Recent awful battery life

[reebzor]

So I've had my 3g since about 2 weeks after it came out. I never really had a problem with the battery life, I'm fine with charging it every night before I go to sleep. Even still, I used to have about 40% battery by the time I went to bed.

Everyday for the passed 5 days, I've been getting the 10% battery warning at about 3pm. I have no idea why this is happening all of a sudden. I've basically stopped using my phone, I only send a few texts per day and the battery still dies. I do always leave my 3g, gps, push and bluetooth on, but I've always had those on when the battery was fine. Is anyone else having problems out of the blue? Is there anyway to fix this? I really hate charging my iphone 3 times just to get through the day. Thanks.

 

[Vandam500]

Have you changed any settings? Started texting/talking more? Been using a new app lately? Added more emails to your phone? Or fetching more frequently? Etc...

 

[PowerFullMac]

Restore.

I think this is a sortware bug that occurs sometimes, restoring should fix it.

 

[reebzor]

Have you changed any settings? Started texting/talking more? Been using a new app lately? Added more emails to your phone? Or fetching more frequently? Etc...

No, I've actually been using my phone less. I would often download apps, play with them, browse internets, twitter constantly. Now all I do is send a few texts per day just so I can at least make it through the work day.

I will try to restore thing, that sounds like a good idea actually.

 

[Ori]

No, I've actually been using my phone less. I would often download apps, play with them, browse internets, twitter constantly. Now all I do is send a few texts per day just so I can at least make it through the work day.

I will try to restore thing, that sounds like a good idea actually.

Actually, I would do a proper reset (holding down power and home button until apple logo comes up) then let it die completely. Give it a full overnight charge from mains. See if that sorts the problem. Failing that restore. Failing that apple store.

 

[iP2]

Just had this happen to me...

Had my phone since 1 week after release day w/o any battery problems either. Battery lasted 2-3 days w/ normal use for me. Then just this week, it drained within a few hours despite not using it. It would get hot if you try to charge it.

I restored to default (and did the 2 hour full reset). Fixed the problem. However, when I restored from my backup, it did it again. After several rounds of restoring, I found out that my Exchange email (more specifically PUSH) was the culprit.

I deleted the Exchange account, re-added it and now its back to normal. My bet is that it got corrupted and ran in the background indefinitely until it killed my battery. Hence the phone got warm and would not charge to full during this time (similar to running the GPS in your car while its charging).

 

[Small White Car]

Had my phone since 1 week after release day w/o any battery problems either. Battery lasted 2-3 days w/ normal use for me. Then just this week, it drained within a few hours despite not using it. It would get hot if you try to charge it.

I restored to default (and did the 2 hour full reset). Fixed the problem. However, when I restored from my backup, it did it again. After several rounds of restoring, I found out that my Exchange email (more specifically PUSH) was the culprit.

I deleted the Exchange account, re-added it and now its back to normal. My bet is that it got corrupted and ran in the background indefinitely until it killed my battery. Hence the phone got warm and would not charge to full during this time (similar to running the GPS in your car while its charging).

This sort of story makes me wish that the iPhone would transfer some sort of daily power-usage graph to iTunes that a typical user could understand.

It would take some fancy programming to cut out the irrelevant stuff and ONLY show the things people understand (like, combining all processes that involve e-mail into one bar that says 'e-mail') but I bet Apple could do it.

Wouldn't it be great if you could have openned up iTunes and seen a chart that showed your e-mail account using power most of the day? Or, for example, you could see that some GPS program you downloaded was accidentally running the GPS non-stop even after you shut it down? Heck, how about it pops up on its own: "Your Exchange account has been using 300% more power this week than it did the previous 10 weeks. Did you make a change to cause this?"

A feature like this would be AMAZING. I bet 95% of the people that have a problem like yours never end up tracking it down the way you did.

