iPod Touch 4th...bad battery or iOS problem?

Kallen · Jan 17, 2013

This'll be a long post, so bear with me.

I have noticed that on my 4th gen iPod Touch that the battery sucks. Running 6.0.1 (non-jailbroken)... For example, no apps in the background, using Pinger to txt (so WiFi is on) and LCD set at half or less, it will begin popping up 20% warning is less than 45 minutes at a full charge. And not heaving txting, just a txt every 5-10 minutes.

If I play ANY game, it easily goes from 75-100% to the 20% warning in 30 minutes or less. Last weekend, on a full charge, it played 2 hours of music with the screen off before shutting down. On my 1st gen iPod touch, as well as the old iPhone 3G that I have, the battery will actually run all the way down until the device WILL NOT BOOT, but shows the flashing red battery. This iPod will not do that. It shuts down, then when I reboot, it is at least 50%. That does not last and quickly shuts down again. I tried 10 reboots like this, each times it lasts less and less time, but I never once got the red flashing battery...

Yes, I have done multiple full charge cycles. I have restored. Nothing helps. So last week, I made a trip to see a genius at the Apple Store (First time, pretty cool place). The night before I went, I did a full restore. I take it in, and the guy connects it to one of their iPads and pulls up diagnostic data.... he said that while I did the right thing restoring it, that there really wasn't a lot of diagnostic data because of the recent restore, and the battery diagnostic shows "normal". He noticed the battery level jump around, and said it's not normal and that he was CERTAIN it's a FW (not OS) issue...he told me to DFU restore, because a standard restore only replaces the OS and not the FW. He said if there is a setting issue that it might be in the backups and not to restore from a backup and set up as new. I did, and still have an issue. I downgraded last night from 6.01 to 5.01, and the behavior persists...

So it's now jailbroken, and I downloaded BatteryInfoLite from Cydia. The "currect capacity" column is interesting. For example, it'll sit at 45%, then if I turn on WiFi and turn up brightness, the current capacity jumps to 12%. Turn down brightness, it goes up to maybe 30 percent. Then doing nothing at all, it'l get back up to 40%, then go down a few percent and up again...
Yes, I realize that the iPod is estimating based on usage, but that seems pretty excessive to me...

So, I am at a loss. But looking on Google,, the part where the ipod dies, then turn t back on and it shows 50% or more is common, but I no one seems to know what causes or why. In many cases, Apple has replaced those devices (with the replacements eventually doing the same thing)... What I do know is my battery shouldn't go from a full charge to the 20% warning just because I play 25 minutes of Angry Birds...

Is anyone able to get their iPT4 to get all the way to the red flashing battery icon? On mine, no matter how many times I let it die, it boots back up showing almost 50% charge (which quickly dies again) but it will not show me the red flashing battery. I want to drain this all the way and do a full charge cycle, but I'm not convinced it's discharging fully. On my older iDevices, I let them dies and they have the red battery. Why is this different?

HMI · Jan 19, 2013

Kallen said: ↑

This'll be a long post, so bear with me.

I have noticed that on my 4th gen iPod Touch that the battery sucks. Running 6.0.1 (non-jailbroken)... For example, no apps in the background, using Pinger to txt (so WiFi is on) and LCD set at half or less, it will begin popping up 20% warning is less than 45 minutes at a full charge. And not heaving txting, just a txt every 5-10 minutes.

If I play ANY game, it easily goes from 75-100% to the 20% warning in 30 minutes or less. Last weekend, on a full charge, it played 2 hours of music with the screen off before shutting down. On my 1st gen iPod touch, as well as the old iPhone 3G that I have, the battery will actually run all the way down until the device WILL NOT BOOT, but shows the flashing red battery. This iPod will not do that. It shuts down, then when I reboot, it is at least 50%. That does not last and quickly shuts down again. I tried 10 reboots like this, each times it lasts less and less time, but I never once got the red flashing battery...

