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ninjapenguin

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 22, 2006
15
0
Usually when I leave my phone overnight, I'll loose maybe 5% with just an alarm on and one or two small apps still in multitasking. Last night all of the multitasking apps were off and there was still the alarm set, but my phone when I woke up was 20% lower than what it was when I went to bed. I checked the phone usage and there was no big increase like I would expect. No push e-mail is on, and only connected to wi-fi and 3g is off.
 
Its probably due to the wifi. Since wifi is persistent now it will drain the battery quicker than previously. Im getting about the same drain average as you with the 5% with my phone overnight.
 
I just logged in to complain about my overnight iPhone battery drain, but I guess I might know the culprit now. Why on earth would the iPhone stay connected via wifi when it's in sleep mode? That makes absolutely no sense to me if it drains the battery.

I went to sleep with the thing 100% and woke up ten hours later to find that the battery was dead. I thought I might have a bum battery (didn't engadget say their review model lasted over a day?) but I guess I'll have to turn wifi off and test it tomorrow so that I'll really know for sure. I guess I could just leave it plugged in all night, but if it can't last ten hours, I don't know if it could last all day (still waiting for my case to arrive before I actually get to use the phone I bought over a week ago.)
 
I keep my phone on wifi all the time. Call time is with BT. I keep BT feature on but BT switch is off if I'm not on a call. All location services ON. I do not clear apps that are in the taskbar at all. I don't use any alarms. During the night I might lose 1%, usually none.

Latest stats:

Usage 3h 44min
Standby 1 day, 12 hours

Call time current: 26 m.

Battery: 30%
 
I keep my phone on wifi all the time. Call time is with BT. I keep BT feature on but BT switch is off if I'm not on a call. All location services ON. I do not clear apps that are in the taskbar at all. I don't use any alarms. During the night I might lose 1%, usually none.

Latest stats:

Usage 3h 44min
Standby 1 day, 12 hours

Call time current: 26 m.

Battery: 30%

I had a lot of apps running in the background, and my hope is that one of them was simply burning a lot of juice. If not, based on your figures, my battery is probably just a dud.

Small update: My phone hit 100% charged, and I unplugged it, one hour ago. As of right now, the battery reads 99%. If 1% an hour holds, that is four days worth of standby time. That is a big if though, and I'll be checking every hour or so. I certainly hope that the trend continues, and that it was just one of my background apps (or Wifi) killing the battery.

update: three hours later, and my battery still reports 99%. Unless it's just reporting improperly, I'm beginning to believe that it was either wifi or one of the background apps killing my battery.
 
I had the same problem last night. My battery was at 100% before going to sleep, then when I woke up this morning, the battery had been completely drained and wouldn't even turn on. The only thing that was running was wifi... but for it to drain 100% over 9 hours?!?
 
I had the same problem last night. My battery was at 100% before going to sleep, then when I woke up this morning, the battery had been completely drained and wouldn't even turn on. The only thing that was running was wifi... but for it to drain 100% over 9 hours?!?

The only thing "running" may have been wifi, but I'll bet you had some apps running in the background. This whole "you don't need to worry about apps running in the background; Your iPhone 4 will handle it!" BS from Apple is starting to seem really fishy to me. Double click the home key, and if there is anything in the bar that pops up, you've got apps in "suspended" mode (you'd hope...how would we ever know since we can't see a task manager?)

Case in point, I came back just now to find my phone (in sleep mode, without wifi, 3G, apps sleeping, or anything) at 99% after nine hours. Nine hours...and an entire percent hasn't even drained from the battery. Something running had to have been doing it, whether it was the wifi, or a rogue app, or push notifications, or whatever.

Try what I did, and see if you can't figure out what is causing it on your device. I'm going to slowly re-enable things and see if I can find the vampire.
 
I'll bet you have Autolock set to Never! Mine was doing the same thing, then I set it to 5 minutes. No problem after that! Goto Settings, General, Autolock.

Hope this helps!

