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Ip4 battery life not quite what I expected...

Y

youngll11

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 12, 2010
15
0
So after patiently waiting for my beautiful black ip4, I finally go it last night. It took 4 hours at apple and AT&T to set me up (story for another time), and then I finally got some time to mess with it. I plugged it into my computer, and left it in overnight to be fully charged today. I got up at 5am this morning, with everything updated and ready to go. It is 8:35am, and I am at 43%. I have updated a lot of apps, done about 25 mins of surfing on this forum, a little facebook, but no music or video playback. I am not connected to wifi at work, although I am connected to 3G.

Please let me know if I'm in the wrong, but I had heard (from mr. Jobs himself, I believe) that the battery was rated for approx 10 hrs of video playback. If I'm already at 42% less than 3.5 hrs later, no chance I would be able to watch 10hrs of video.

I'm wondering if I got a crappy battery. Is this normal or should i take my phone back? I wanted to give as much background info as possible.

Thanks in advance for your help.

Aiden
 
did you set it up as a new phone, or restore from an iPhone 3G backup? I had restored mine, and had similar battery issues. But I had read on here to set it up as a fresh install. I did -- even though it was a pain (goodbye ANGRY BIRDS progress)--and my battery life has been a lot better.

And since your phone is brand new, I'd run it down all the way a couple times to calibrate the meter.
 
Yea something is def wrong. Try charging it with the wall charger until it hits 100% and see if you have the same issue.
 
ericg301 said:
did you set it up as a new phone, or restore from an iPhone 3G backup? I had restored mine, and had similar battery issues. But I had read on here to set it up as a fresh install. I did -- even though it was a pain (goodbye ANGRY BIRDS progress)--and my battery life has been a lot better.

And since your phone is brand new, I'd run it down all the way a couple times to calibrate the meter.
Click to expand...

This. Same thing for me. Set up as a new phone, did a full battery discharge cycles, and now I get 7hrs of heavy usage before I hit 5%. And by heavy usage I mean alot of safari use, app use, and a little video & camera use.
 
ericg301 said:
did you set it up as a new phone, or restore from an iPhone 3G backup? I had restored mine, and had similar battery issues. But I had read on here to set it up as a fresh install. I did -- even though it was a pain (goodbye ANGRY BIRDS progress)--and my battery life has been a lot better.

And since your phone is brand new, I'd run it down all the way a couple times to calibrate the meter.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the quick response. I did set it up as a new phone. I was planning on running it all the way down a couple times. I had a blackberry 9700 until yesterday, so I didn't want to use my old iPhone backups from a year ago.

To update, I am at 35% less than 4 hours after initial charge. 2 mins of video playback, 40 mins of safari use, and I updated about 25 apps from the AppStore. I would classify my usage as "heavy." but I have seen other threads of 1-2 day stretches off one charge with "heavy" usage.

I really don't want to go back to apple, but I'd also like my phone to last longer than my work day.
 
youngll11 said:
Thanks for the quick response. I did set it up as a new phone. I was planning on running it all the way down a couple times. I had a blackberry 9700 until yesterday, so I didn't want to use my old iPhone backups from a year ago.

To update, I am at 35% less than 4 hours after initial charge. 2 mins of video playback, 40 mins of safari use, and I updated about 25 apps from the AppStore. I would classify my usage as "heavy." but I have seen other threads of 1-2 day stretches off one charge with "heavy" usage.

I really don't want to go back to apple, but I'd also like my phone to last longer than my work day.
Click to expand...

Definitely do a few battery discharges. Mine got better after I set it up as a new phone, and then cycled the battery a few times.
 
joshwithachance said:
DEFINITELY set it up as a new phone because I'm getting 2 days of battery life EASILY with the iPhone 4 :D
Click to expand...

I know you mean well, but these kind of posts don’t do anything for anyone. 2 days of life doing what? If you were surfing a large portion of the time, there’s no way you’d get that. Bottom line, what you do with the phone affects how long it takes before you have to charge. For example, I have my old jailbroke 3G that I don’t use any more, since I have the iPhone 4. The 3G is in airplane mode with wifi on, since it doesn’t have a sim. I currently am at %55 battery after 24 days.

youngll11 said:
So should I go straight to apple? Or will they tell me to ******* off?
Click to expand...

Forget the “couple of times” discharging until it dies. Do it once, and if you still have the issues take it back. Apple will look at it and be able to tell there is something wrong with the battery. You’ll be fine.
 
joshwithachance said:
DEFINITELY set it up as a new phone because I'm getting 2 days of battery life EASILY with the iPhone 4 :D
Click to expand...

What Josh said.

I'm getting two full days with reasonably heavy usage without a problem. I typically have about 10-15% battery left when I go to bed on the second night. I think it would be even better if I had good cell signal in my bomb shelter of an office. I usually only have about 3bars of edge in my office. This thing rocks compared to my 3G.

I think yours has issues.

Steve
 
check for background apps running that are using location services.

A co-worker brought me his iPhone and said it was hot and he could [almost] literally watch the battery percentages drop. When I checked, he had Trapster running in the background using the location services (GPS). 5 minutes after killing the app, the phone was cool and the battery stabilized out. In checking with him later that week, he can now go 2 days before having to charge.