Yes, I have done multiple full charge cycles. I have restored. Nothing helps. So last week, I made a trip to see a genius at the Apple Store (First time, pretty cool place). The night before I went, I did a full restore. I take it in, and the guy connects it to one of their iPads and pulls up diagnostic data.... he said that while I did the right thing restoring it, that there really wasn't a lot of diagnostic data because of the recent restore, and the battery diagnostic shows "normal". He noticed the battery level jump around, and said it's not normal and that he was CERTAIN it's a FW (not OS) issue...he told me to DFU restore, because a standard restore only replaces the OS and not the FW. He said if there is a setting issue that it might be in the backups and not to restore from a backup and set up as new. I did, and still have an issue. I downgraded last night from 6.01 to 5.01, and the behavior persists...

So it's now jailbroken, and I downloaded BatteryInfoLite from Cydia. The "currect capacity" column is interesting. For example, it'll sit at 45%, then if I turn on WiFi and turn up brightness, the current capacity jumps to 12%. Turn down brightness, it goes up to maybe 30 percent. Then doing nothing at all, it'l get back up to 40%, then go down a few percent and up again...
Yes, I realize that the iPod is estimating based on usage, but that seems pretty excessive to me...

So, I am at a loss. But looking on Google,, the part where the ipod dies, then turn t back on and it shows 50% or more is common, but I no one seems to know what causes or why. In many cases, Apple has replaced those devices (with the replacements eventually doing the same thing)... What I do know is my battery shouldn't go from a full charge to the 20% warning just because I play 25 minutes of Angry Birds...

Is anyone able to get their iPT4 to get all the way to the red flashing battery icon? On mine, no matter how many times I let it die, it boots back up showing almost 50% charge (which quickly dies again) but it will not show me the red flashing battery. I want to drain this all the way and do a full charge cycle, but I'm not convinced it's discharging fully. On my older iDevices, I let them dies and they have the red battery. Why is this different?
Click to expand...

I have the iPod touch 4 from 2010 running 6.0.1 (never jailbroken)

From the beginning, I have always used Battery Doctor Pro to show me more percent and performance information, and have almost always tried to keep network settings off when I don't need them, and brightness between 0 and 30% when I don't need it to be bright. I have always followed the charging directions of the app, letting it drop as low as possible before charging, letting it complete the full cycle charge, and never letting it stay connected to a power source longer than 12 hours. When it finishes charging I disconnect it.

Right now, It usually dies around 13-14%, and will last for at least a four hours of light use. I mostly just use it as a music player and AppleTV remote now. Typically, it does die quicker with games, but I don't recall how long...maybe an hour or two. It will survive on standby for at least a few days, with wifi on all the time and some light use.

I have noticed that new versions of iOS have tended to have better battery life when installed through iTunes rather than OTA. I have always restored as a new device, and avoided using backups.

When I visited Apple and they ran the same diagnostic tests, they could only recommend the restore. The costs of changing out the battery now aren't really worth it if I could just use that money towards a new device.

I'm wondering if you ever had a long history of starting charging before the battery died all the way (it is better to start charging closer to 0%, not just after the "20%" warning), or if you always unplugged it at "100%" instead of allowing it to finish a full charge and trickle. Did you ever allow it to stay connected to the power for more than 12 hours at a time. If you did these things, you might have been re-training your battery to think it was fully charged before it was, so what you see as 100% is actually something less than 100% in available power.

If you know you have re-installed/restored your version of iOS through iTunes as a "new device", and you still have battery issues, then all you can really do is try to use proper charging techniques to re-train the battery to charge it's full capacity (not just what the iOS battery icon displays), or consider replacing the battery or buying a new iOS device.

If it is the 2011 iPod touch 4, you should definitely have much more battery life. If it is the 2010, you should decide how much you need more power and if you want to consider buying a newer one.

Let me know what you think.

iPod Touch 4th...bad battery or iOS problem?

Kallen macrumors newbie

HMI macrumors 6502a

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iPod Touch 4th...bad battery or iOS problem?

Kallen macrumors newbie

HMI macrumors 6502a

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