JC
 
I turned off wifi today and the battery life has been much better. I actually closed all the programs before going to bed the night before even in the multitasked section and autolock has been set to every minute since I got the phone... hopefully that solves the problem
 
Update:

I’m now 24 hours into my experiment with my iphone 4’s battery. With everything off, and the phone in sleep move except for a few short calls, my battery still reads 99%. It’s clear to me now that something was definitely draining the battery, whether it was wifi, a rogue app, or some combination.

If you are having problems like me, the silver lining is that in my experience, you can fix it if you are willing to…turn off wifi, 3G, and make sure all apps are closed. That shouldn’t be necessary, but I can’t argue with the results (99% after 24 hours in standby).

This just proves the necessity of a task manager that shows exactly what is happening on the phone. A task manager should be able to show usage, and then you could close things until you found whatever was causing the heavy battery drain. Since we can’t see exactly what is happening on the phone though, we have to suffer. I can’t wait for a jailbreak for this thing, so that I can finally gain proper insight into just what I can do to create a happy middle between functionality and battery life.
 
I had a similar issues and whittled it down to being bad push or bad location services from 3/4 apps. I turned push/location off all apps except my critical ones and all is working great with wifi and 3g always on,. Last night took of charge, went to bed, this morning some 7 hrs later its dropped to 99%, previous with all push notifications on was 92%

So to me it does lean towards apps not o/s.

Something I wouldn't mind seeing is some sort of toggle display like the push notifications screen to let you toggle which apps suspend and which just quit.

And more than 1 row in the multitask bar, 2/3 rows would make switching quicker and easier to find.
 
I had a similar issues and whittled it down to being bad push or bad location services from 3/4 apps. I turned push/location off all apps except my critical ones and all is working great with wifi and 3g always on,. Last night took of charge, went to bed, this morning some 7 hrs later its dropped to 99%, previous with all push notifications on was 92%

So to me it does lean towards apps not o/s.

Something I wouldn't mind seeing is some sort of toggle display like the push notifications screen to let you toggle which apps suspend and which just quit.

And more than 1 row in the multitask bar, 2/3 rows would make switching quicker and easier to find.

Even 92% after 7 hours is less of a drain than I was seeing. Something was seriously draining the juice right out of my battery, and I'm going to have a hard time relying on this thing until I can figure out what it was.

Like you though, I have a feeling that it was an app. Apple couldn't test all apps, but they surely could test Wifi and 3G to make sure that their mere operation wouldn't kill a battery. When combined with a rogue app however, they certainly could, and that may have been the problem I was seeing.

I'm going to enable 3G today (leaving all apps closed), and see what my battery looks like at the end of the day. If it holds its charge, I'll probably just live with the idea that I need to close my apps when I'm done with them (which is ridiculous, but whatever)
 
Just remembered, I did a network settings reset too!!

That cooled it down do end!!!
 
Battery Drains Fast when using it

I just got the iphone 2 weeks ago. I noticed that when my iphone 4 is in standby mode, the battery seems like working as what Mr. Job says - it uses about 1% in 3 hours. But once I started to use the phone, either surfing web (3G or Wifi), checking email or just turn on to play some icons (look and close then), the battery drains like very fast. It use almost 1% every 1-2 minutes (never over 3 minutes). In this case, 2minutes x 100=200 minutes, that is only about 3 hours.
I have configured battery saving mode as per iphone suggestions - like turn of Push email, turn off GPS ....

Is it normal or there is problem with my iphone battery?

thanks.
 
i'm experiencing something odd that's draining my battery that is different than anyone else here. all apps closed in MT, push is on, wi-fi on etc. for the past few months it's been great on battery. the past couple days i have noticed that it appears my backlight is on, but showing a black screen. i know that this is the cause of the battery draining, but does anyone know why this is happening?
 
When mine starts to act strangely I try a complete turn off reboot. That usually clears it. Probably healthy to do it anyway from time to time.
 
I guess I could just leave it plugged in all night, but if it can't last ten hours, I don't know if it could last all day (still waiting for my case to arrive before I actually get to use the phone I bought over a week ago.)


