Poll: Battery Life improvement w/ 2.1

[Cyclone Chris]

I wasn't so sure about the significant battery increase with the 2.1 F/W release?

However after a day and a half it really made a difference on my 3G iPhone.

I'm seeing about an hour increase with usage on mine. I went from 4 hrs 20 mins to 5 hrs 30 mins on Edge.

About 1.5 hours of video, 1 hour of talk time, 2 hours of Safari, 1 hour of gaming.

Post your increase if any.

 

[Anuba]

I'm one of many who have seen battery life shrink to 30-50% of what it was in 2.0.X, so I'd be opting for the alternative "worse than 2.0.X", but it dosn't exist...

 

[Cyclone Chris]

^^^ That's not good... I would be taking mine back to apple.

 

[Rybold]

I'm definitely seeing longer battery life.

Check this out:
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/562298/

 

[lokiju]

I had been having an issue until yesterday where my battery was randomly drain for no apparent reason.

I'll need a few weeks before I know if this is fixed for sure or not but it's looking better so far.

 

[MotionxxUSxx]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.1 Mobile/5F136 Safari/525.20)

my battery is dramatically better. I did a clean install when loading 2.1. During my tests today I even left location services on. I'm loving this update.

 

[Anuba]

^^^ That's not good... I would be taking mine back to apple.

Why would I take the phone back to Apple over a software problem? They could give me a hundred replacement phones but those would still have this battery problem with 2.1. There's nothing wrong with the actual battery.

 

[Rybold]

Looks like we're in a dead-lock on this one.

18 say "no"

17 say "yes"

3 say "45-60 min more"

Hmmmm.

 

[sammich]

I guess I'll have to wait for my uni week to start before I make my judgement. It's kinda sad to actually have to actively think of 'conversing' phone battery when I go out for the day (fully charged before I leave).

 

[hazza.jockel]

ill need more time as well before i can see a diference. atm (after my first full charger after updating) i have 3hrs45min usage and 1day 1hour standby and mostly full battery. So far its looking good for an extra 1 hour then in 2.0.2

 

[SOLLERBOY]

personally , my iphone battery life is worse , I am seeing around a day less life.

 

[paulsalter]

Cant say for certain at the moment, but it looks like my battery will be a lot worse

I am back to the problem where usage and standby times are the same, something is constantly running, thought it was Push, turned that off and it makes no difference

 

[steveapp]

It would be interesting to wait a week or so, peoples usage varies so much its hard to say, i might have 2 hours use one day and 50% life left, and 10 hours the next and 80% left if id been using just as a music ipod that day - and I think those that are suffering worse life would be best calibrating their batteries for a few cycles - is there a link to the way they updated ?

Mine seems a bit better but i use it so differently on a weekend its impossible to say to be honest - and I wasnt expecting amazing changes really - more small improvements which seem to be there

 

[Cyclone Chris]

Why would I take the phone back to Apple over a software problem? They could give me a hundred replacement phones but those would still have this battery problem with 2.1. There's nothing wrong with the actual battery.

Because it seems like you are one of the few having battery troubles. Why is your iPhone acting different than others? It's either your type of usage or it's the equipment.

 

[sibruk]

Because it seems like you are one of the few having battery troubles. Why is your iPhone acting different than others? It's either your type of usage or it's the equipment.

I definitely had battery problems with my first 3G. The Geniuses at my local Apple Store acknowledged it as a 'known problem' and said that mine definitely did have a problem.

My replacement 3G is much better. And now with 2.1 it's better than ever. 1 day, 5 hours later (4:15 actual usage) with 3G and Push turned on and it's only just given me a 20% battery warning.

 

[Anuba]

Because it seems like you are one of the few having battery troubles. Why is your iPhone acting different than others? It's either your type of usage or it's the equipment.

