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How Does Your 3GS Battery Life Compare?

How does your 3GS Battery Life Compare to your Previous iPhone?

  • Better than my 3G

    Votes: 45 26.8%

  • Better than my 2G

    Votes: 8 4.8%

  • About the Same

    Votes: 29 17.3%

  • Worse than my 3G

    Votes: 38 22.6%

  • Worse than my 2G

    Votes: 28 16.7%

  • Never owned a previous model

    Votes: 20 11.9%
  • Total voters
    168
Stangs55

Stangs55

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jul 3, 2007
778
47
The Lone Star State
I'm posting a poll here because I'm a bit perplexed. As an iPhone owner since launch day on the 2g and subsequently 3g launch day, I was upset with the very poor battery life I was getting on my 3g compared to the first gen. Of course, when I saw the 3GS boasted modest battery life gains I knew it would be another launch day purchase for me.

But since using my 3GS, I seem to actually be getting worse battery life and I was curious what everyone else though of their upgrade. For example, I'm off work today--so I unplug my 3GS from it's wall charger around 10am and use it lightly throughout the afternoon on my WiFi network only. By lightly, I mean checking my Gmail, occasionally browse the app store, etc. But I've played no games and made very few phone calls. Well by 2:45pm, I was down ato 18% battery life!! Err...this seem right? I'm using the same settings I had on my 3G and it's actually worse. I have push enabled ONLY for my MobileMe contacts/calendars, and have my Gmail set to automatically check every 1 hour. Location services is on, but I haven't used any and bluetooth is off.

Anyways, I'm once again saddened by Apple's choice to sacrifice functionality over usability. It seems like I will once again be carrying an iPhone charger in my pocket to work so that I can charge during lunch breaks. :( Great...:rolleyes:
 
Hm, after 9 hours of having it off the charger, downloading apps, playing a game for a while, PUSH email as well as 15 minute intervals, my battery is down to 77%. It is lasting phenomenally long, much longer than my 3G. So your case seems like something is wrong. Did you restore a previous 3G backup?
 
You probably just need to give the battery a full discharge/full recharge to calibrate the battery gauge. But then, you'd know that if you had searched and found several other threads about the same issue...
 
notjustgc said:
You probably just need to give the battery a full discharge/full recharge to calibrate the battery gauge. But then, you'd know that if you had searched and found several other threads about the same issue...
Click to expand...

I've done that...but then you'd know that if you'd asked instead of remarked...
 
10x better than my 3G was. I sold my 3G after a few months because of battery life. everyday i was in the 20% warning range.

the 3G S i beat to death and the lowest i got was 37%

with all the new speed, features, and battery life...i'm a happy camper :D
 
Stangs55 said:
I've done that...but then you'd know that if you'd asked instead of remarked...
Click to expand...

Well in that case, you may have a faulty battery... but regardless, this definitely didn't need yet another "3GS battery life" thread.
 
notjustgc said:
Well in that case, you may have a faulty battery... but regardless, this definitely didn't need yet another "3GS battery life" thread.
Click to expand...

With all those posts...I figured it'd be nice to have a poll

And...FWIW....my iphone is now at 6% and it's been doing nothing but sitting on my desk. Yea.
 
Stangs55 said:
my iphone is now at 6% and it's been doing nothing but sitting on my desk. Yea.
Click to expand...

Yeah, that doesn't sound right at all. But whether you can convince someone at the Apple store of that is a different story entirely...

Apologies for the stand-offish tone in my first post, btw.
 
Here's a random question as I attempt to power cycle from a dead battery for the 4th time.... On my 3g/2g, whenever I would run out of battery (even fully out) and it would power off...if i pressed the power button, it would give me the red battery icon and the you-need-to-plug-it-in-moron symbol. My 3gs doesn't do that but instead just stays black without any kind of indication it's out of battery....does any else's?
 
