iPhone 3G Battery Life Tests

[c0mmander venus]

What really chaps my ass is that on the first page in the "Settings" menu on our 3G iPhones the wi-fi connection settings are listed, but to get to 3G connectivity you have to go two more pages deep to make the swap between enabled/disabled. If Apple could have foreseen a lot of us toggling to save battery, you think they'd make this feature less of a pain. It sucks when someone's like "Oh! New iPhone! Sweet! I hear the internet's great...let me check my Facebook!" and I have to say "Sure! But first, let me trifle through 4 pages of settings to enable a better connection for you!"

More or less a buzzkill if you know what I mean.

 

[winterspan]

I have a great idea that may help to avoid unnecessary arguments in the future. Before you criticize something, spend some time researching the subject matter in order to obtain a proper context through which to view the specific criticism. Everyone can sit here and whine about the battery life of the new iPhone, but in reality it's actually pretty good for such a slim smartphone with a large screen. Am I an apologist? Nope, I'm just being realistic. Should Apple have made the battery easily replaceable? I think so.

what I don't understand is, how does Apple get away with outright lying about this very topic?

One of the things most of us were worried about was battery life on a 3g iPhone. Jobbs comes out on jun 9 and tells how absolutely wonderful and revolutinary their newest battery life accomplishments are.

Why can't they just be honest? I left the keynote thinking: 3G and better battery life. Reality though, is 3G and worse battery life. How does that not become a legal issue for them? I mean, it will eventually. They get sued constantly over these things. But it will be all hush hush again and swept under the rug like the macbook battery issue.

Please be more specific with your allegations of "outright lying"! The iPhone 3G lasts longer than the original iPhone talking on GSM/2G. With 3G voice calls and browsing, it has one of the best "battery life / screen + phone size" ratios and in fact has one of the longest battery lives of many other competing large-screen smartphones.[/B]

What upsets me is that the reason Jobs didnt implement 3G in the first iPhone is that it sucks battery life, so he said he wants to find the battery technology to be able to handle it. Well after one year we do not have battery times anywhere near the old one so basically Jobs spent the last year sitting on his ass in terms of batteries

"sitting on his ass"? In fact, the 3G iPhone battery and power optimizations are an improvement over the original, as can be seen by the 2G talk-time. It's 3G UMTS talk-time and web browsing-time are easily one of the best of any 3G smartphone, especially considering the very slim design and large screen. UMTS/HSDPA voice/data transfer takes almost twice the energy per unit of time. Apple was able to get the new iPhone's 3G talk-time pretty good compared with the original iPhone's 2G talk-time -- that is an accomplishment!

Apple outright lied about several things, if you didn't take the time to notice the fine print. This is unfortunately a common model for operation now, as it really has been for almost 20 years now. It sells more products by emphasizing what is most appealing while simultaneously all but disclaiming that which is not. In this case the price point is one example, the battery life is another. I am sure that this is a trend that will continue and only get worse with time. Be wary what you conclude from any keynote SJ does in the future, and make sure to look at all the fine print and subtle wording he uses.

These are not lies. Fine print, disclaimers, etc have been a fact of business since the dawn of man. I do think Apple (and the tech industry as a whole) is much less shady and tricky than the majority of consumer retail companies. The iPhone IS half the price, unless you are already an AT&T customer who received a discounted phone on their current contract.

I think the point might have been that Apple originally stayed away from 3G because it chewed up too much battery. Now a year later we have 3G that chews up too much battery. Could we have had the same thing last year?

Did the mobile chips get better over the last year so the phone would last longer, or after a year did they just put in what they could have put in last year?

"chews up too much battery" is a pretty arbitrary statement. What is "too much"? If you go by comparison, the iPhone has quite good 3G battery life, especially compared to competing large-screen smartphone models. And yes, the embedded chipset/processor market moves like crazy. 12-months is a long time in that industry, just like many other markets.

I'd been similarly unhappy at the battery performance in my 3G since Friday, finding the need to recharge two or three times a day - and only with light use. I let the battery drain a few times to the point of shutdown (as opposed to 10%) in an attempt to "condition" it a bit. No luck. I cut WiFi, shut off 3G, and lowered my brightness. No significant change.

I reactivated 3G and WiFi (I'm in range about 50% of the time), but turned off bluetooth and killed push (switching to 15 minutes). The resulting improvement was dramatic: phone's been off the charger for six hours now, and is still at about 70%... and I've been using it more today than in the last two. Anyway, just my two cents.... I think the battery's half decent, but either bluetooth or push e-mail is a killer.