Different than others? I have no idea why you live in this weird bubble where the only possible outcome of installing 2.1 is improved battery life, and you're so hell bent on this that you don't even include any other options in your poll than as good, or varying degrees of better. But please, wake up and smell the coffee. There are tons of similar posts in various threads about battery life, all reporting the same issue: After installing 2.1, the battery is bleeding power like crazy for no apparent reason. The common denominator is that iPhone is reporting hours and hours of active usage, including the night time when the owner is asleep. The only known workaround is to reboot the phone when you've used it. This kills all apps. Only THEN do you get the promised improvement in battery life under 2.1.

So, what are you suggesting? That we all return our perfectly healthy phones to Apple due to some bug in 2.1? That we uninstall all 3rd party apps? What if the culprit is Safari or the Weather applet, how do we uninstall those?

 

[jrbdmb]

Because it seems like you are one of the few having battery troubles. Why is your iPhone acting different than others? It's either your type of usage or it's the equipment.

One of the few? Umm ... your own poll shows that around half the respondents show no increse in battery life. And if you had included "Worse" as an option I would have checked that as well.

2.1 Battery life: 3 hours 45 minutes from full charge to dead battery. This is with GPRS off.

 

[Cinemagic]

Different than others? I have no idea why you live in this weird bubble where the only possible outcome of installing 2.1 is improved battery life, and you're so hell bent on this that you don't even include any other options in your poll than as good, or varying degrees of better. But please, wake up and smell the coffee. There are tons of similar posts in various threads about battery life, all reporting the same issue: After installing 2.1, the battery is bleeding power like crazy for no apparent reason. The common denominator is that iPhone is reporting hours and hours of active usage, including the night time when the owner is asleep. The only known workaround is to reboot the phone when you've used it. This kills all apps. Only THEN do you get the promised improvement in battery life under 2.1.

So, what are you suggesting? That we all return our perfectly healthy phones to Apple due to some bug in 2.1? That we uninstall all 3rd party apps? What if the culprit is Safari or the Weather applet, how do we uninstall those?

Actually, you don't have to reboot to terminate all apps. You can simply hold down the Home key for 10 seconds and it will terminate all running applications. This is a lot easier and takes a lot less time than a reboot. But it is true that if some applications are left running, they can drain the battery significantly.

It would be nice if Apple would provide an easier way to close open apps.

 

[Cyclone Chris]

Different than others? I have no idea why you live in this weird bubble where the only possible outcome of installing 2.1 is improved battery life, and you're so hell bent on this that you don't even include any other options in your poll than as good, or varying degrees of better. But please, wake up and smell the coffee. There are tons of similar posts in various threads about battery life, all reporting the same issue: After installing 2.1, the battery is bleeding power like crazy for no apparent reason. The common denominator is that iPhone is reporting hours and hours of active usage, including the night time when the owner is asleep. The only known workaround is to reboot the phone when you've used it. This kills all apps. Only THEN do you get the promised improvement in battery life under 2.1.

So, what are you suggesting? That we all return our perfectly healthy phones to Apple due to some bug in 2.1? That we uninstall all 3rd party apps? What if the culprit is Safari or the Weather applet, how do we uninstall those?

Geez... the hostility... all I'm saying is why are half the iphones acting different than the other half?

SJ said that "most" users will experience significant increase in battery life.

my question: Why most and not all?
Did they only adjust battery parameters for certain apps or communicating hardware? Will people mostly on Edge experience longer than usual times than 3G people? Will people that use Bluetooth now experience longer battery times than they did before?

We just do not know, however we do know that a few of us are experiencing longer usage times than others with 2.1..... what makes us different.... that is the variable we need to figure out.

I remember... when I first installed 2.1 on my iPod Touch, I noticed the next day at the gym that I had a 20% warning after a full charge the day before. Some app drained the battery, however after a reset and another full charge it hasn't happened since, and it's been 6 days.

