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Ridiculously Short Battery Life

2

2good2btru

macrumors member
Original poster
Mar 8, 2008
38
0
photo-1.jpg


This battery life is just ridiculous! I'm at 29% after only an hour and a half??!?! I'd consider myself fairly tech savvy so no, I don't have Bluetooth, Data Roaming, or anything else on. No wifi (obviously). The only thing I've got is 3G. If I turn that off and only use EDGE, it only gives me about an extra 45 minutes to an hour.

This only started happening about a week or two ago. I figured that I would try calibrating it a couple times to see if that fixed the battery but to no avail. I'm running out of ideas.

I'm using a 3GS. I'm the original owner and I bought it about a week after it was released in June. Does Apple cover anything like this? I was looking on the website and found this :http://www.apple.com/support/iphone/service/battery/ I don't want to have to pay $85.95 for a new battery.

Any suggestions? Thanks!
 
It's covered in the warranty, though, right? Because it's defective. The link is for out of warranty replacement.
 
How many different accounts (email, contacts, calendars, etc) do you have synching to your phone? Are they synching via Push?
Push has a noticeable impact on battery life. More accounts will also increase the speed at which your battery is drained.
 
I've only got one email account set up (gmail), and even then, I'm not using Push. It's set to fetch every hour (which is the least most frequent option available --next to manual of course). So I highly doubt that's it.

Can I take it into ATT or do I have to take it to Apple for it to be serviced?
 
Take it to Apple, it should be lasting longer than that. Just explain, like you have here what your problem is and hopefully they will get ist sorted for you.
 
stridemat said:
Take it to Apple, it should be lasting longer than that. Just explain, like you have here what your problem is and hopefully they will get ist sorted for you.
Click to expand...

Restore it as a new device NOT FROM BACKUP, switch your sync settings back on and re-sync. You won't lose anything.
Then turn off push e-mail.

That should do the trick
 
Don't forget, whatever you're doing makes a huge difference to battery life. Just making phone calls, texting and listening to music results in a long battery life. However, some games, and surfing the net can can be very power-hungry.

I usually get, on average, about 5 hours per charge - usage consisting of calls, texts, light gaming and a couple of hours on Safari.

Also, it's adviseable to make sure all pages are closed when closing Safari.
 
I've just noticed you've set your mail fetch to one hour. Switch "Fetch" OFF COMPLETELY - even set to one hour, it'll drain your battery! It's no real effort to occasionally manually check your mail ;)

It's always easy to blame the phone! Before doing so, chech your settings etc.
 
John T said:
I've just noticed you've set your mail fetch to one hour. Switch "Fetch" OFF COMPLETELY - even set to one hour, it'll drain your battery! It's no real effort to occasionally manually check your mail ;)

It's always easy to blame the phone! Before doing so, chech your settings etc.
Click to expand...

Even if Fetch somewhat drains the battery it wouldn't drain 71% in an hour and a half... I have Fetch too and my battery lasts all day.
 
John T said:
I've just noticed you've set your mail fetch to one hour. Switch "Fetch" OFF COMPLETELY - even set to one hour, it'll drain your battery! It's no real effort to occasionally manually check your mail ;)

It's always easy to blame the phone! Before doing so, chech your settings etc.
Click to expand...

That wouldn't cause that drastic of a battery decrease, at lesast not what the OP is experiencing.
 
Before I was experiencing battery issues (when I would get 5 hours to a charge), I had fetch to every 15 minutes and even then it wouldn't even come close to draining my battery the way it is now.

Question: If I restore as a new device and then resync everything, I know that I'll have all my music, photos, apps, etc, but won't I lose all my application data, settings, and contacts? I'm not sure I'm ready to do that.

I would love to take it into an Apple store if I could, but the closest one is about 6 or 6 hours away. What are my other options?
 
2good2btru said:
Before I was experiencing battery issues (when I would get 5 hours to a charge), I had fetch to every 15 minutes and even then it wouldn't even come close to draining my battery the way it is now.

Question: If I restore as a new device and then resync everything, I know that I'll have all my music, photos, apps, etc, but won't I lose all my application data, settings, and contacts? I'm not sure I'm ready to do that.

I would love to take it into an Apple store if I could, but the closest one is about 6 or 6 hours away. What are my other options?
Click to expand...

It's been a fairly wide-spread issue so if it were me, this is one of the first solutions I'd try.
If you want to be more sure before trying, do a search for "Restore as new phone" or something similar.
You may lose some app settings but as long as you've synched your contacts through iTunes with Address Book or Entourage or whatever, you just re-sync them and all will be fine.

Your other option is to get a new iPhone so you would have to start from scratch anyway.
 
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