Piss poor battery life with iPhone 4...?

[jdean23]

I think I may have fixed my battery life.....All I did was go into setting then to the mail, contacts tab and turned off push....
Also Went inside the ADVANCED tab and turned off push for my Yahoo Mail..(Thats the Key) Its inside Settings-MAil,Contacts-Advanced

 

[aforty]

i had similar usage as you. they ran their diagnostics and they told me i was getting about 5.5hrs of usage which falls within their "normal" allowance, and would not give me a return.

i asked him .."so my only option is to deal with it or return it?", which he said pretty much. i said ok, and returned a week later for a return. i had to mail it back to apple, and now i'm just waiting for my upgrade eligibility to be reset so i can get a new phone.

give it a shot though. i've read other posts on here where they were told the same thing, but replaced their phone anyways. it all depends on the "genius" you get.

Interesting. Anyone have any ideas what this diagnostic actually does? Does it perform anything scientific? 🙄

yep, it does depend on the "genius"

But honestly, his battery may be fine. His brightness settings was FAR to high and his mail was being fetched every 15 min.

That has alot to do with it im sure. So its very possible that his battery is good and he just needs to tweak his settings to get optimal performance.

Correction: it was set to push -- push on three different accounts! 😱 One for work and two private gmail accounts. Not too scientific but after disabling push my battery has not drained at all on standby. Have not used it so the screen brightness could not have come into play yet. If you recall earlier, I dropped a few percentage points in 10 minutes. Could very well be the push... weird though, I never had any problems with push on my 3G.

I typed the above and then took a few minutes to browse the web. Battery went down from 79 to 77%. The battery drain (almost none) on standby is acceptable now but I'm still worried my battery may be draining quickly. I'll still go to the Apple store and let them do a battery diagnostic on it and see what happens. I'll also still report back with the final numbers before leave.

 

[impulse462]

Why do you need or expect more than 5-6 hours???

What kind of question is why do you "need" more than 5-6 hours. People use their phones for all kinds of reasons and frankly 5-6 hours isnt much unless your consantly using a data connection for browsing/texting/maps.

 

[Roofy.]

Right now I'm at 83% with 1hr 43 minutes usage and 2 hrs 42 minutes standby. I've been using it for Internet on wifi the whole time with pandora in the background a little of the time.

Yesterday I managed just under 8 hrs of usage and 22.5 hrs standby with 6% life left. Pretty great if you ask me. I usually average 6.5 to 7 hrs. With my 3G S I averaged 4.5 hrs. Alot better and definitely good enough for me.

 

[aforty]

So here's an update.

At 12:16PM I set my brightness down from 75% to 50%. I also turned off push on all three of my Exchange accounts and set them to fetch every 30 minutes instead. At 12:16 my battery was at 79%. Now, at 4:24PM my battery is at 65%.

In these 4 hours I accumulated some more standby time, but I also streamed an audio podcast, played a bit of Gun Range and Moron Test (work be damned) and did a bit of light web surfing, most of this on WiFi. I can definitely say that turning off push email had a significant effect on my standby battery usage. Earlier in this thread you can see how standby was killing my battery pretty fast, just getting emails relating to this thread (but not actually checking them!) was costing me a couple percentage points. An hour and 30 minutes into the experiment I checked my phone, at that point I had not yet used my phone since changing the settings (all this usage I listed came in the last two hours) and the battery had only dropped two percentage points (from 79% to 77%).

Here's an updated usage screenshot. This is still on the same charge, just later in the day.

I'm not going to run around forever without push email and my brightness way down but this is yielding some interesting results. What do you guys think, do I still think my phone may have a problem?

 

[impulse462]

Looks like with the decrease in brightness and fetch time, your phones battery is getting better.

Your 75% brightness, I think, was your number one battery killer closely followed by 15 minute fetch.

 

[aforty]

Looks like with the decrease in brightness and fetch time, your phones battery is getting better.

