Battery Life

[CaptainHighTop]

I have an iPhone 4, 32GB. So far I am impressed with everything but the battery life. It's much better than my 3G. But I was just hoping for much more from the battery. So that brings up some questions for me.

How do you maximize your battery life? And I'm I'm not talking about lowering the brightness, not playing games, etc... I'm talking about the amount of time it holds a charge when it's brand new, compared to how long it holds a charge a year later, usage being the same.

I know not to leave it in the car when it's really hot out. But what about the way you recharge it. Does that matter?

- Is it a good idea to let the battery run all the way out? Or should you avoid that?

- Is it okay to keep recharging it when it gets down to 75% or should you wait until it's lower like down below 50% or 25%?

- When you charge it, is it best to not stop charging until it reaches 100%?

These are questions I have had for a while but I never seem to be able to find answers to them.

Thanks!

 

[Thedeathbear]

From what I believe, Lith-ion batteries are fine with any charges at any time, but you should run it down completely to 0 at least once a month.

 

[phrint]

I have an iPhone 4, 32GB. So far I am impressed with everything but the battery life. It's much better than my 3G. But I was just hoping for much more from the battery. So that brings up some questions for me.

What are your expectations of the battery? My old 3GS would need a charge about 3/4 through the day. Now I can go through the next morning with my 4 and not charge. That's a huge improvement. I run it just as hard as my 3GS.

 

[phas3]

what's the rule of thumb out of the box? I've heard people charging it for 24 hours?

 

[DineshD]

I charged it all day today and at about 530PM PST i took it off, its now 7PM PST and after very very minimal use ... 94%.

 

[ravensfan55]

I charged mine fully around noon yesterday, used it regularly since and I'm at 40%.

So much better than my 3G

 

[_Refurbished_]

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/525741/

 

[jbachandouris]

I was at 100% charge at around 6:30AM and by 5:30PM I was down to 20%. I did travel through some bad coverage areas and made maybe 3 phone calls. I seem to remember my 3GS being at 70%+ charge after the same exact trip. I could be wrong though....

 

[matt550]

I was at 100% charge at around 6:30AM and by 5:30PM I was down to 20%. I did travel through some bad coverage areas and made maybe 3 phone calls. I seem to remember my 3GS being at 70%+ charge after the same exact trip. I could be wrong though....

mine is the same way, im at 36% after a slightly above normal use day. I have it set up no different then my 3GS was and im getting about the same results. I would think it would be better then this.

 

[jrcsh6]

do the batteries improve with usage? mine's been about dead at the end of the day. slightly more usage than usual and imovie! but not a ton... work days. tomorrow will be another story though thus far it's about the same at my original iphone...

 

[matt550]

What settings are you guys running. I have 3G turned ON, push ON, brightness about 70%. wifi and location services are both OFF. and my phone is now at 33% with about 3.5 hours of use. 2-3 short phone calls, maybe 30 minutes of iPod use in the car, and the rest was just messing around with it.

 

[nfl46]

Battery life is way better on the 4. I can go through the full day without a charge. That's damn impressive!

 

[james92se]

Posted this a few hours ago in the other battery thread:

I seem to be getting pretty darn good numbers. I ran my battery completely dead last night, and then charged it fully overnight. I've been using the phone VERY heavily today, on purpose. Just to see how it does, I set everything up pretty much to its full extent and made an honest noted effort to "document" everything I've done:

Screen on FULL brightness

3G ON

Location services ON

Notifications ON

Push ON

Pandora streaming via 3G the WHOLE time I've been using it (obviously unless it won't during phone calls, HD video, etc.)

About 10 minutes of Madden '10

47 minutes of phone calls

Making a point of using Safari nearly the WHOLE time I've been simultaneously streaming Pandora

About 120 total texts sent/received

2 MMS messages

5 e-mails received, 1 e-mail sent

About 10 minutes total time spent on the Facebook app.

3 HD pictures taken, 27 seconds of HD video taken

29 640x960 wallpapers saved to phone from the wallpaper thread, set/changed wallpaper and lockscreen 4 times

I'm currently at 5 hours and 7 minutes of usage, and just hit 20%

Personally, I find this downright impressive, especially considering how the majority of the usage time has been VERY data-intensive over 3G, with full brightness, notifications, push, etc. all on.

