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How is your battery life

  • Brilliant

    Votes: 15 10.1%
  • Same as Iphone 2G

    Votes: 23 15.4%
  • Ok

    Votes: 60 40.3%
  • Poor

    Votes: 51 34.2%

  • Total voters
    149
  • Poll closed .
You're basing this on the experience of a very small number of people on the first day of use. My experience (noted above) isn't in line with what others have experienced - maybe my charging cycle was better, maybe I'm simply being less sensationalist, maybe it's just luck. But don't go all tabloid and acting like you're going to throw yourself off a bridge over battery life just yet.

No, I am slightly miffed that I have just entered a new contract and I am worried that it isn't doing what it said. I am now updating to the latest software and I hope this may help. Also i will give it a few charge cycles to see if it gets better. Fingers crossed.
 
No, I am slightly miffed that I have just entered a new contract and I am worried that it isn't doing what it said. I am now updating to the latest software and I hope this may help. Also i will give it a few charge cycles to see if it gets better. Fingers crossed.

My battery just died and I had a total of 14 hours of usage
 
Here's my situation...

I had an original iPhone and the batter was never an issue for me. I usually have it docked when I'm at my desk. When it's in my car, I have it plugged into the car charger. The battery was more than adequate.

Here is my plan for my new 3G iPhone: keep it docked when at my desk, turn off 3G unless I have a lot of browsing I need to do, and keep it on the charger when driving.

I'm hoping I don't have a problem. But since reading that article on Apple's website, I will let it discharge once a month. I didn't realize that Lithium Ion batteries still needed to be discharged; I thought keeping them topped off was best for battery life.
 
But since reading that article on Apple's website, I will let it discharge once a month. I didn't realize that Lithium Ion batteries still needed to be discharged; I thought keeping them topped off was best for battery life.

Despite what they say, that's probably as much about keeping the software's awareness of the battery's full capacity accurate as it is about actually maintaining the battery capacity. However, your iPhone will turn off when it thinks it's low on battery, so it's still the way to go.
 
Here is my plan for my new 3G iPhone: keep it docked when at my desk, turn off 3G unless I have a lot of browsing I need to do, and keep it on the charger when driving.

Good luck with that. Apple did something to the 3g so that car chargers don't work any more...

As far as the battery life goes I haven't noticed anything different from the 2G. Hammer it and it drops fairly fast, light usage and it'll last a while (still at 80% battery after all days use, a little browsing, and listening to music for 2 hours.. so I reckon a couple of days at least). I generally leave wifi and bluetooth off unless I'm using them, also - bluetooth doesn't seem to affect it much but wifi is a huge drain.

Edit: Oh, and switch push off as it keeps an active data connection, which also drains battery (although I haven't actually run a comparative test on the 3G I've seen it enough on other phones.. having an active data connection, even over GPRS, is way more battery intensive than having it merely idle waiting for a call).
 
I noticed this with my old iphone as well as this new one.

Battery-life is noticeably shorter in the beginning because we want to play with it and mess with all the features, however, as we get into a rhythm of using the phone and the initial "ooh i want to try all these things out" factor wears off, battery life always seems to be better afterwards.

at least that's what i notice.
 
Good luck with that. Apple did something to the 3g so that car chargers don't work any more...

As far as the battery life goes I haven't noticed anything different from the 2G. Hammer it and it drops fairly fast, light usage and it'll last a while (still at 80% battery after all days use, a little browsing, and listening to music for 2 hours.. so I reckon a couple of days at least). I generally leave wifi and bluetooth off unless I'm using them, also - bluetooth doesn't seem to affect it much but wifi is a huge drain.

Edit: Oh, and switch push off as it keeps an active data connection, which also drains battery (although I haven't actually run a comparative test on the 3G I've seen it enough on other phones.. having an active data connection, even over GPRS, is way more battery intensive than having it merely idle waiting for a call).

My car charger works fine with my iphone 3g.
 
1st gen iphone would last me all day...granted I've been using it more than normal, but my battery today was almost completely wasted by midday..had to recharge it for the first time in the middle of the afternoon...not good
 
Well i've barely touched my phone and it's dead. 48 minutes usage, 8 hours standby and the 20% warning has come up. The usage included a couple of SMS and a short phone call. And this is with WiFi switched off!!!

Damo
 
As i understand 3G and batteries, there are some issues. If you are near a mast, and are the only user on the mast, you will get plenty of battery time. the device can 'whisper' and communicate. however, imagine yourself in a crowded party and you are talking to your friend, over the disco, and he is at the other side of the room .... it takes some energy. this is how 3G works, every talks at once. crowded network, you are in battery hell. GSM is different in that everyone takes turns to talk, and therefore doesnt have to shout. slower, but more battery efficient. I hope the analogy is a good one and explains the issue and the battery saving implications.
Batteries also, take a while to hit decent performance, several charge/discharge cycles.
Now i dont have a 3G iphone yet (it coming this week hopefully), but some knowledge and realism, i know, is going to be required. the device is being asked to do a lot and it is a small battery. What i dont know is to what degree the battery newness and 3G 'shouting' actually effects usage. percentages? does anyone have any data?
 
