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Battery life does get better after a few charges

bit_bucket

bit_bucket

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jul 18, 2002
252
60
Summerville, SC
I was one of the lucky ones to get a sexy 16GB black iPhone 3g on iDay. I immediately noticed that the battery life was not as stellar as my first gen iPhone. Since then I have charged it a few times including the charge it fully then use it until it shuts off then recharge it fully routine that apple suggests. I now get really good battery life even with 3G on.
 
bit_bucket said:
I was one of the lucky ones to get a sexy 16GB black iPhone 3g on iDay. I immediately noticed that the battery life was not as stellar as my first gen iPhone. Since then I have charged it a few times including the charge it fully then use it until it shuts off then recharge it fully routine that apple suggests. I now get really good battery life even with 3G on.
Click to expand...

What are you defining as really good battery?
 
jediistar said:
What are you defining as really good battery?
Click to expand...

Have to say after the iPhone depleting SCARILY fast on Saturday (to the point where the iPhone switched off at about 5pm after being disconnected from the charger around 10am) I now seem to have gotten a decent battery life yesterday and today... so far.

I'd say the usage (3G web browsing, email checking, few phone calls) and battery life today has been comparable to my old iPhone.

I've got location services turned off at the minute (although it was switched on briefly earlier today) and my MobileMe push email is off (Calendar and Contacts are on though).

I'm hoping that this is the shape of things to come and I can rely on my iPhone again. :)
 
I get much better battery life by disabling push and not using GPS - still it isnt great but it at least lasts a day now!
 
I too noticed and increase after a full charge-discharge cycle like the OP said. Hopefully it will stay that way for a while now!
 
I'm on day 3 and have noticed a huge difference. I've had 6 hours of standby today, 2h 30 minutes of audio, an hour of video, and around 15 minutes of internet usage. My battery is still at 100% and 3G is on. GPS and Push is off. Screen brightness is turned down, and mail is on manual.
 
i feel liek 100% is not realistic for that time amount, but yes i have seen much better battery life today (day 3) as well
 
bit_bucket said:
Since then I have charged it a few times including the charge it fully then use it until it shuts off then recharge it fully routine that apple suggests. I now get really good battery life even with 3G on.
Click to expand...

What exactly does Apple suggest you do? I have always wondered this. Is it best to always let it run out before charging it again? Or just in the beginning? Is there an Apple page about this?
 
As of right now it's about 80% with approx. these usages:

Usages are about:
Music: 3 Hours
Video: 40 minutes
Internet: 20 Minutes

Usage: 4 hours
Standby: 5 Hours 59 Minutes
 
Lexoticstylez02 said:
As of right now it's about 80% with approx. these usages:

Usages are about:
Music: 3 Hours
Video: 40 minutes
Internet: 20 Minutes

Usage: 4 hours
Standby: 5 Hours 59 Minutes
Click to expand...

Sorry if this is a noob question, but does this mean your phone has been on for 10 hours, 6 hours of which it was doing nothing?
 
my battery life has not been that very good either.

i'm on day 3 of having this phone.

i used it off and on until it powered down.. is that okay? i didnt use it for a long period of time then it shut down. it got down to 20% last night, then i used the rest of the juice this morning and it shut down.

i plugged it up at around 12:00 and when i came back home at 2:00 it was done charging.

is this normal charging time?

what should i do after this?
 
forrest368 said:
What exactly does Apple suggest you do? I have always wondered this. Is it best to always let it run out before charging it again? Or just in the beginning? Is there an Apple page about this?
Click to expand...

I don't see anything on the Apple site that suggests you need to do this with the type of battery that they have in this phone. The lithium ion batteries don't develop a memory like the NiCad batteries used to so I don't quite understand the thought process behind the discharge charge cycle.

I am looking at this page:
http://www.apple.com/batteries/

iPhone specific:
http://www.apple.com/batteries/iphone.html

If anyone has different information, I'd love to see it!

Thanks!

Edited to add this snip from the website:
Viewing Usage Statistics
Awareness of how you use your iPhone and knowing how long your battery typically lasts can help you improve your its battery life. You can view your iPhone usage statistics by tapping the Settings icon on the Home screen and choosing Usage. Under the “Time since last full charge” heading you’ll see two items:

Usage: Amount of time iPhone has been awake and in use since the last full charge. The phone is awake when you’re on a call, using email, listening to music, browsing the web, or sending and receiving text messages, or during certain background tasks such as auto-checking email.
Standby: Amount of time iPhone has been powered on since its last full charge, including the time the phone has been asleep.

