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iPhone 4 Battery Life

M

Mr. Incredible

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Sep 16, 2010
541
0
Southern California
I've been keeping a log of my iPhone 4s battery life. Every morning, once unplugged at 100%, I would see how long it would last the entire day, until it either dies or gets to about 2%.

Here is the data I've come up with in the past week:


iPhone 4 Battery Life Log

Sun, March 6: Usage: 4 Hours, 30 Minutes. Standby: 13 Hours, 35 Minutes. 2% Left.
Mon, March 7: Usage: 4 Hours, 44 Minutes. Standby: 15 Hours, 30 Minutes. 2% Left.
Tue, March 8: Usage: 6 Hours, 44 Minutes. Standby: 15 Hours, 51 Minutes. Died.
Wed, March 9: Usage: 8 Hours, 11 Minutes. Standby: 13 Hours, 57 Minutes. Died.
Thu, March 10: Usage: 6 Hours, 42 Minutes. Standby: 15 Hours, 36 Minutes. 2% Left.
Fri, March 11: iPhone was synced. Inaccurate data.
Sat, March 12: Usage: 4 Hours, 8 Minutes. Standby: 15 Hours, 28 Minutes. Died.

For Friday, I synced my iphone to my imac, and while doing so, it increased the battery charge, so I didn't include that to my data.

Most of my Usage is from listening to music in the ipod app, or playing games (tiny wings!). But I also make calls, text, facetime, and maps. Usually when playing a game for about an hour, battery life drops by about 15-20%.

I got 2 questions to ask everyone.

1. When using your phone while it's being charged, does that ruin the phones battery life? I mean, my old macbook, I would use it while it would be plugged into an outlet. From the normal use of about 6-8 hours a day, it would now be about 90 mins to 2 hours. The battery has become dependent on the outlet, and I'm wondering, will the same happen to the iPhone, or is it ok to use it when it's charging, or when having it plugged into your car?

2. I'm curious to see the Battery usage of everyone here. You don't have to keep posting the usage/standby hours you get everyday. Instead, to save space. I think it would be best to consistently update your post with the data you have.

Apple does claim that the iPhone has a standby of 300 hours, but I think it's complete BS. I honestly think the best standby time an iPhone 4 can get would be no more than 100 hours. But that's just me.

So, if you guys want to share data starting tomorrow, I think it would be nice to see how everyone's phones compare.

Oh, I also have all push notifications on (for every app that supports push), the phone is on vibrate, and the screen is at 100% brightness. Not sure how much of an impact that would have on the battery life, just saying.
 
when i got my ps3, i barely touch my iPhone 4, so i just used it like a old nokia phone, so no facetime, no gaming, no video, just casual use, making and receiving calls, messaging, browsing to find news or walkthrough if i stuck on the PS3 games. and i realized the usage was like 11 hours and 3 days of standby before it died. amazing.

brightness usually on 60%
3G on
location service on
wifi on
push on with mobile me (iCal, Mail and Notes syncing up)
notification on
 
previously ive had
5221092169_193a97b3b4_m.jpg

and
5207999156_0f9f8566c0_m.jpg


these were taken on random days with iP4 4.2 with PUSH, location and notifications all on and about 60% battery NON JB and im gonna run one today or tomorrow once the batt dies with a Jailbroken result.

I think these results are pretty pointless because if i spend 30mins playing fifa or infinity blade. the results are going to be wayy LOW
 
Could my iPhone 4 be defected in anyway?

I mean, you guys are getting usage near the double digits, and more than a day of standby.

I know that Aleni has 60% brightness, but Sl4ve, what was your brightness? 60% also?

I'm gonna just try to use less of my phone today, and see what happens. Hope it's not defected, I put a skin on, that I don't even know how to remove if it was. :/
 
yes about 60%

i think your being a bit overzealous tbh, it really depends on the charge also, if i pick it up once its just charged fully i seem to get a better more efficient run. if i leave it overnight for a charge over say 7-9 hours sometimes a few percent drops in a couple of hours of low low usage. it depends a lot on the battery. tbh this has been driving me madd. best thing to do is turn of the batt percentage and enjoy it (yes i know, easier said than done lol)
 
Mine is jailbroken and at the moment its showing 14 hours standby and 4h 15m usage with 11% remaining and I've been playing games in for a couple of hours at least today. Make of that what u will. But it's not pretty bad running a widget. Custom fonts and theme. Winterboard also drains apparently!
 
All the push notifications and screen brightness at 100% are definitely hurting your battery life.

