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Battery on iphone 3g s drains very fast.

Mr. Bad Example said:
Thought this might be worth a mention...

For over a week now my 3 month old iPhone's battery has been draining at a rate of more than 10% per hour, regardless of usage.
I removed the eBay app 4 hours ago and I'm now sat at 95% :)

I'm not sure of the exact reasoning why this particular app may have caused such dramatic battery drain. I anybody out there does know how to fix the app to prevent it from this I'd be very interested to know.

Here's a little background which may help anyone else out there solve the problem:
It was just 1 week ago when my iPhone battery decided to function on par with my 12 year old Nokia's.
I did the usual google searches and removed pretty much all the apps I'd installed over the last 2 months as well as changing all my phone setting as advised by the masses.
No change!
I recently recalled that I had been receiving SMS messages from eBay informing me of various item updates. A result I guess of my recent change in location where I am frequently travelling in and out of various free WiFi spots.
As the eBay app was one of the very first apps I'd installed I never considered it to be the cause of my sudden battery problem.
I don't fully understand why removing the app has immediately resolved my problem, as all my phone internet settings and the like have been disabled for the last week. I can only assume that the eBay app has been 'trying' to operate regardless of having no internet connection.

If anyone has knowledge of this situation I'd be very grateful as I am sure that the same reasoning could apply to many other apps out there.

Hope this helps.
Click to expand...

All I did was install the app. Are you saying it has nothing to do with SMS?
 
Here's my theory.

Push Notification uses up 20% of battery (as quoted by apple). Now just to maintain a link with their APNS 20% of your battery is lost. This 20% doesn't include the battery consumption when messages come in. For instance someone who receives 50 IMs/hr via push is going to reduce battery life much more than someone who receives 1-2 IMs/hr.

Now when the push server sends the phone a notification it understands, the appropriate notification pops up directed at the correct application. However if the message is short of information for whatever reason or corrupted even, the phone processes it but dumps it in the background without your knowledge. However the battery/bandwidth used to process that is lost.

I have a very sneaky suspicion that at time notifications between server & phone get stuck and like a bounced email processed over and over again by the phone.

There's a particular push app I use. I very infrequently get alerts from it because I'm hardly use that app.

I remember once my battery used to go to 0% in 5hrs for no reason. I would hard reboot and again in 5hrs I was getting the 20% at best. I looked at usage and it was barely 1hr so obviously nothing was running in the background. I deleted all my apps but the 2 push apps I had and it still kept dying.

So I opened that app posted a message and awaited a push reply.

Within 30min I had a reply and it was pushed to me. Miraculously after that battery life was back to normal.

Something was not working somewhere in-between the developer's server -> apple's APNS and my iphone but forcing the app to deliberately receive a notification fixed it.
 
I've been having an issue the past 2 days.

I have not changed or done anything differently, but the battery was going down 1% every minute. This is with nothing running.

Nothing new was put on compared to before.

Then when I put the charger in, it would go up extremely fast.

It was as if it thought 0% charge was where 50% charge should be (I made up the 50%, but the point remains).

I let it use up all the charge and when it got to 8% it stayed there for quite a while before shutting off.

Then I plugged it in and it came on after a few minutes and the charge again was going up fast.

This time it seemed to go down a tad slower but still way too fast.

Again I let it run out and it got to 2% before shutting off (I never saw it go that low).

Then when it came back on it was 6%.. then about 10 seconds later it was up to 13%. It seems a bit more normal but I wll have to see how it goes to see if the battery is messed up or not.
 
This is what I do to make the battery last longer:

1. Turn off WiFi unless I'm using it. To be 3G is close to as fast if you're in a good coverage area.

2. Turn down the screen brightness, this helps a lot.

3. I have email at one hour push only.

4. I have no notifications turned on, when I want to check I just turn on my iPhone.

5. Always, ALWAYS, close web browser pages when you're done. Never leave them open in your browser.
 
I turned off every single function except 3G with a few calls, messaging(sms), average 5mins/hr of internet surfing and I manage to use it for 2 days before battery life drops till below 15%. Usually i do charge the the phone up till 100% before unplugging.

I same similar issues with njchris( post # 303 ) in the past 2 days.
With fully charged and cable being unplugged, the battery seems to drain quicker as before. What I noticed was I did not fully charge the phone, ie stop at 70% twice before this problem occurred. Similarly charging process does go up.

Does it got to do with the charging process? Should we unplugged the cable once charging reaches 100% or if its ok to leave it even for hours(that's what I've been doing for the past few months.)?



For reference, my Iphone is 3G's and 7 months old.

Any advice or help would be great. Thanks in advance.
 

