitting in the same spot in the window and after pulling from the charger, pressing the button to shut off scree and starting the timer, after 41 min, the stock 3gs was 100% battery, the IOS4 was 97%.

Later after 1 phone call for 10 min, battery was 86%.
 
Day 1 of my pre-release iOS4 and I have to chime in as well and say that I can tell my battery life is shortened. The phone sure seems faster and more responsive though which I quite like.

Maybe I do need to do a full battery drain and charge and see if that'll help out anything.
 
I've upgraded another iPhone to iOs4 (3gs 32 gb) Vodafone branded (apple officially supported italian carrier).
Same network mess and frequent jumping between edge and utms network.
IMHO battery draining is due to overall network reception shortage.
 
My initial reaction was it was using more battery in stand-by. But when I used it for about 2 and a half hours surfing and AIM chatting it seemed to be fine leaving me at 70%.

So I also turned on Notifications today since I never used them in the past due to the battery drain. It seems to work better on iOS4 for me and doesn't change things much.
 
Interesting. I'll have to try that too. I'll report back for the curious.

Yeah, remember, calibrating the battery isn't doing anything to the battery itself, it's teaching the OS how to read the battery life based on your usage.

And yes...for a major OS revision like this...it's better to set it up as a new phone rather than restore a backup with old OS3 settings.
 
I installed and jb a 3gs on ios4. It was set up as a new phone, notifications are off, and my battery life is horrid. I let the battery run down to 4% twice and it hasnt helped.

Just chiming in.
 
I installed and jb a 3gs on ios4. It was set up as a new phone, notifications are off, and my battery life is horrid. I let the battery run down to 4% twice and it hasnt helped.

Just chiming in.

I'm taking back my previous statement...WiFi does seem to be an issue. Turn it off when you're not using it. I'm doing much better now.
 
I am having the same problems with iOS 4. I upgraded my 3GS from 3.1.3 and noticed the fast battery drain right away. It's so bad that I just wanna downgrade. Anybody know how to downgrade?
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.