I couldn't give you a perfect picture of my usage because most days I either plug in to sync or plug it into my car to listen to music but I can definitely get double digit usage times and I can make the battery last into the second day without charging.
 
finally
not really amazing but i bet i can get more out of it not playing games
 

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It won't damage your phone if you use it while charging. The numbers you're getting are normal for your usage.
 
i can't make the iPhone to last more than 1 day on standby if im playing games with it even for 30 minutes, especially 3d games like NOVA 2.

so please take it as a consideration too.

iphone can last a long stand by time only if u use it just like a casual phone back in the daya when you just use your phone to make calls and messaging only.

i turned off the battery percentage of the iPhone and just use the phone without worrying too much, this takes away the paranoia feeling and trust me it really helps. :D
 
actually, that's a good time of usage really. i charge my iphone every day since it hits the 30% at the end of the day. the other day ended up with 5%
 
Last week, I had a fluke performance of 12 hours and 35 minutes usage with 1 day & 14 hour standby. This was mostly using Notes and watching videos at a dim setting, but I also did WiFi browsing at the Apple Store for 45 minutes at high brightness level. It was stuck at 90% for the longest time. The next time it got a full charge, I used Edge browsing with Opera Mini since I only use 3G when I want to stream or download. I got an amazing 10 hours and 24 minutes with 2 day standby. I am still on 4.0.

What I learned is it varies even with the same settings. The next time after the full charge, I did the same thing and got under of 9 hours usage. You can do the same thing and it won't always stay the same. If I am not using Edge, I put it on airplane mode. I never count music playing. Just hours with the screen on.

My battery is very normal to me and can occasionally surprise me by surpassing Apple's claims. To kill the OCD and paranoia, I just turned off the battery percentage today after almost 9 months of always leaving it on. Only when I am running out and don't have my charger or outlet around will I turn it back on. Because with the percentage always on, I always tend to watch it and keep using the Settings app to check on the usage data. This would dictate how I would use my phone the rest of the way and I sometimes would avoid listening to my songs to do another battery usage test. Just turn off the % and use it the way you want to use it. Turning it off will eliminate any potential stress or OCD you have with it.
 
wow you got 8 hours usage? the most I have ever got has been 6 hours, 15 minutes

Guessing it is because I have my brightness quite high where everything else is turned off.
 
Turning off the battery % really has helped me become less worrisome about battery life.

I didn't unplug my phone since 7am yesterday and still have 49% left. This is with browsing and listening to music mostly. Listening music through the external speaker kills it faster than headphones. I have 10 hours and 14 minutes usage and 1 day and 5 hours standby. I can last another day or two. That is Tues through Thurs/Fri. Nomore obsession to keep checking the usage time and staring at each 1% drop. My own personal issue is I can be very specific and always want close to the same result over and over. That is too unrealistic when my usage varies day by day. Some days, I could be texting or talking on the phone. Other days, I will just listen to music or stream YouTube. Now my phone is just like any of my other gadgets without the % reader always on display and I can use it care-free.

I guess having the battery percentage always on is like putting the time remaining of a movie. Nobody wants to see that especially if it is a good one. They just want to enjoy the movie as is without a countdown at the upper right corner of the screen. Just enjoy it. Glance the % when you need to or running out and have no charger and outlet in sight. And if 4.3 is killer, just hope Apple fixes it in 4.4 or downgrade the firmware.

This iPhone 4 has the best battery life I ever experienced from a gadget and what it can do. My 5th gen iPod (30 GB) could only last 12 hours at music playing and with no shuffle and ZERO backlight. With backlight, I would be lucky to get 8 hours with it. My PSP still has a healthy battery after almost 6 years with it. Some years, I rarely used it, but it can still hold a charge. I get 5.5 hours of gameplay with downloaded games, 5 hours of video, over 12+ hour music (via headphones), and maybe 3-5 WiFi which is crap. My first gen iPhone and iPod touch would only last 4-6 hours of WiFi until they died and music under 20 hours (less than half) of the 40 hours Apple claims for the iPhone 4. This is the first Apple is very honest with their claims. Most competitors just exaggerate. Android is a resource-hungry OS with widgets killing the battery. And RIM which are known for great battery life has to deal with multi-tasking which is a battery-killer as seen with webOS. I don't expect PlayBook to have the batt life as iPad 2 especially if it supports Adobe Flash.

