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iOS4 Burning Through Battery Life

T

travis123

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 24, 2008
11
0
I dont know if anyone else has seen this problem but I have a 3gs and after installing update, my phone went through battery like crazy. Im talking like almost a percent per minute. Even after turning off as much as I could think of. Then I started deleting apps, rebooting, and at some point it stopped consuming current and started acting normal. I dont know if it was a rogue app but I suspect so. I have not updated any apps in over a month I would say so it could be. I started googling and found the below thread. I am Travis245 in the thread. If you have seen this, take a look at the thread.
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2469566&tstart=0
 
Same issue here. I haven't tried removing all the apps yet, but it's draining at about 1% every 1.5 minutes or so on my 3GS.

Any idea what app may have been causing this?
 
There is now 8 or 9 pages to the thread I posted in the previous email with people experincing this problem. Someone pointed out in that thread that you can use a program called a system monitor to check and see what is running when it shouldnt be. I dont know anything about that but since deleting some of my old apps my phone has been working fine. Here is the program they suggested:
System Activity Monitor

Im surprised I have not seen other people here posting about this problem. Im really surprised that this is not a more common problem than it is. I dont do any special things on my phone so I would have expected this not to happen to me if it didnt happen to most people. I think I just had a odd app running or something.
 
I have iOS4 on my 2G iPod touch and I have great battery life. I enabled the percentage for it and I'm trying to make it die because I heard you get off readings until it dies completely and it just seems to keep going and going and it's still going. I've only plugged it in to sync a few things. I've been on 3% for about 5-10 minutes now. It might have something to do with multitasking or backgrounds. Try letting the battery run completely dead and then completely charging it. It may help.
 
Sucks! My 3GS battery went from 14% to 5% in half an hour in standby mode. What the hell was draining it.
 
problem identified

guys, please read the post on the discussion forums.

Ive had exactly the same issue....but ive solved it!!

Turn off all your email accounts PUSH setting, not just the exchange ones.

Ive just done a thorough test and its 100% the Push setting thats draining us dry in 2 hours.

when i got up this morning on a full charge, my battery died within 2.5 hours.

my phone has been used heavily now for the last 5 hours and im at 73%.


what a difference!!
 
vincebio said:
guys, please read the post on the discussion forums.

Ive had exactly the same issue....but ive solved it!!

Turn off all your email accounts PUSH setting, not just the exchange ones.

Ive just done a thorough test and its 100% the Push setting thats draining us dry in 2 hours.

when i got up this morning on a full charge, my battery died within 2.5 hours.

my phone has been used heavily now for the last 5 hours and im at 73%.


what a difference!!
Click to expand...

Don't you think we know that already? I have no push, no notification, no jailbreak. It's draining for no reason even when in standby.
 
Mee too

Man my phone is doing the exact same thing. About 1% a min. I thought something was up. I have been teathered to my desk lately since starting with the iOS 4 because I have had to keep it plugged in!
 
I took some suggestions from this forum and Apple's own support forum, and Factory-restored my phone.

Then I turned off "push" mail on ALL my mail accounts. So far, that seems to slow the drain by a lot, but it is still draining faster than when it was on 3.1.3.

Now I have my personal email accounts to manual fetch, and my office email to fetch 15 mins.

If I get desperate I'll try turning off Location services. I hear that zaps battery too, and is a reason why people are complaining their phone is hot, cos the GPS is constantly running. You can turn off location services for specific apps, though, so i don't know if that helps.

Its just irritating that all these things that would work flawlessly on 3.1.3 don't seem to work properly on 4.0, and we have to make workarounds to accomodate it.

Apple, patch this quickly please!
 
I have experienced this problem straight after installing iOS 4. Yesterday the battery died in the afternoon whereas usually I manage to go through the day without charging the battery under the same conditions.

Some details to isolate the issue:

a. Because I was working from home I had the wifi connection on all day. This didn't make any difference in 3.1.3.
b. Network usage was unusually high. When the battery died, the stand-by time was around 8 hours and usage almost 3 hours. Three hours of usage seems a lot to me and I can't remember to ever had such a high value in there. I didn't use any apps that access the networl for that long
c. Push was On (MobileMe user) as usual.

After the battery died, I recharged it completely. This morning I work from the office and wifi is not on. Check this data:

a. Wifi Off, just 3G
b. Push email is still On
c. No changes in software installed
d. Standby = 7 hours already (the iPhone was partly on during the night in plane mode) and usage only 26 minutes

Now, if my analysis is correct two factors can be the cause of problem (at least in my case):

1. I have recycled the battery. Maybe that has recalibrated it? No idea, I'm not an expert in that and it seems unlikely.
2. Wifi is Off and I'm pretty much doing the same things that I was doing yesterday. Even so the network usage is low.

If I am not wrong iOS 4 keeps the wifi connection On all the time even when the iPhone is in sleeping mode. This would explain the high network usage that I had yesterday.