It won't last all day, the battery is ****. My iPhone4 is barely more than a week old also and the battery rarely gets me thru half a day if I'm actually using it for things. If you use anything from the app store your battery will get raped in a couple hours. The only thing that is good on battery life is the apple apps that come on the iphone.

I guess we have to wait a lot longer for a good battery in these things. My iPhone 1st gen can last almost as long as my iPhone4.

Mine has never died from not being used though, the standby battery life is ok
 
I just got the iphone 2 weeks ago. I noticed that when my iphone 4 is in standby mode, the battery seems like working as what Mr. Job says - it uses about 1% in 3 hours. But once I started to use the phone, either surfing web (3G or Wifi), checking email or just turn on to play some icons (look and close then), the battery drains like very fast. It use almost 1% every 1-2 minutes (never over 3 minutes). In this case, 2minutes x 100=200 minutes, that is only about 3 hours.
I have configured battery saving mode as per iphone suggestions - like turn of Push email, turn off GPS ....

Is it normal or there is problem with my iphone battery?

thanks.

Mine is exactly the same as this. I noticably see my percentage dropping if I'm using the phone. 10-15 minutes in almost any app will drain like 10%. It's really dumb. I need to carry around 5 iphones to get through a day apparently.

Someone else said they use theirs for 5 hours a day and 12+ hours standby and still have 40-45% at the end of the day.. WTF? Mine must be broken then.
 
Your battery drains when you're using the phone? How strange.

Always gotta be a useless idiot on every forum. How strange.

It is quite strange when my 1st gen iPhone lasts longer than my iPhone 4 using the same apps. Go find something better to do with your time kid.
 
Iphone 4, jb, fw4.1 bb 1.59.00 Don't stop to drain my data plain, even in standby mode. That's the reason my battery drain too. The only way to stop that is disable the data. i'm not using push, exchange, notthing.
 
The only thing "running" may have been wifi, but I'll bet you had some apps running in the background. This whole "you don't need to worry about apps running in the background; Your iPhone 4 will handle it!" BS from Apple is starting to seem really fishy to me. Double click the home key, and if there is anything in the bar that pops up, you've got apps in "suspended" mode (you'd hope...how would we ever know since we can't see a task manager?)

Case in point, I came back just now to find my phone (in sleep mode, without wifi, 3G, apps sleeping, or anything) at 99% after nine hours. Nine hours...and an entire percent hasn't even drained from the battery. Something running had to have been doing it, whether it was the wifi, or a rogue app, or push notifications, or whatever.

Try what I did, and see if you can't figure out what is causing it on your device. I'm going to slowly re-enable things and see if I can find the vampire.

I slightly disagree with clearing apps from the multitask bar. I went to bed with my battery at 100% at 11pm. Got up at 6am and it's still at 100%. My battery lasts literally like days most of the time. If those programs were truly running in suspended mode, when you reboot your phone they would dissapear, and they don't. Wouldn't you think rebooting would end any running apps?

Wifi shuts off after your phone is locked, so I don't think that would do it either. It has to be some program besides those that does it. Maybe you could compare some programs with people here to see what it is.
 
I slightly disagree with clearing apps from the multitask bar. I went to bed with my battery at 100% at 11pm. Got up at 6am and it's still at 100%. My battery lasts literally like days most of the time. If those programs were truly running in suspended mode, when you reboot your phone they would dissapear, and they don't. Wouldn't you think rebooting would end any running apps?

Wifi shuts off after your phone is locked, so I don't think that would do it either. It has to be some program besides those that does it. Maybe you could compare some programs with people here to see what it is.

I don't have any program in suspend mode (i use the remove from cydia). I only have twiter in my iphone, can you imagine that? I start this program (without wifi, only data plan), close that, close that in multitask bar too, put my phone in standy by. My phone lose the battery and my data plan go away.
 
Something is going on with my phone. I haven't changed anything lately, but in the last 4 days my phone has been getting really warm and the battery is draining very quickly. Phone was fully charged and 1.5 hours later (without using it) it is now at 82%. 15 minutes later at 78%

Email boxes set to sync every 30-minutes.

The only thing I can think of that was recently updated was the Facebook app - is anyone else having this issue? :confused:
 
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