So "Standby" includes "Usage" time.
 
I noticed the battery life is better now. I used it all day yesterday and I still have about 20% left at the end of the night. 9AM - 11PM. So as long as I charge it every night it should be fine.
 
Akira1980 said:
I noticed the battery life is better now. I used it all day yesterday and I still have about 20% left at the end of the night. 9AM - 11PM. So as long as I charge it every night it should be fine.
Click to expand...

I took my phone off charge at 7am yesterday, used it quite a lot including a bit of GPS, quite a lot of 3G browsing and email checking, few phone calls (probably 30/40 minutes in total) and I also had to switch it off and back on twice (once by accident and then at the cinema) which always seemed to hit the battery on my old iPhone.

By 11.30 last night I'd still got about 1/3 charge left.

So far, it seems comparable with my old iphone. This is a relief after the ridiculously fast discharge on day two of owning the phone! :-s
 
byron_hinson said:
I get much better battery life by disabling push and not using GPS - still it isnt great but it at least lasts a day now!
Click to expand...

I'm sure that helps - but disabling Push is not an option. It's the main feature I use on the iPhone. I can live without GPS, though.

Anyway - it'll last a full day with normal use for me, with push and 3G enabled - so that's good enough. I'm just kinda worried that the battery won't even last a year if I have to recharge it every night.
 
ottergal said:
Usage: Amount of time iPhone has been awake and in use since the last full charge. The phone is awake when you’re on a call, using email, listening to music, browsing the web, or sending and receiving text messages, or during certain background tasks such as auto-checking email.
Standby: Amount of time iPhone has been powered on since its last full charge, including the time the phone has been asleep.

So "Standby" includes "Usage" time.
Click to expand...

I have a quick question on this. I have just checked my Usage and Standby times and they both show the same numbers, i.e. 17 hours and 9 minutes. Does anyone know why this may be. I have push disabled, fetch set to manual and Wi-Fi off. I have hardly used my phone today, it was fully charged this morning at 7:00 and it is about to die (less than 10%). I've used the phone to send about 30 sms messages, and made two phone calls, which lasted about 3 minutes in total. I have also browsed the Internet for no more than 10 minutes.

I can't understand why the battery is being drained so fast.
:(

Edit - location services are also switched off.
 
How long are people finding they need to charge their phones once they get below 20%?

I have charged my iPhone three times thus far, and each time I get the "Battery Plug" icon that indicates a full charge after about an hour.

Doesn't seem right to me...
 
I was expecting that to happen and told my dad it will get better as time goes on because it hasn't reached its peak battery performance yet.

ChrisN
 
mciarlo said:
How long are people finding they need to charge their phones once they get below 20%?

I have charged my iPhone three times thus far, and each time I get the "Battery Plug" icon that indicates a full charge after about an hour.

Doesn't seem right to me...
Click to expand...

it seems like regardless of how long the battery lasts the power meter isn't very accurate....
 
atiffarooq said:
about to die (less than 10%). I've used the phone to send about 30 sms messages, and made two phone calls, which lasted about 3 minutes in total. I have also browsed the Internet for no more than 10 minutes.

I can't understand why the battery is being drained so fast.
:(

Edit - location services are also switched off.
Click to expand...

my point exactly - today I disabled everything and I had about 10% more battery left at the end of the day than yesterday when 3G und push were enabled. There's really not much difference. Somehow, no matter what you do, the battery won't last longer than a day!?
 
bit_bucket said:
...Since then I have charged it a few times including the charge it fully then use it until it shuts off then recharge it fully routine that apple suggests. I now get really good battery life even with 3G on.
Click to expand...

Don't let your battery go completely dead. Lithium Ion batteries grow crystals when they are totally discharged and it shortens their life. Charge as often as you can and keep as much juice in it as posable only allowing to completely discharge once a month to reset the charger meter.
 
On my old iPhone I had to charge it every night because I used it all day. When I first got my 3G iPhone I was dissapointed that after an hour of playing with it (Games, music, etc) the battery was almost dead.

Now (about a week later) I have played Enigmo for over an hour, made 30min worth of calls, played another game for a while, and still have plenty battery to spare. I feel like it is getting better, which doesn't make sense to me really. I thought all newer batteries were unaffected by charge cycles and such.
 
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