Just my 2c here. Your thoughts appreciated.

EDIT:
It's 12.45pm GMT and the network usage stats are
- Usage = 38 minutes
- Standby = 10 hours
- Battery = 88%

This looks really similar to the stats I used to have in 3.1.3.

Curious behaviour. I'll have to check again if with the wifi On the battery drains like yesterday.
 
My Battery is Unaffected

Dear All,

After reading initial reports of decreased battery life I paid close attention to how my 3GS was doing. Since I am now based largely at home, on average I would get about 2 days from my battery on 3.1.3 and this seems to be holding true for 4.0

My settings:

WiFi - On
3G - Off (no point turning it on out here)
Push - On (multiple apps)
Email - check every 15 minutes or Push where available (3 accounts)
Screen Brightness - medium
Usage - moderate to high (calls, web use, texts, apps)

After leaving the phone on standby for 10 hours, battery life was 92%. It took 2 days before I needed to charge again.

Has anyone pinpointed what it is that causes the drain?

Regards,
Droid13
 
Safari in background

I've noticed a strange behaviour with battery life since ios4 GM on a 3GS 32gb: leaving the phone in standby mode -or using it- for the same amount of time in the same conditions (i mean, same settings/same use) drain battery differently, i.e. 3% vs 15%.
I'm not sure, but for some reason closing all safari tabs (important: leave a blank page) and then kill the app from the "taskmanager" seems to work. I don't know, it's really strange, but maybe there is something in background that safari does?
 
Touched Too

We have a Touch (older model) which is now going flat overnight, I think it is the wifi, if I put it in 'Airplane' mode it hardly goes down at all. Hopefully Apple will get it sorted, but what I'd like to know is why wasn't this found in testing?
 
Battery Life on iOS 4.0

Dear All,

Please find attached a screenshot showing my iPhone 3GS has been running steadily for nearly 2 full days - my settings are detailed earlier in the thread, it would be interesting to find out what exactly is causing the battery to die so readily in other handsets.

Regards,
Droid13
 

Attachments

  • iOS 4.0 Battery.jpg
    iOS 4.0 Battery.jpg
    107.7 KB · Views: 72
Hello,

I recently made the upgrade to 4.0. I love it overall, but my battery is draining SLOWER while I use it, but much faster in standby mode compared to the the original OS in my 3GS.

I use to be able to leave my 3GS fully charged off the charger over night. Now a fully charged 3GS at 10PM is at 10-20% battery life at 6AM the next day! I do have push email on for one exchange account but that is it. No bluetooth or anything extra beyond what I was using in the original OS.

HELP!

Chandra
 
Weird, I'm noticing a far improved battery life on my 3GS after installing iOS 4:
img0319.png


A lot of the time, these types of problems are caused by corrupted backups. Try restoring then not putting the backup back on.
 
Wegee said:
but maybe there is something in background that safari does?
Click to expand...

Update: after a bit of testing i'm quite sure that wasn't safari.
Actually the only thing that worked for me was deleting every accounts from mail app, and never use the app. I've posted this in the Bugs thread in response to another user, sorry for double post, but maybe can be helpful:

"usually my iphone is setup without notifications, only manual fetch etc, no push at all, but sometimes open contacts app, or receive a text message, made mail app to automatically download e-mails, this never happened in ios 3.1.3. It seems like that mail app remains blocked in a loop trying to do something in background, but occasionally other services unlocks the loop for some reason. At first i thought that was safari auto-refreshing sites in background, but after a week of experiments i'm pretty sure it has to be related to mail."

Done this and my 3GS is back like new, seriously: before the battery burning 3-5% (and worst) every hour IN STANDBY. I'm annoyed but for now is the only way to go... waiting for the update, ios4 is so buggy :(

It would be useful if someone else could try it.
 
Droid13 said:
Dear All,

Please find attached a screenshot showing my iPhone 3GS has been running steadily for nearly 2 full days - my settings are detailed earlier in the thread, it would be interesting to find out what exactly is causing the battery to die so readily in other handsets.

Regards,
Droid13
Click to expand...

Wow, you just blew my battery life out of the water! That's impressive! :eek:
 
Droid13 said:
Dear All,

Please find attached a screenshot showing my iPhone 3GS has been running steadily for nearly 2 full days - my settings are detailed earlier in the thread, it would be interesting to find out what exactly is causing the battery to die so readily in other handsets.

Regards,
Droid13
Click to expand...

With 3G off and wifi only you should have got 10 hours usage and been able to go the whole weekend without charging. This is based on the Apple stats for the phone, plus my own experience (and I had 3G on).
 
-aggie- said:
With 3G off and wifi only you should have got 10 hours usage and been able to go the whole weekend without charging. This is based on the Apple stats for the phone, plus my own experience (and I had 3G on).
Click to expand...

Not me. I get a day of charge, but not a whole weekend. Unless I kept the phone in standby the whole time, I don't think I'd be able to achieve that.
 
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