Did you have a specific need for the bluetooth like a headset or something? If not, definitely keep it off because bluetooth on most phones really sucks the battery life out.. It should be turned off by default, is it not on the new iPhone?

Seriously, all you guys who are whining about the battery life need to do some research first. Just about every report out there is saying these batteries last longer on 3g than any other smartphone. Is it what you would like it to be, probably not.And I think after a year and a 2nd gen. phone we should stop complaining about the non-removable battery. It's what they are doing, so if you don't like it, you shouldn't have bought an iphone. YOU made the choice knowing what it was the way it was. Nobody forced you to buy it. I know that it's normal to have complaints about products, and desires for better versions of something. BUT, some of you guys are ridiculously arrogant and pompous about what you are writing.

Thanks for providing some sanity..

 

[tomjleeds]

I'd been similarly unhappy at the battery performance in my 3G since Friday, finding the need to recharge two or three times a day - and only with light use.

I let the battery drain a few times to the point of shutdown (as opposed to 10%) in an attempt to "condition" it a bit. No luck.

I cut WiFi, shut off 3G, and lowered my brightness. No significant change.

I reactivated 3G and WiFi (I'm in range about 50% of the time), but turned off bluetooth and killed push (switching to 15 minutes). The resulting improvement was dramatic: phone's been off the charger for six hours now, and is still at about 70%... and I've been using it more today than in the last two. Anyway, just my two cents.... I think the battery's half decent, but either bluetooth or push e-mail is a killer.

I've been getting good (comparable to previous iPhone) battery life with 3G and WiFi on, and have been wondering how on earth all these people are getting mere hours out of their shiny new phones.

I don't use Bluetooth, or push. At a guess, I'd say push over 3G is the problem - keeping that data connection alive constantly cannot be fun for the battery.

You know which feature I would like? Give me not just Disable 3G, give me the option to Disable 3G Voice. Let me, whenever I open safari to browse the the Internet in 3G when wifi is not available, but only do voice calls via edge.

You know have:

Disable 3G Voice. On/Off
(When disabled all calls come via Edge)

Disable 3G Data. On/Off
(When disabled all data services go through wifi or edge)

Doesn't work like that. Well, it could do...but what people need to understand is that 3G isn't an EDGE replacement, it's a GSM replacement. It handles everything - all the radio traffic in and our of your phone. The only way to do what you're suggesting is to toggle 3G on (globally) when you start a data-using app. However, you'd then have to wait for the GSM chip to shut down, the 3G chip to start up, then wait for a signal...etc. It's not really practical.

 

[Raikun]

I find battery life on my 3g iphone is fine.

 

[jonoslack]

Excellent post

I'd been similarly unhappy at the battery performance in my 3G since Friday, finding the need to recharge two or three times a day - and only with light use.

I let the battery drain a few times to the point of shutdown (as opposed to 10%) in an attempt to "condition" it a bit. No luck.

I cut WiFi, shut off 3G, and lowered my brightness. No significant change.

I reactivated 3G and WiFi (I'm in range about 50% of the time), but turned off bluetooth and killed push (switching to 15 minutes). The resulting improvement was dramatic: phone's been off the charger for six hours now, and is still at about 70%... and I've been using it more today than in the last two. Anyway, just my two cents.... I think the battery's half decent, but either bluetooth or push e-mail is a killer.

HI There
What useful information - I've tried just turning off bluetooth and 3G (none around here anyway).

So many questions come up with respect to the different battery drains for different technologies.

e.g. does 3G drain the battery where there is no 3g coverage?
does push drain the battery more?
does wifi drain it if the coverage is poor (or non existant).

It would be lovely to have a specific 'does and don'ts' with respect to battery life. After all, we do not all need these services all the time.

What would also be good would be a 'power saver' icon in settings, which would pull all these greedy things together in one space.

 

[spacetycho]

battery

my battery is bad. i have been testing different confirguations and will post a pic when my battery is real low to show the results. as of now it doesn't look good.

apple will probably have sold 2 million+ by week's end. ALL devices, from any manufacturer have some percentage of defective units. some of us could have bad batterys or bad phones. it, not only is possible but probable.

it's not a big deal to me, i just want it fixed if it's not 100%.

i love this phone.

 

[LoCarbHotrod]

Guys, I heard turning off location services and wifi scanning helps save battery a bit (tests also found that it increased edge and 3G speeds a bit when these services where switched off). Also, the new screen is more bright than the previous phone, turn the brightness down a few notches, you'll eventually get used to the slightly dimmer screen. Push is a real battery drainer, turn it off if it's not essential to you.

Good luck.

