Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

I hope the next update fixes the battery issues

Island Dog

Island Dog

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Sep 11, 2005
705
3
St. Cloud, FL.
Several weeks ago I wrote about my troubles after the last update regarding the battery suddenly losing battery life. Many people seem to be experiencing this same problem.

I took my iPhone back to the Apple store and received a new one. While this phone has "acted" much better the same problem has happened a few times. I really hope the next update fixes this issue.
 
erandall38 said:
just around how much usage are you getting out of it?
Click to expand...

im getting 4.5 hrs out of my battery most of the time on the web. Wifi, ssh abd all this apps are off and i keep my brightness on the lowest that i can barely see. Is that sounds for about normal?
 
That's poor. Mine lasts all day.. of course it has to be plugged back into the dock when I get home from work otherwise it'd die. Wifi etc. are all switched on.

Of course that's standby time.. start making calls and 4 hours is probably about right.
 
How much are you using it for various things during a typical day, Tony? It's just that while the manufacturer's standby times are usually optimistic, a working day is a lot less than "up to 250 hours"!
 
Depends. Some days it's not used at all apart from the occasional ding when an email arrives.. then I can finish a day at 60% ish and even have time to go out for a pint and put it on when I get home. If it gets used for anything eg. browsing the battery drops like a stone. It's 4pm now I was browsing a little earlier.. battery is at 50%.. so it'll be exhausted by the time I get home tonight (about 8pm).

250 hours just isn't going to happen - that's 10 days!

I'd say optimistically with everything off maybe 2 days if you didn't use it at all.
 
That's pretty poor - all the US reviews said the standby times etc. that were quoted were actually not far off. Arse. Still, I'd imagine it'll get docked most nights so it hopefully shouldn't be too much of an issue.
 
Maybe it's 250 hours in airplane mode? That'd work... wouldn't be a lot of use as a phone, though...

Every manufacturer quotes outrageous times for their standby times.. I remember my old P800 quoted a whopping 600 hours! In reality it got about 96 if you never used it.

Basically with any 'smart' phone you're going to have to keep it near a power source or have lots of spare batteries (I usually have 3 on rotation for holidays, but that's obviously not an option for the iphone).
 
I had the same problem and I think I figured out what it is...

Some days my battery would go completely dead in half a day, but this only ever happened at work. Couple things I noticed...

At the office there are several wifi networks, none of which I can connect to because they're neighboring offices and they're all secure. Also, occasionally my e-mail retrieval sticks... that is, it may be loading a large number of messages or a large file attachment and sometimes it seems like it just hangs there (which it'll do even through sleep as it's really the display that sleeps as the phone will notify you of new emails while asleep).

I took some steps and now my battery life is excellent...

1. Disable automatic email retrieval. Check your email as needed. If it's really important, there's no reason someone can't just call you.

2. Disable wi-fi.

3. While using wi-fi, keep "Ask To Join Networks" turned off.

Also, if you have it turned on, keep bluetooth turned off except when you're using it. Bluetooth burns a tremendous amount of battery power.


There's other stuff you can probably reconfigure but these are the big drains on your battery life.
 
Battery life bad, try restore

I noticed about 2 or 3 weeks after I applied 1.1.1 that my battery was dying VERY quickly. Before having the problem I was getting 5h - 8h usage and about 2 days to 2.5 days standby.

Suddenly it just started running down very quickly. I would get maybe 50 minutes of usage and 15h standby if I was lucky!

This last weekend (11/3) the phone ran all the way down to where it wouldn't even turn back on. I hooked it to my Mac until I could get it back on, did a restore and then applied my backup back to the phone.

Then I docked it on the AC charger and went to bed. It's been ROCK SOLID since. I'm back to getting 5h to 8h usage with over 2 days standby.

I also noticed that prior to the battery really running down quickly the iPod "play" icon would be up next to the battery even when I wasn't using the iPod. Restarting the phone didn't seem to help, it would just randomly re-appear. Since I've restored the phone it's not done that again.

I wonder if maybe the iPod software is running in the background and sucking the battery down while the phone is in standby?

Anyway - I'm a happy camper now. Try restoring! :D

PS - To give you an idea of usage vs. features for my battery life: I keep WiFi off unless I'm using it, leave bluetooth on and use it with my Jawbone when driving. I keep auto-brightness off and the brightness is set to between 40% and 45%. I use it about 70% Internet, 25% iPod, 5% calls/SMS.
 
To me this is like complaining about gas milage when your driving a Ferrari and constantly have your foot on the gas....

In other words, my battery problem stems from the fact that the phone is so functional, I end up using it 2-3 times more than any other phone I've had.
 
how do u guys treat ur batteries? Do u let it dry all way down or put it on charge when possible. Let's say u came from work with 50% battery left. Would u put it on charge or keep using it and than charge at night maybe?
 
Charging

I usually charge when the battery is around 40% to 50% remaining. I've read many places with the Li-poly batteries the 500 or so charge cycle is counted as a full chemical discharge/charge. So if charging from 50% full, it's really 1/2 of a chemical charge.

Frankly I just don't worry that much about it. It'll last me the two years - of that I'm pretty confident - and I already spent $600 on a phone (yes, I was an early adopter) so if/when the battery is dead I'll pony up the $80 to have it replaced.

Or I'll buy the iPhone2.0 when it comes out! :D
 
Do existing iPhone users really have to charge their units every night?
My current SonyEricsson needs charging once a week (or a bit more frequently if I use it a lot) & my work BlackBerry doesn't need plugging in much more often.
OK I know that the iPhone does more than either of these, that's why I want one - but this battery issue sounds like a real pain in the bottom...
 
Deadhead said:
Do existing iPhone users really have to charge their units every night?
My current SonyEricsson needs charging once a week (or a bit more frequently if I use it a lot) & my work BlackBerry doesn't need plugging in much more often.
OK I know that the iPhone does more than either of these, that's why I want one - but this battery issue sounds like a real pain in the bottom...
Click to expand...

I charge about every 96 hrs..
 
I don,t know if I'm lucky or what but i think I get great battery life. So far today today 1hr 12 minutes usage and 7 hrs 17 min standby and the batt is still at 100%. What do you guys think?
 
snook911 said:
I don,t know if I'm lucky or what but i think I get great battery life. So far today today 1hr 12 minutes usage and 7 hrs 17 min standby and the batt is still at 100%. What do you guys think?
Click to expand...

at that time of usage im sure my battery starts dropping.


And i do charge mone every night since i use it a lot during the day.
 
Avatar74 said:
1. Disable automatic email retrieval. Check your email as needed. If it's really important, there's no reason someone can't just call you.

2. Disable wi-fi.

3. While using wi-fi, keep "Ask To Join Networks" turned off.

Also, if you have it turned on, keep bluetooth turned off except when you're using it. Bluetooth burns a tremendous amount of battery power.
Click to expand...


The first items you recommend are spot on, but bluetooth does not burn a tremendous amount of battery power. That's part of the advantage of bluetooth, it uses a minimal amount. Sure, you may notice a slight increase, but it wont be dramatic. You wont see 50% or anything close, maybe 5-10% max.

I turned off "ask to join networks" today, and I'm charging it right now. Today, I had 3 hours 14 minutes of use, and 22 hours 36 minutes of stand by. I was down to about 10% battery life. We'll see if the ask to join networks makes that big of a difference tomorrow. I hope it does.

I really believe 1.1.1 really ate my battery life by a significant amount. I was able to get the same amount of stand by with nearly double the amount of use (about 5-6 hours) before I saw 10% battery.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back