Your 75% brightness, I think, was your number one battery killer closely followed by 15 minute fetch.

It was not 15 minute fetch, it was PUSH. The screen had no impact on my standby time improving because the screen isn't even on. I'd say turning off push was the bigger contributor to the improvement.

But should I still get the battery tested by an Apple "genius"? I have an appointment in a few minutes... should I still go?

 

[impulse462]

It was not 15 minute fetch, it was PUSH. The screen had no impact on my standby time improving because the screen isn't even on. I'd say turning off push was the bigger contributor to the improvement.

But should I still get the battery tested by an Apple "genius"? I have an appointment in a few minutes... should I still go?

My bad with the push. Push does take a lot of battery, and I would just go to see what he has to say.

 

[Spideytex10]

It was not 15 minute fetch, it was PUSH. The screen had no impact on my standby time improving because the screen isn't even on. I'd say turning off push was the bigger contributor to the improvement.

But should I still get the battery tested by an Apple "genius"? I have an appointment in a few minutes... should I still go?

Yes go. And search the forums for "corrupt app." You may have one. I had 2 draining my battery even though they were closed. You shouldn't have to reduce anything in order to get great battery life. Mine now lasts at least a day with heavy use, everything on and full brightness.

 

[zerix]

I'd like to share my story:

My original iPhone 4 was absolutely terrible with the battery, I originally used a restore from my 3G (which was jailbroken using 3.0). I eventually read people that did this were experincing terrible battery life, so I did a full restore and ran it as a new phone and still experienced the same battery life. The phone came out of the box dead, which was weird I thought, all my previous iPhone's came charged at least 60%.

OLD phone:

Called apple up last week and eventually got a replacement phone and the battery life on the new phone is PHENOMINAL!

Location Services: On
Mail: 1 GMail account on fetch every 30 minutes
Brightness: 50-60%, no auto correction
Bluetooth: Off
Notifications: Off
Wifi: On

NEW phone (first charge btw):

In conclusion: Call apple and get a replacement, or take it into the apple store.

 

[AHDuke99]

I never get more than a day and a half on my phone, but maybe it's because I have 2 push accounts on. Otherwise, who knows. I've always been on the fence about my battery quality. I usually drop below 80% with about 1.5 hours of usage, but then my battery meter slows its dropping and I end the day around 8 hours or so of usage. I need to probably calibrate it again.

 

[simple20]

Damn... maybe my battery is defective? I thought this was pretty good!

 

[drewfus]

OK, reading through this thread is making me paranoid! Looking at today's usage, I'm thinking that my battery may be wonky.

I took my phone off its charger this afternoon, and used it without charging out till I got home about 20 minutes ago. I used it for calls, texting, a little Google Maps-ing, taking a few pics, and showing some pics to a friend, and looking a couple of things up on Safari.

Is this normal-ish, or am I being at all paranoid?

 

[iceman718]

I can't believe some of you guys own the phone with the highest resolution screen on the market and are content leaving it at 50% brightness. I understand it saves battery and all, but I feel like what's the point of having such a great screen if you can't even turn it up?

Every gadet with a screen that I own always has brightness set to the max. Looks terrible to me if not.

That being said, I don't own an iPhone 4, or any smartphone for that matter. I'm still trying to decide between the iPhone and the Samsung Captivate. I must say though, I'll be very disappointed if I can't make it through a day with max brightness on either of them.

Sorry for interrupting the thread, just had to say it.

P.S. just thought it was funny that as I'm typing this on an iPhone forum, the ad at the top of the page is for the Droid X.

 

[JeffLebowski41]

the 4 on 100% brightness is blinding and looks like garbage. I'm well under 50..probably 35% at most. Crazy, maybe, but I'm also one that calibrates my tv and takes it out of vivid mode within 2 seconds of unboxing.