 

[specops]

Turn Off Push Email!!!! Hint Hint

 

[tirerim]

I saw on the battery test that surfing with Wifi lasted the longest. I don't use Wifi as much as I could because I was under the impression that Wifi would use more battery life if left on, is this true or not?

- James

Any tranceiver, be it wifi, Bluetooth, 3G, or EDGE, will use power if it is left on. What this mainly means is that you should turn off whatever you're not using. Wifi uses less power than the cellular ones (it's shorter range), so if you have the option, use wifi and turn off 3G. If you're browsing somewhere without wifi, though (or not browsing at all), then there's no sense having the wifi tranceiver continually wasting power looking for a signal, so you might as well turn it off.

 

[KaiMac]

Wifi is better

I saw on the battery test that surfing with Wifi lasted the longest. I don't use Wifi as much as I could because I was under the impression that Wifi would use more battery life if left on, is this true or not?

- James

Wifi is short range wireless and uses less battery than 3G, which is long range wireless. For the best battery life I suggest the following.

1. Follow the proper discharge/full recharge procedures for conditioning the battery.

2. Turn off PUSH email, unless you need it for work.

3. Turn off 3G, especially if you are getting a weak 3G signal in you location.

4. Only use 3G for browsing, use Edge/2G for Voice/Txt daily use as a phone.

5. Use Wifi for data as much as possible like you did on the iPhone 1

I don't see this a crippling the iPhone3G, just setting it up to have it last as long as possible based on what the different services are used for.

The next iPhone3G (probably 12 months from now) will probably get better....it is a great phone.

 

[BriChi]

Battery draining even in standby mode (no 3g or wifi)

this is GREAT
So I tried this test last night, Did a complete charge from dead to full. Shut the phone totally off and then let it boot up. The standby and usage times were at 0 and 0. I unpluged the charger before I fell asleep and when I woke up this morning, my battery is at 80% and my times read:

usage 4 hours, 13 minutes
standby - 9 hours, 54 minutes

I wasn't doing anything though, I rebooted the phone last night so I know nothing was "hung up" plus I shut off 3g and wifi so only edge was active and I get good edge service in my house so I know it wasn't going in and out looking for coverage. he only thing on is push email for my job but I on;y received 7 emails throughout the night, there is no way push should use 4 hours of usage in standby mode just to receive 7 emails

Apple really needs to figure this one out!

and yes, I had location services off

 

[tullys]

In Case I was the last to know...

2. Turn off PUSH email, unless you need it for work.

When you go to Settings->Fetch New Data

this is only setting "The schedule for applications which do not support push".

To change the setting for your email, scroll down to the bottom of the page and press "Advanced" (it's normally just off the screen) and change the fetch settings for your email accounts.

Otherwise you could quite easily think you'd reduced the Push/Fetch schedule and your email accounts will carry on regardless.

HTH.

 

[KaiMac]

My Usage Stats

Are my usage stats great, No. Are they awful, No. I have pushed quite a bit of data through my iPhone3G.

 

[KaiMac]

When you go to Settings->Fetch New Data

this is only setting "The schedule for applications which do not support push".

To change the setting for your email, scroll down to the bottom of the page and press "Advanced" (it's normally just off the screen) and change the fetch settings for your email accounts.

Otherwise you could quite easily think you'd reduced the Push/Fetch schedule and your email accounts will carry on regardless.

HTH.

Thanks, that was great information. I totally missed that.....

 

[taylorwilsdon]

this is GREAT
So I tried this test last night, Did a complete charge from dead to full. Shut the phone totally off and then let it boot up. The standby and usage times were at 0 and 0. I unpluged the charger before I fell asleep and when I woke up this morning, my battery is at 80% and my times read:

usage 4 hours, 13 minutes
standby - 9 hours, 54 minutes

I wasn't doing anything though, I rebooted the phone last night so I know nothing was "hung up" plus I shut off 3g and wifi so only edge was active and I get good edge service in my house so I know it wasn't going in and out looking for coverage. he only thing on is push email for my job but I on;y received 7 emails throughout the night, there is no way push should use 4 hours of usage in standby mode just to receive 7 emails

Apple really needs to figure this one out!

and yes, I had location services off

Push is a constant connection (that's how its instantaneous...) which is a severe drain on the battery.

 

[BriChi]

ok, so then this iphone sucks! c'mon, on 10 hours standby it uses 4 and half hours of usage to get 7 emails through push. That's a little absurd. I never picked the phone up, i was sleeping, when I went to bed i was at 0 and 0 for standby and usage and when i wake up it shows 4 and half used, I dont think that is because of push, it has to be a bug in something else

 

[jamesarm97]

Sounds like they should try and make the iPhone a little more configurable / smart. Have a button or something in Safari where you can turn 3G / WiFi ON/OFF right from there. I'm not sure how WiFi works, but if possible have an option to keep WiFi off when the phone is 'off' / asleep and only turn it on once you wake up the phone (that is if WiFi stays on even when the screen is asleep).