I've been a Quality Assurance Manager for 4 years on Fighter Aircraft electronics and have seen alernating issues between duplicate devices. It usually came down to the software acting different to certain hardware or chips on the device. If there was a sutable sub chip / or different revision chip, the software went haywire because of that.

So is it possible that not all our iPhones are exactly the same (hardware wise)??? I noticed that my wife's 8 Gb iPhone decides to shut down by itself after a week or 2 of usage.... mine doesn't do that.

 

[Anuba]

Actually, you don't have to reboot to terminate all apps. You can simply hold down the Home key for 10 seconds and it will terminate all running applications. This is a lot easier and takes a lot less time than a reboot. But it is true that if some applications are left running, they can drain the battery significantly.

Here's the thing with that. It's been common knowledge that it force quits the application in focus, but then people started saying that it kills ALL application. So yesterday I put it to the test by having the iPod app play some music, then I minimized it and went back to the home screen, music still playing, and opened Safari. Then I held the home button for 10 seconds which terminated Safari, and the home screen appeared, but the music was still playing in the background. If you do the same when the iPod app is open on your screen, the music stops abruptly and the home screen appears. Try it.

 

[Anuba]

SJ said that "most" users will experience significant increase in battery life.

my question: Why most and not all?
Did they only adjust battery parameters for certain apps or communicating hardware? Will people mostly on Edge experience longer than usual times than 3G people? Will people that use Bluetooth now experience longer battery times than they did before?

My guess is that he assumes that most users leave stuff like 3G, Bluetooth, Fetch/Push and Location Services running, and that these things have been optimized for power conservation in 2.1. But the users who are anal about battery life have already disabled all those things and run the phone in forced EDGE mode, and therefore they won't see any difference. EDGE, WiFi and BT are staples of iPhone technology since the beginning and have already been fine tuned to death, but the new stuff on iPhone 3G (3G, GPS, 3rd party app support) still needed some improvement. Again, it's a guess but it's one with high probability IMHO.

So is it possible that not all our iPhones are exactly the same (hardware wise)??? I noticed that my wife's 8 Gb iPhone decides to shut down by itself after a week or 2 of usage.... mine doesn't do that.

I agree that no two iPhones are exactly the same, but the thing is that I already knew that there was good battery life in mine. I followed all the recommendations religiously, calibrated the battery meter and all that, and did a lot of tests prior to the release of 2.1. I was able to get 4 days of standby and still have 1/3 charge left, whereas most people were happy if they only had to recharge once every 24 hours. So when battery life suddenly went from excellent to abysmal immediately after the installation of 2.1, I was confident that it wasn't a hardware issue.

 

[sibruk]

Just need to put my red pen over that

...but then somebody (sibruk) started saying that an Apple "Genius" had told them it kills ALL applications...

 

[Anuba]

Just need to put my red pen over that

Ah, so it was you!

Did you try that iPod app thing I mentioned? I suspect that the Genius was pulling your leg...

 

[sibruk]

Ah, so it was you!

Did you try that iPod app thing I mentioned? I suspect that the Genius was pulling your leg...

No I didn't, but I believe you! I suspect it was more likely a case of the "Genius" not having a clue what he was talking about.

 

[bmwpowere36m3]

My guess is that he assumes that most users leave stuff like 3G, Bluetooth, Fetch/Push and Location Services running, and that these things have been optimized for power conservation in 2.1. But the....

I totally agree, I think that there were two camps of users. THe "general public" who would leave all there settings ON, and the "informed/Apple users" you knew that by turning OFF certain functions would save power. In in the poll you can see it, either people don't see any difference (informed users probably) or ones who see a dramatic increase (one's who previously had everything ON).

Also has anyone noticed the default settings have changed since at least 2.0.2. The default brightness is down around to ~30% when in 2.0.2 is was 100% and by default auto-brightness is ON in 2.1. THe only other setting I noticed was Fetch was now set to MANUALLY by default in 2.1 and in 2.0.2 it was every 15 MINUTES (I believe).