 

[zerix]

the 4 on 100% brightness is blinding and looks like garbage. I'm well under 50..probably 35% at most. Crazy, maybe, but I'm also one that calibrates my tv and takes it out of vivid mode within 2 seconds of unboxing.

yeah pretty much, full brightness is so unnecessary, i'm probably 60% and it's PLENTY bright

 

[IrishVixen]

LOL--I'm usually at 20-50% on the iPhone for indoor use. It doesn't NEED to be any brighter than that unless I'm playing a game with dark toned images/backgrounds. The screen is gorgeously clear even at lower levels, and my eyes are good enough that I can read comfortably even at 20%. In the car, I turn the brightness to max, but that's to compete with outdoor glare.

You'll be even more appalled to note that my iPad is nearly always set to minimum, and is almost never above 20%. Anything brighter just causes me eyestrain over time.

 

[grimmjaw]

Do I have defected battery?
The most I can get is around 5 hours
Wifi On
Bluetooth Off
Location Off
Push Manuel = Off
Brightness: 40%
close most background app
just talk to my wife for 15min and here the result:

btw where do you make appointment to see the genius bar guy.

 

[Drag'nGT]

OK, reading through this thread is making me paranoid! Looking at today's usage, I'm thinking that my battery may be wonky.

I took my phone off its charger this afternoon, and used it without charging out till I got home about 20 minutes ago. I used it for calls, texting, a little Google Maps-ing, taking a few pics, and showing some pics to a friend, and looking a couple of things up on Safari.

Is this normal-ish, or am I being at all paranoid?

I don't want to feed your paranoia but I have 38% battery left with 1 day 16hrs standby and 3hrs and something min of usage.

Does the phone count texting, gaming and other apps as 'usage'? The only true way (imo) to test your batter is to make a call for the full life of your battery or at least until you get the 10% warning. Compared to my 3G, my i4 is lasting much longer than before.

 

[pdhahn]

This is my first iphone so I had nothing to compare to and I thought my battery was fine. In reality my battery life is as bad if not worse than the OP's. And here I thought my phone was perfect. Looks like I might get to meet the geniuses after all.

 

[Moe UK]

I seem to have some sort of screwy app on mine as looking at it today I have had 7 hours and 15 minutes standbay and 7 hours and 15 minutes usage. A reboot seemes to have fixed this but I have noticed some days the battery drains a lot faster then others, and some days the battery seems to be amazing.

Another 35% brightness here, I did dare turn it up to 75% for a few days but found the batter life to aweful.

 

[AHDuke99]

This is my first iphone so I had nothing to compare to and I thought my battery was fine. In reality my battery life is as bad if not worse than the OP's. And here I thought my phone was perfect. Looks like I might get to meet the geniuses after all.

That's about what I get. Do you have push on at all? I've turned mine off for today to see what my battery is like. If it's no better, I may go in.

 

[Irish Rose]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_0_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/532.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.5 Mobile/8A306 Safari/6531.22.7)

I'm getting a full day out of one charge on my iP4 which is good for as much as I use it during the day.

 

[r&s]

I don't want to feed your paranoia but I have 38% battery left with 1 day 16hrs standby and 3hrs and something min of usage.

standby hardly does anything to the battery so you're getting pretty much the same results as the other guy w/38% and 3 something hours of usage

personally it looks like a lot of the battery performance people are showing are similar to each other, and that most people get 5-6 hours of usage a day, and that the more striking differences can be attributed to the brightness setting, and that the people who are going for really long periods of time w/out charging either have their brightness set really low, or in some cases maybe some people got an extra amazing battery, but that sounds like the exception, not the norm.

and regarding brightness settings, imo the screen doesn't look good below 50% and i'm surprised that any of you can stand that. I prefer it at 75-100% but it definitely taxes the battery hard.

 

[macfan881]

Make Sure Push is Off if you don't need it Fetch at the minimum that you want I also tend to find if your in a place that has WiFi is to turn off 3G that Improves it as well