 

[CheesePuff]

Posted this a few hours ago in the other battery thread:

I seem to be getting pretty darn good numbers. I ran my battery completely dead last night, and then charged it fully overnight. I've been using the phone VERY heavily today, on purpose. Just to see how it does, I set everything up pretty much to its full extent and made an honest noted effort to "document" everything I've done:

Screen on FULL brightness

3G ON

Location services ON

Notifications ON

Push ON

Pandora streaming via 3G the WHOLE time I've been using it (obviously unless it won't during phone calls, HD video, etc.)

About 10 minutes of Madden '10

47 minutes of phone calls

Making a point of using Safari nearly the WHOLE time I've been simultaneously streaming Pandora

About 120 total texts sent/received

2 MMS messages

5 e-mails received, 1 e-mail sent

About 10 minutes total time spent on the Facebook app.

3 HD pictures taken, 27 seconds of HD video taken

29 640x960 wallpapers saved to phone from the wallpaper thread, set/changed wallpaper and lockscreen 4 times

I'm currently at 5 hours and 7 minutes of usage, and just hit 20%

Personally, I find this downright impressive, especially considering how the majority of the usage time has been VERY data-intensive over 3G, with full brightness, notifications, push, etc. all on.

Do you use your phone normally at 100% screen brightness or was this just for the test?

 

[AGEC2008]

My battery life has been exceptional. I have used it for two days straight and still not to 25%. Pandora playing a lot of the business day, with push and fetching mail. Very impressed.

 

[HarrisonB]

im at 78 percent after 2 hours of usage today. Battery life is pretty damn good dude.

 

[myfoneisdank]

mine is the same way, im at 36% after a slightly above normal use day. I have it set up no different then my 3GS was and im getting about the same results. I would think it would be better then this.

im right there with you. the phone is amazing but the battery life is just the same if not a little worse than my 3gs with the same usage. i mean ive only had it for one day, but i noticed not a single difference in longevity.

maybe it just needs to go through a few my cycle charges? I sure hope so... this was a major selling point in getting the 4

 

[dunk50]

I am going to post at the risk of getting flamed. I have had a 3G for nearly two years so that I am somewhat use to the settings. I even started another thread that i have to go cancel because I found out my problem with battery. It was ONE setting that was wrong and I didn't even know it. I went through all the settings, push etc etc etc. Then by chance I saw my problem. When I was transferring and activating my IP4 it kept timing out and locking. I went into settings and set the screen lock to NEVER. Then for two days I would use the phone and put it back into my horizontal side case from my 3g. Had the brightness set at about 75% and with NEVER set, it stayed on forever. Set it back to 3 minutes and all IS GOOD!!

 

[gloss]

Did you restore from a backup, or set up as a new phone? Doing the restore from my 4.0 3GS seemed to hurt my battery life.

 

[matt550]

Did you restore from a backup, or set up as a new phone? Doing the restore from my 4.0 3GS seemed to hurt my battery life.

Why would that matter?

 

[dunk50]

I restored from a backup on my Macbook. MOVIES take a little while!

 

[danpass]

This is the result of my second full charge. Hoping for even better based on some forum claims.

Brightness set just over the 'e'

 

[VSMacOne]

Plug it in every time you have a chance to. I usually keep it plugged in when I'm sitting at my desk and plug it in overnight next to my bed.
I figured i'd treat it like my Macbook battery... over 1.5 years old, 200 cycles on the battery and 99% health. Plugged in most of the time, and full cycle once every 4-6 weeks (more like 6-8 lately OOPS).

 

[IrishTiger]

I expected my battery life to be a little bit more than it is. I let it drain all the way last night, and charged it through the night. After using it moderately throughout the day, I hit 50% left, which is better than before. I'd recommend doing a full calibration when you first get the phone (within a few days) to get the ball rolling). I'm going to be looking for alternate settings that might improve my battery life

On my iphone 3G I had a Mophie JuicePak Air which was fantastic. Hopefully with the right settings combo and taking good care of it, this iPhone 4 won't need any additional battery.

 

[james92se]

Do you use your phone normally at 100% screen brightness or was this just for the test?

No, I never have my screen brightness set that high. In fact, I normally have the brightness all the way down and all that other crap turned off. All of this was just for the sake of testing it with all the bells and whistles.

On my 3G, I could routinely eek out about 6 hours with the brightness all the way down, everything turned off, 3G turned off, etc. On this new phone, it looks like I can probably eek out 6 hours with just about everything on and REALLY using it pretty heavily.

I'm really impressed with it. Tomorrow I'll turn the brightness down and all the extraneous crap off and see how it goes. I should easily get 7+ hours, which is phenomenal.