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The real problem with the battery as I see it is that you can't swap it out. Not only does this mean you can't take a spare with you it also means you can't swap it out for a more powerful one.

Look at some of the more popular winmo devices, most of them have some sort of super battery for sale. Yes it increases the thickness, but hell even if you doubled the iphone's thickness it would still be thin. And honestly, while it may last a few days on light usage, it can be drained in sub 3 hours with heavy usage.

If they doubled the thickness and made all the extra battery and it lasted for 15 hours of HEAVY usage I think you'd have more people happy than upset. Just my 2 cents.


I totally agree with this, I use my phone a lot at work and home but at work I have the ability to plug it in and have it charge so the battery has been a non issue thus far. I'm going to start traveling more next week though and all of these posts have me worried that I'll be stuck with a dead phone. Has anyone tried portable battery packs. If so how do they work? I have a link to one below so you know the type of device I'm talking about.

http://www.jr.com/kensington/pe/KEG_33442/
 
The real problem with the battery as I see it is that you can't swap it out. Not only does this mean you can't take a spare with you it also means you can't swap it out for a more powerful one.

Look at some of the more popular winmo devices, most of them have some sort of super battery for sale. Yes it increases the thickness, but hell even if you doubled the iphone's thickness it would still be thin. And honestly, while it may last a few days on light usage, it can be drained in sub 3 hours with heavy usage.

If they doubled the thickness and made all the extra battery and it lasted for 15 hours of HEAVY usage I think you'd have more people happy than upset. Just my 2 cents.

That's a good point. So what is the reason Apple won't allow us to switch out batteries? Is it for aesthetic purposes? If that's the case - DUMB.
 
This is the same for me. I was getting crappy battery life, and turning off 3g and just leaving it on edge doubled my battery life easy.

My neighborhood is a 3G dead spot (I live 20 minutes west of Chicago) for some reason. I only get 1-2 bars on 3G, but full on edge. In my basement, where I spend most of my time, 3G will go dead and the phone switches to edge anyway. At work 3G is ok outside, but only like 1-2 bars inside the building.

After trying it out for a day, I noticed it's better for me to just turn off 3G all together and only turning it on when I wanna surf the web and there is no wifi available. Battery life is fantastic for me now. Location services and push are both on as well.

I'm in this same boat. At work, the 3G signal sucks (even though it is in a dark blue area on the coverage map).

I, too, switch off 3G and just use Edge all the time. But it seems pretty ridiculous to never be using 3G (the biggest difference between the last iPhone). I guess I'm just hoping that AT&T is not done with their 3G rollout yet.
 
I'm in this same boat. At work, the 3G signal sucks (even though it is in a dark blue area on the coverage map).

I, too, switch off 3G and just use Edge all the time. But it seems pretty ridiculous to never be using 3G (the biggest difference between the last iPhone). I guess I'm just hoping that AT&T is not done with their 3G rollout yet.

Y is 1-2 bars on 3G such a big problem? I get 2 bars at my place on 3G & full bars at my friend's place but noticed no speed difference. OK maybe there was a slight difference in speed but definitely not noticeable.
 
Aside from those with genuinely defective batteries, I think most people complaining are just unfamiliar with the limitations of 3G devices. Based on my experience in this regard, my battery life expectations were quite low, and the iPhone 3G has exceeded them.
 
Y is 1-2 bars on 3G such a big problem? I get 2 bars at my place on 3G & full bars at my friend's place but noticed no speed difference. OK maybe there was a slight difference in speed but definitely not noticeable.

Who said anything about 1-2 bars?

At work, I get either "No Signal" or 1 bar (even though Edge has 4-5 bars). At my house, I took my friend's 2G iPhone and we loaded the same webpages side by side; he beat me in some cases and we tied otherwise (I have 2 bars at my house).

And note: 2 bars is not necessarily indicative of speed, and 3G speeds widely vary by city. Your experience does not necessarily equate to other people's experience in different areas. Now, if you live in North Austin, please let me know.
 
My battery life seems to really fluctuate. At first it was what I considered bad. I'd take it off the charger at about 7am and by 4 or 5pm it would give me the 20% warning. I turned off location services and that seemed to really help. I was able to go until about 11pm or midnight before getting the 20% warning. I guess this is ok, but I don't really use the phone much at all during the day. I might check a few emails when they come via push. I might play a game for a few minutes and maybe do a few minutes of web surfing. Most of the time I'm getting about 4-5 hours of use, so I guess that's within Apple's specs. But I agree it'd be much less of an issue if the battery could be swapped out. Granted there are external batteries we can get. Now I'm starting to wonder if push isn't the culprit. Our exchange server was down all day today so no emails coming through. I'm at 3.5 hrs usage and 11 hrs standby and the battery still looks full! I'm amazed.

UPDATE: I knew the 100% battery after 3.5 hrs usage was too good to be true. Remembering how as someone else said, the battery meeter seems to change when you reboot the phone I decided to reboot and it gave me the 10% warning! I didn't really use my phone at all today, so I'm guessing that 3.5 hrs of use was trying to check for email?

Another update: I just tried to wake the phone up and I'm now getting the charge message with red battery, so it's done. So yea, I'd say 3.5 hrs "usage" which meant sitting in my pocket all day and 11 hrs standby isn't that great imo.
 
No life? Are people serious when they post such crap?

I use my iPhone at work quite a bit. I make phone calls, need numbers when I am at other peoples office and have no access to a computer, and use the iPod when traveling

That makes me have no life? Interesting
 
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