Apple is now #1 for battery life when it comes to smartphones and tablets.
 
this is a result without any game play just communication, twitter, facebook and but of PULSE news reading with about 60% brightness, mostly on wifi and location on... also its jailbroken running winterboard and tbh if it wasnt i think i could get 30-40mins extra usage. but im willing to sacrifice... cant see it ever reaching 8 hours, unless maybe perfect reception area all the time and 20% brightness, but whats the point of that on an iPhone
 

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kuebby said:
All the push notifications and screen brightness at 100% are definitely hurting your battery life.

I couldn't give you a perfect picture of my usage because most days I either plug in to sync or plug it into my car to listen to music but I can definitely get double digit usage times and I can make the battery last into the second day without charging.
Click to expand...

Concerning Push Notifications:

Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > Fetch New Data > Push is ON.

(I normally had Fetch for every hour, but for FindMyiPhone, they require Push to be On, so I just turned it on).

Settings > Notifications > ON

1. Alarm Clock
2. Angry Birds
3. Bump
4. Chase
5. Dictionary
6. Doodle Fit
7. Durak
8. Facebook
9. Flixster
10. Game Center
11. Inception
12. Jenga
13. Scrabble Free
14. StickWars
15. Tango
16. Twitter
17. Words Free

^Everything is on for Each of these Apps, I'm talking Alerts, Badges, Sounds, it's all on.

Now, how bad is this right here hurting my battery life?

Also, I like having my brightness at 100%, but how low should I go to enjoy more of it?

Currently, I have:

Usage: 2 Hours, 12 Minutes
Standby: 5 Hours, 25 Minutes
63% Left

I really want to be able to use my phone for at least 8-10 hours a day with a standby around 15 hours, but I'm not even sure if that's possible with the iPhone, is it?
 
I set notifications and location services on, pushed email every 15 minutes, brightness around 60% on average (sometimes I adjust it depends on the light condition), and use wifi and no 3g while at home and 3g when out of home.

I'm using my phone mainly for browsing, facebook, whatsapp, emails, some light games, reading files, light games and ipod mode.

my average usage after updating to 4.3 is the following:
around 8 hours of usage (usually more), and
1 day and around 12-14 hours standby

of course sometimes Im doing things out of home a bit longer so it drains the battery faster (using 3g instead of wifi), or when I got stuck in playing games. But the worst so far is around 6 hours of usage and 16 hours standby.
 
I don't believe it. Apart from forum talk I've never seen batt life like this and all my friends have iPhones. With different setups.
 
JohnBossu said:
I set notifications and location services on, pushed email every 15 minutes, brightness around 60% on average (sometimes I adjust it depends on the light condition), and use wifi and no 3g while at home and 3g when out of home.

I'm using my phone mainly for browsing, facebook, whatsapp, emails, some light games, reading files, light games and ipod mode.

my average usage after updating to 4.3 is the following:
around 8 hours of usage (usually more), and
1 day and around 12-14 hours standby

of course sometimes Im doing things out of home a bit longer so it drains the battery faster (using 3g instead of wifi), or when I got stuck in playing games. But the worst so far is around 6 hours of usage and 16 hours standby.
Click to expand...

How the hell are you getting over 8 hours usage and over 36 hours standby? :eek:

After playing more games, here is my current battery life:

Usage: 3 Hours, 23 Minutes
Standby: 6 Hours, 54 Minutes
Battery: 27%

I don't get it, is something wrong with my phone?
 
That is not good for an iPhone 4. I see twice that on a 3GS. Also DO NOT run your iPhone below 20% that often!
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C148 Safari/6533.18.5)

My iPhone usually lasts about 4 hours when heavily using it (Real Racing 2 for 2 hours on 50% brightness and 60% volume, heavy browsing, music and YouTube videos)

The most I got out of my iPhone was 12 hours, but that was when I was browsing for 8 hours @ -5% brightness (Dimmer app via Cydia) and music.

On average I get 4-6 hours of usage when casually playing games here and there and light browsing and mail checking @ 100% brightness during the day while I'm out.

For all, I have location on, mail push off, notifications on, sbsettings, winterboard.

PS: Buy Dimmer via Cydia, it helps maximize battery life. I tested it while watching a video, I used about -10% brightness @ night from a full charge and it went down only 2%, when using stock lowest brightness, it would go down 7%. this was a 1hr video (56mins)
 
ntrigue said:
That is not good for an iPhone 4. I see twice that on a 3GS. Also DO NOT run your iPhone below 20% that often!
Click to expand...

Yeah, I'm starting to think that my battery is defective. And why is it bad to have my battery life below 20%?!

My phone goes down to like 5% and has even died a few times before I get home to charge it.
 
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