a battery question

[Ruffian829]

I've encountered a recent battery issue- I've had my iphone 3gs for under 3 months now, I charged my phone over night last night and this morning (about 6 am) it reported a fully battery. Since then (it is now 11am) I've made 0 calls, a few texts, and looked at one website via 3g (not wifi) the website was of a pet cam I have set up to watch my dogs when I am not home and my schools wireless network blocks the website so I need to see it on 3G. My phone is now reporting less than 20% battery life and I'm watching it drop while not doing anything with it...
can switching between wifi and 3g cause that large of a difference? or looking at a website that has a streaming video? I glimpsed at it a few times for maybe a few minutes at the most- but i'm not sure if it was running in the background or something similar to that while i was not looking at it...

also, i just received a griffen car charger for the 3gs which, this morning (first time ive used it) would not work and no charger symbol would show up on the phone... although it seemed to charge fully last night via the wall charger.

I am at school now and dont have a cord w/me to plug into my laptop to see if it charges or not...

so my question is does it appear that this is a battery problem? i can get to the apple store today but if i have to wait it wont be for awhile that I can get there... so i have some time constraints... is there something else that can explain the poor battery in this situation?

(email is set to push although gmail only comes every 15 min- i dont get a lot of emails it hasn't been a problem before...)

 

[fishmd]

Seems possibly about right. Browsing the web via 3G eats that battery up very quickly from what i have seen, especially if you do not have a really strong signal. As to why the car charger did not charge, maybe the charger is a dud. It happens. When you hook it up again try to wiggle the connector around a bit and see if you can get the iPhone to read it. Also, make sure it is plugged into your cig adapter well. Good luck.

 

[Ruffian829]

Thanks... I have full signal strength and I tried wiggling the charger around... No luck. I guess I am just hoping it's the web via 3g eating it up but I know I've used the web via 3g with far better battery life than getting down to 20% in 20 min or so... Would having the phone set to 3g eat the battery even without using the Internet? Does that just drain the battery in general?
Would looking at a webcam also drain the battery since it's like a streaming video not just a stagnate website?

 

[Ruffian829]

I just did some googling (now that I'm out of class...) and read that apple claims the iphone 3gs should be able to get 5 hours on 3g web browsing... i literally got about 20 min max earlier today... this is super frustrating... I have too much stored on my phone that seemingly cannot be backed up I really dont want anything to be wrong with it... I'm assuming that information I have stored in apps will not be synced if I need a new phone...

:-\

I'll give it another try tomorrow when I am back at school and see what happens...

does anyone else get such poor battery life on 3g web browsing with a full signal?