 

[Ben8472]

Push is a constant connection (that's how its instantaneous...) which is a severe drain on the battery.

Does it? I thought the iPhone gets some sms-like cellular notification that new data is available so it doesn't have to keep a constant connection open?

Please someone who knows please clarify how the push thing really works

 

[timpoke8]

Removable battery=almost all problems with the battery fixed.

 

[BriChi]

Removable battery=almost all problems with the battery fixed.

ummm, not really, why would I want to have to charge 2 batteries every night just t get through a days work. I would rather one battery (like gen1) that will last me all day and still have 50% left

 

[timpoke8]

ummm, not really, why would I want to have to charge 2 batteries every night just t get through a days work. I would rather one battery (like gen1) that will last me all day and still have 50% left

Unfortunately batteries like that do not exist for 3g phones. I don't know why everyone expected apple to innovate battery technology that no other country has been able to. What Apple could have done instead is allowed the user to switch out the battery.

 

[BriChi]

Unfortunately batteries like that do not exist for 3g phones. I don't know why everyone expected apple to innovate battery technology that no other country has been able to. What Apple could have done instead is allowed the user to switch out the battery.

I don't even turn 3g on and the battery is dead by the end of the day, at this point it has nothing to do with 3g, there is something wrong with the 2.0 software,,,,,even gen1 phones have crappy battery times now and there is no 3g involved

I do agree with you that 3g is a battery drainer, but like i said, 3g is off in my case

 

[ItalianBoston]

The battery life absolutly sucks.

I took my phone off the charger at 430am and by 11am it was almost dead. This is with not talking on the phone and surfing the web only 2 times both times for just a couple minutes.

This is pathetic!! I hope its a defective battery or something, what does everyone think?

 

[spacetycho]

battery

i posted on another forum in here on this already but...

my theory is that yes there are defective batteries. almost 2 million iPhones sold. there is ALWAYS a small % of defective units.

recall anyone?

i will post a usage image at the end of my battery cycle which shouldn't be long.

i have disabled everything possible and spent 1 hour on the phone with . they say to make an appointment at a store. that will be a waste since they probably won't do anything. and i can't send my phone to apple for repair because i will we without a phone for days.

WTF?

more soon.

 

[_Refurbished_]

On my second iPhone 3G. On my first iPhone, the volume down button was making a weird clicking noise. Returned it. The battery on that phone worked much better after a few days compared to my current, brand new iPhone. I am confident I will have similar success after a few days, though. Both phones are going through the exact same initial charging methods.

Here is the method I'm going to use while charging my iPhone. Very detailed, possibly a little extreme, but in the long run you'll be happy .

#1 - Buy iPhone
#2 - Initially charge iPhone for 8 hours (don't flame, I know what you're going to say). Use your wall charger (avoid computer charger).
#3 - On first use, let the iPhone's battery fully drain out.
#4 - Next, fully charge your iPhone overnight.
#5 - From this point forward, DO NOT LET YOUR BATTERY DRAIN COMPLETELY. Recharge your iPhone w/ 40 % or more battery life (using wall charger or car charger).
#6 - Once a month, make sure you fully charge your iPhone and fully drain the battery in one motion.
#7 - Always charge with the iPhone out of it's case. Charging your iPhone inside your case will make the iPhone hotter. This is what happens to hot batteries:

#8 - Store your iPhone in a cool location (near fan or AC) at night. The colder the location, the longer your battery will last. DO NOT PUT PUT YOUR IPHONE IN THE FREEZER! LOL.
#9 - If you ever need to store you iPhone for any reason, make sure your battery is stored @ 40% charge. Never store your phone fully charged or depleted

More information can be found here, as it's a great place to begin to learn about your iPhone battery:
http://www.batteryuniversity.com/parttwo-34.htm
http://www.apple.com/batteries/iphone.html

As for defective batteries. First and foremost, charge from the wall. I tried charging my iPhone from my iMac and had a 20% charge the next morning. I'm not saying you can't successfully charge from your computer, but to diagnose a problem, I would give the wall charger a shot. If you use the wall charger, reset your iPhone, fully charge the battery, fully drain the battery, then fully charge the battery. After those steps are done and your iPhone STILL can't hold a charge, I would take it into the Apple store to get a replacement.