 

[efp1]

Had my phone since 1 week after release day w/o any battery problems either. Battery lasted 2-3 days w/ normal use for me. Then just this week, it drained within a few hours despite not using it. It would get hot if you try to charge it.

I restored to default (and did the 2 hour full reset). Fixed the problem. However, when I restored from my backup, it did it again. After several rounds of restoring, I found out that my Exchange email (more specifically PUSH) was the culprit.

I deleted the Exchange account, re-added it and now its back to normal. My bet is that it got corrupted and ran in the background indefinitely until it killed my battery. Hence the phone got warm and would not charge to full during this time (similar to running the GPS in your car while its charging).

The same exact thing happened to me except that I just disabled push and never re-added the account. Just too scared that it'll drain my battery again.

Same exact thing as you though, just started happening to me recently when before it was fine.

Maybe Apple is playing around with their push settings? I had MobileMe enabled.

 

[iP2]

This sort of story makes me wish that the iPhone would transfer some sort of daily power-usage graph to iTunes that a typical user could understand.

It would take some fancy programming to cut out the irrelevant stuff and ONLY show the things people understand (like, combining all processes that involve e-mail into one bar that says 'e-mail') but I bet Apple could do it.

Wouldn't it be great if you could have openned up iTunes and seen a chart that showed your e-mail account using power most of the day? Or, for example, you could see that some GPS program you downloaded was accidentally running the GPS non-stop even after you shut it down? Heck, how about it pops up on its own: "Your Exchange account has been using 300% more power this week than it did the previous 10 weeks. Did you make a change to cause this?"

A feature like this would be AMAZING. I bet 95% of the people that have a problem like yours never end up tracking it down the way you did.

I would be happy with some sort of Task Manager on the phone itself (w/o Jailbreaking) so you can see what app is running. I've read that you should hold down the HOME button for 8 seconds to kill the current app for sure...that's weak. I shouldn't have to be unsure if an app closed down after I close it down.

At least for my situation, deleting the Exchange account then re-adding it did the trick. I probably didn't need to do all those restores, but that was the only way to weed out the problem. Now that my phone is back to normal, I need to do a new backup so that in the event this happens again, I can just revert back to this instead of my 'corrupted' backup.

Sidenote: If I didn't research this issue for 2 days and try a whole bunch of time consuming methods, I probably would have returned/exchanged my phone for a new one thinking it was defective. You gotta wonder how many phone returns have occurred due to this type of problem (which can be solved). You get the new phone (default mode) and it works great at the store. Then you go home and sync it to your bad backup...then guess what? It's hosed again. Repeat return process X number of times. What a waste of time and replacement phones.

 

[PowerFullMac]

iP2, hold the home button for 8 seconds to end the current app. You will know it worked coz the screen will go black for a second or two before it returns to the homescreen.

 

[iP2]

Thanks.

iP2, hold the home button for 8 seconds to end the current app. You will know it worked coz the screen will go black for a second or two before it returns to the homescreen.

Thanks...I will edit my post. But yea, even worse...try doing that each time to make sure you actually closed that app!!

 

[icewing]

Actually, I would do a proper reset (holding down power and home button until apple logo comes up) then let it die completely. Give it a full overnight charge from mains. See if that sorts the problem. Failing that restore. Failing that apple store.

Agree - give this a shot first. It's worked for me, killed stuff running in the background. I've also changed my fetch setting from 15 mins to every hour, and got a nice bump in battery life.

 

[bigmouth]

Agree - give this a shot first. It's worked for me, killed stuff running in the background. I've also changed my fetch setting from 15 mins to every hour, and got a nice bump in battery life.

+2

BTW, try fetching every half hour -- it's pretty easy on the battery.

This sort of story makes me wish that the iPhone would transfer some sort of daily power-usage graph to iTunes that a typical user could understand.

That is an EXCELLENT suggestion. Of course, I've given up hoping Apple will do something so useful. Cydia developers, are you listening? This would make a great app or even an addition to BossPrefs...