Why not have an option to have 3G off for phone calls? It seems to be a huge battery drain, but what benefit does it give? You should only really want 3G when using Safari...
 
I am on softbank in Japan and sadly the network is 3G only! no option to switch 3G off because the network just drops. On the other hand the network is lightning fast and the coverage is great. Sadly it is killing my battery life.
 
Everyone is probably busy checking out all the new features at the moment, but any thoughts on the battery life on a normal day? Check mails in the morning, make some calls during the day, some browsing, sending a few text messages, etc. I hope it holds out long enough for simple things like this. It would be bad if you can't even get through the day without walking around with a charger...
 
They say lithium batteries take about three cycles to fully wake up.

And turn off the 3G when you don't need it, especially if your signal strength isn't good, kills the batteries.

And by three cycles I mean three full charges and usage until your phone shuts down.
 
When i purchased my iPhone, I was a bit concerned about the 3G battery times so I went with an Edge plan and added an Unlimited Data plan to it. By doing this, I can disable 3G and have longer battery times. it may take my iPhone longer to download but since my data is unlimited, I don't mind. Besides, I do most of my downloading at home or at a wifi hotspot. I really don't need 3G speeds for calls or sms messages which is why I went with Edge. The only drawback to doing this is that I purchased the Tuner app (internet radio) and streaming it using Edge is horrible as it lags quite a lot.
 
Why not have an option to have 3G off for phone calls? It seems to be a huge battery drain, but what benefit does it give? You should only really want 3G when using Safari...

Not everyone has GSM networks available everywhere they have 3G networks available. It's rare in Europe and unheard of in the US, but it does happen.
 
battery life's definitely not great but it's not a catastrophe, either. I had it fully charged at 7 a.m. this morning - now it's 2 p.m. and it's down to 1/3.
My HTC TyTN II never lasted this long...

However, I have push enabled for Mobile Me, 3G on, WiFi on and location services on - that's quite a load for a cellphone. I used it for 3 1/2 hours constantly today, mainly downloading apps, browsing the iTunes store, playing games and browsing the web.

Tomorrow's my first work-day with it and I'll be using it "normally" - if it doesn't last through a normal work-day with all the stuff enabled, I'll start disabling things that I don't regularly use - like location services and 3G / or WiFi, depending on whether I have a WiFi hotspot nearby.

3G could be a double-issue: 1st of all, the 3G chip uses more power - but secondly, the 3G coverage isn't as good as GSM in most areas so the phone will have to power-up the radio and use even more battery.

peter
 
just remembered something. My old iphone required a few charge cycles before it actually had good usable life. I'm hoping the same is true of the new one.

Bingo! We have a winner...

They say lithium batteries take about three cycles to fully wake up.

And turn off the 3G when you don't need it, especially if your signal strength isn't good, kills the batteries.

And by three cycles I mean three full charges and usage until your phone shuts down.

...and another!

All this talk of poor battery life is seriously premature. Put your phone through 3 full charge/discharge cycles before even thinking about your battery life. Anyone quoting their battery life on a 2 day old device cannot have done this and so their data must be viewed with some scepticism.

I have learnt to do this with every mobile phone; camera and other portable device that I've owned. I consistently get better day to day and year on year battery life than my less techy friends.

That said, no manufacturing process or quality control procedure is 100% perfect. So, if one is still getting poor battery life after 3 full charge/discharge cycles, then it's fair to say there's a problem, but not before.
 
I know 3G is tough of battery, but SJ said 5 hours talk time 3G and 10 hours talk time on 2G. This seems to be a myth. Yes you may get that in full service with wifi off, location services off and screen brightness set to min. If you don't do all of this you will get 1 hour before your battery beeps at you.

Jobs is a salesman, not an engineer. This carries over to the tests Apple uses to create their battery specs. You can see their caveats listed at the bottom of their web page.

When Apple tests a phone, they make sure it connects only at frequencies that use the least power. Up to 2/3 less power. This almost certainly means that they also use their own test cell nearby, or in the lab itself.

The internet testing is almost as unrealistic. They use local servers, with certain captured (and apparently manipulated, judging from that National Geographic demo) pages. Same for email servers. Then they pull down a page every three minutes and email once an hour... from servers that don't change address and which, being local, have little latency.

So their tests are most useful when comparing their own products.
 
I'm getting about a full day so far, about the same as I was getting on my old iPhone under the same usage. I've been doing allot of texting and emails the last two days so to me it's not bad at all.

I do have emails being sent via MobileMe so the push feature seems to be helping on battery life.
 
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