Not me. I went from 2g to 3gs. I fell that the 3gs is worse than the 2g i had.
I have cycled it a couple times (full discharge/charge) and have all the battery draining options OFF, like push notify and bluetooth, brightness is low and running in edge. Wi-fi is on but not actively searching.

as of now.. battery is at 61% with 2hours and 34 minutes usage
and 6hours 40minutes standby.

it just doesnt seem right.
 
checkflag said:
Not me. I went from 2g to 3gs. I fell that the 3gs is worse than the 2g i had.
I have cycled it a couple times (full discharge/charge) and have all the battery draining options OFF, like push notify and bluetooth, brightness is low and running in edge. Wi-fi is on but not actively searching.

as of now.. battery is at 61% with 2hours and 34 minutes usage
and 6hours 40minutes standby.

it just doesnt seem right.
Click to expand...

update : 4 hours 3 minutes used, 39% battery left.
All usage with battery draining options off.
2g, push off, blutooth off.

I actually timed the life span of a percent while in use, and my phone is burning 1% battery in 2 minutes.
 
iPhone 3GS battery drains super fast

checkflag said:
Not me. I went from 2g to 3gs. I fell that the 3gs is worse than the 2g i had.
I have cycled it a couple times (full discharge/charge) and have all the battery draining options OFF, like push notify and bluetooth, brightness is low and running in edge. Wi-fi is on but not actively searching.

as of now.. battery is at 61% with 2hours and 34 minutes usage
and 6hours 40minutes standby.

it just doesnt seem right.
Click to expand...


I feel my 2G is better with the battery too. My new 3GS drains battery a lot faster. When that happens, I'm reluctant to use it in order to have enough battery life in case if I really need to make a call with sufficient battery remaining on my phone. I hope Apple will come up with something substantial to fix this problem
 
uberamd said:
So your case seems like something is wrong. Did you restore a previous 3G backup?
Click to expand...

I did a restore from a 3G backup. What affect might that have? My battery isn't draining as fast as these guys though. Went to bed last night with the battery at 66% and this morning its at 45%.
 
I can't contribute to this thread yet because I haven't calibrated my 3GS battery yet. As soon as I do, I'll come back and vote.
 
Here's my numbers

3GS 32GB
Usage: 2hrs 47min
Standby: 1 Day 11hrs
Battery: 44%

Pretty moderate usage with everything on as it comes out the box.
 
I'm getting pretty horrible battery life compared to my 3G. I have everything turned off and I can't web browse for more than like 3 hours on 3G. I am calibrating it right now so hopefully it will get better time.
 
Guess I should post my numbers:

Standby: 17 hours 9 minutes
usage: 2 hours, 55 minutes
Battery percent 69%

iPhone has not been plugged in since last full charge. I love my 3G S!
 
my 3gs got me all around london on the weekend (compass with maps was very useful), and was on standby for about 24 hours and i was down to about 65% when i woke up this morning.
 
uberamd said:
Hm, after 9 hours of having it off the charger, downloading apps, playing a game for a while, PUSH email as well as 15 minute intervals, my battery is down to 77%. It is lasting phenomenally long, much longer than my 3G. So your case seems like something is wrong. Did you restore a previous 3G backup?
Click to expand...

Wow, 77% seems to be very good. What setting do have turned on etc? Do you have push notifications turned on? Do you have bluetooth turned? Do you have email pushing to your phone? My iPhone is currently at 82% after 53 minutes of usage. What is your actually usage when it reaches 77%? You can find this by going to settings --> General --> Usage. My battery drain seems to be in line with the iPhone's tech specs of 5 hours on 3G, 20% for every hour.
 
So, I'm actually fine with my battery life. However, as compared to many of you apparently I am turning out to be a very light user.

BatteryLife.png


3G on (didn't seem to wander to Edge); BT off; WiFi off; Push off; 1 hr Fetch; Usage is mostly music via wired headphones; a hand-full or so (less than 10 for sure) of short calls; a hand-full of text messages; some emails read and deleted but no responses; location services on; fandango used; phone was last charged Wednesday night/Thursday a.m.; unplugged about 8:30 a.m. Thursday a.m.; was never plugged in to electric or USB to "top off".

Now, I'll be adding more apps shortly...a grocery/shopping app, a todo app, etc. This is my first iphone so I've been browsing the app store trying to figure out which ones are worth paying for instead of going with the freebies!
 
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