Personally, I can go 2 days and I have Location Services, Push, BT, WiFi and Notifications on at ALL times.
 
wattsja said:
check for background apps running that are using location services.

A co-worker brought me his iPhone and said it was hot and he could [almost] literally watch the battery percentages drop. When I checked, he had Trapster running in the background using the location services (GPS). 5 minutes after killing the app, the phone was cool and the battery stabilized out. In checking with him later that week, he can now go 2 days before having to charge.

Personally, I can go 2 days and I have Location Services, Push, BT, WiFi and Notifications on at ALL times.
Click to expand...

Thanks for all your help. I went ahead and made an appointment with apple.

How do you check what's running in the background?

To be clear, I did set my phone up as a new phone. I have made two calls, each lasting 3 minutes. I've watched one 3-minute YouTube video, and besides that I've been using safari. I updated all my apps this morning, which I'm sure used up a good portion of the battery, but as of 930am I'm under 20%.
 
wattsja said:
check for background apps running that are using location services.

A co-worker brought me his iPhone and said it was hot and he could [almost] literally watch the battery percentages drop. When I checked, he had Trapster running in the background using the location services (GPS). 5 minutes after killing the app, the phone was cool and the battery stabilized out. In checking with him later that week, he can now go 2 days before having to charge.

Personally, I can go 2 days and I have Location Services, Push, BT, WiFi and Notifications on at ALL times.
Click to expand...

With heavy internet use and location service use, wifi IMPROVES battery life. It's not like everything you do is killing the battery super fast. Try it over 3g, and your results will vary. The bottom line is that you SHOULD get 7 to 8 hours of heavy use over 3G before charging. If you aren't... take it back.
 
normwood said:
What Josh said.

I'm getting two full days with reasonably heavy usage without a problem. I typically have about 10-15% battery left when I go to bed on the second night. I think it would be even better if I had good cell signal in my bomb shelter of an office. I usually only have about 3bars of edge in my office. This thing rocks compared to my 3G.

I think yours has issues.

Steve
Click to expand...

Define "reasonably heavy usage."

I say bs. There is no way you are getting two days of battery with what most people would consider even minor usage. No way.
 
youngll11 said:
How do you check what's running in the background?
Click to expand...

"double click" the home button. You will see the dock raise up and a list of icon will appear. (NOTE: Just because an icon is here does NOT mean it is running .. it will only be running if it supports the background APIs). To clear them, hold them down (like you are moving apps between pages) and a - sign will appear allowing you to close/remove them.
 
Just to throw this into the mix, I realized today that none of my SMS messages are going through. I can't send or receive them. In addition, my ip4 died as expected not long after my last post, so I charged it up via USB at work. It took quite a while to get up to 35%, probably around 30 minutes. I then turned my phone off while it was still charging, thinking it may charge faster. 2 hours later I turned it back on to find that it had not charged at all while it was plugged in.

I don't know if any of this info helps in figuring out the issue, but I just thought I'd throw it out there for you Mac geniuses to think about. I'm at the apple store waiting for my genius appt to come around, I'll let you know what they say.

Thanks again for all of your help.
 
youngll11 said:
Thanks for all your help. I went ahead and made an appointment with apple.

How do you check what's running in the background?

To be clear, I did set my phone up as a new phone. I have made two calls, each lasting 3 minutes. I've watched one 3-minute YouTube video, and besides that I've been using safari. I updated all my apps this morning, which I'm sure used up a good portion of the battery, but as of 930am I'm under 20%.
Click to expand...
good luck, they told me to eff off today. i was getting about 5-6hrs of heavy usage (web, apps, games) before it got to about 10%. they ran a diagnostic test which came back as normal and said they couldnt replace it. i'm going to to a full cycle and set as new again to see if helps, if not, i'm just going to return it and get another one a day or so later.
 
Got my phone and used the backup from my 3G, charged it up and it's still going at 1 day 5 hours of standby, and 7.5 hours of usage (couple of calls, texting, camera, apps, updating/downloading apps, music, iplayer, web browsing etc) with 10% battery left. I've been waiting for it to run down so I can go to sleep and leave it charging overnight :rolleyes: much better battery than my 3G was giving me though, very annoying when it'd die on me when out camping or something.
 
What's this reasonably heavy usage? Please explain. What does your actual usage say when you are about to put it on the charger? I get about 6 1/2 to 8 hours of heavy usage and 16 hours or so standby depending on exactly what it is I'm doing and if I'm on 3G or wifi. What I mean by heavy usage is web browsing for a few hours, streaming some videos, a couple emails, listening To some iPod music, streaming some pandora, browsing facebook etc.
 
Did you sync your email account(s)? If you're trying to sync Exchange mail, that might cause huge battery loss while it's syncing in the background, especially if you're trying to do your entire inbox history in one go. Happened to me.
 
The diagnostics test they did at the apple store also came up regular, but they gave me a new one anyway. Pretty chill in century city. The new one is much better in terms of battery life, and the lack of sms was as a result of a dumbass at&t store rep who didn't know what she was doing and took my whole family off of our text plan.

Soooo....i can finally enjoy my phone!
 
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