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It's fine to leave it plugged in once it reaches 100%. Your numbers don't look that unusual but it's really tough to tell. I turned the battery % off a long time ago and stopped worrying about it...

There are a ton of threads on this subject -- check out Mroogle
 
I was advised by an apple rep on the phone to take my 3GS to the apple store. The Battery is draining really fast and sometimes sticks at a certain percentage and does not update the actual battery percentage.

Last week I went from 77% full to 18% in a matter of a minute. I have done restores, but it doesn't fix the issue.

Does the Apple store actually change out the battery part of the phone or do they just give you a refurbished phone?
 
njchris said:
I've been having an issue the past 2 days.

I have not changed or done anything differently, but the battery was going down 1% every minute. This is with nothing running.

Nothing new was put on compared to before.

Then when I put the charger in, it would go up extremely fast.

It was as if it thought 0% charge was where 50% charge should be (I made up the 50%, but the point remains).

I let it use up all the charge and when it got to 8% it stayed there for quite a while before shutting off.

Then I plugged it in and it came on after a few minutes and the charge again was going up fast.

This time it seemed to go down a tad slower but still way too fast.

Again I let it run out and it got to 2% before shutting off (I never saw it go that low).

Then when it came back on it was 6%.. then about 10 seconds later it was up to 13%. It seems a bit more normal but I wll have to see how it goes to see if the battery is messed up or not.
Click to expand...

Mine started doing the exact same thing 2 days ago. This morning, it went from a full charge down to 22% in less than 30min on standby. I even put on airplane mode at 50%. There is either an app running in the background or a faulty battery. I started charging at 22% and went up to 40% in less than 5min. Anyone else experiencing this?
 
Tiger, I have the SAME problems. I use my phone quite a bit, but not enough that the battery should need charged two (sometimes three) times per day. I wake up at 7am with a fully charged battery and after moderate use, my charge is down to 20% by 1pm easily.

I was a BlackBerry user for 6 years before the iPhone and never had problems even on a 3G network. I could use the phone heavily all day and still end up with a good 30-40% remaining. Apple needs to fix this problem and I think they'll see a lot more business from commercial/business users.
 
i take mine off the charger at 8 am and i usually do about 1 hour of 3g web surfing, texting and some music. About 2.5-3 hours usage by 4pm and im usually at 65-70%. More then happy with my battery life
 
Something happened to my 3GS this week. Battery draining way too quickly.

First thing I did was delete any apps I had recently added. It seemed to help a bit.

I think the new Facebook app with notifications is the culprit. I have all that stuff turned off in the main settings as well as the facebook settings.

Still draining too quickly but not as quickly. I'm hoping I have the older version of the Facebook app still on my imac.

But, yeah, something definitely happened recently.
 
Several things I found to prolong the standby life of my 3gs, bought in the UK in December:

1. My home is in a borderline 3g area so the iphone is constantly losing the 3g signal, then picking it up, then finding 2g, etc. This seemed to drain the battery a bit. Also turned off location services except when out.

2. Turn off Bluetooth! I haven't found a use for it yet, as I don't take many calls in my car.

3. I had my work email and diary connected via Exchange with Push, but this was a killer overnight- could go from 90% to 50% while sleeping. Changed it to check every hour and it hasn't been a problem since. Also disabled push on most of the apps that have it, but which I barely use.
 
tigerinroc said:
My phone battery drains very fast after a full charge even though I don't:cool: use it constantly. I typically surf the net, check email on wifi or 3g for 5 minutes every hour and the battery almost drains after 3-4 hours.

Anyone has the same problem?
Click to expand...

Yes, and it's likely a software issue, not just heavy usage. I was always surprised at how quickly using the iphone drained the battery. BUT, drainage while NOT using was predictable and not bad. Then suddenly, the phone was dead every morning when nearly fully charged the night before. That was new. I figured a bad battery suddenly.

No, it was a software problem with the OS. You have to back EVERYTHING up and reinstall. The apple store did it for me (I had iprotect or whatever) and don't look to me for tech advice. But if your iphone is suddenly shocking you with how fast it goes dead, when it was not like that, it's not you, it's the damn phone.
 
I had problems with my Iphone4's battery. It was discharging very fast and the phone was warming up.
After searching the internet for solutions I found out it is the Yahoo mail account who is jamming and stays connected to your 3G network. This forces the rapid discharge and consumes your mobile internet megabytes too. So I deleted the Yahoo account, restarted the phone and created the account again. It's working perfect now, battery lasts 3 days.

At first some recommended to back-up and restore via iTunes, that was a temporary solution, it jammed again in 2 weeks and restoring is annoying.
 
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