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Strategies for longer battery life?

Vox409

Vox409

macrumors newbie
Original poster
I will be picking up an iphone in February, with my old cell phone [Dumbphone] I had a charger at home, a charger in the car and a charger at work. Will I need the same set up, or is there a stategy on preserving battery life?
 
Vox409 said:
I will be picking up an iphone in February, with my old cell phone [Dumbphone] I had a charger at home, a charger in the car and a charger at work. Will I need the same set up, or is there a stategy on preserving battery life?
Click to expand...

just common sense things such as making sure the bluetooth is turned off if youre not using it, or not having your iphone fetch your mail every 15 minutes. the iphone battery isnt the best out there but you should only have to charge it once a day, after the first month of owing it that is. we all know when we get new phones its hard to put them down, so a charge is needed a little more often at first
 
Good advice on killing Bluetooth. Screen brightness is another major battery drainer.

Clearly, it depends on use, but sometimes I go days without recharging.
 
I have USB charger cables both at work and at home, and I use a Mophie Juice Pack Air (here) so I do not have to worry about managing the drain on the battery and I can enjoy all of the iPhone's bells and whistles without worrying about it.

If I am in a situation in which I need to manage the battery life (e.g., using the iPhone as a GPS device when I am hillwalking or entertaining myself on long-haul flights), I disable communication technology that I do not need (bluetooth is always off because I do not use it, WiFi and 3G are turned off when I am out of range, I fetch mail manually if I am in Wifi/3G range, etc.) and I keep the screen brightness turned down a little.

Taking these steps I have never run out of battery power on my 3GS when I have needed it....

I do wish someday Apple would offer a model with an extended battery.
 
Dandrews524 said:
just common sense things such as making sure the bluetooth is turned off if youre not using it, or not having your iphone fetch your mail every 15 minutes. the iphone battery isnt the best out there but you should only have to charge it once a day, after the first month of owing it that is. we all know when we get new phones its hard to put them down, so a charge is needed a little more often at first
Click to expand...

iPhone battery is not the best compared to what?
 
I used to own an iPhone 3G and I battled with the battery constantly, using every trick I could to make sure I made it through the day. Now with my iPhone 4, I don't even think about the battery. The only times it really drains down is if I'm doing some intensive gaming, like Infinity Blade, which I just make sure not to do on the go.
 
I find it hard to run down the battery myself. My phone is jailbroken with tweaks and I can use 3G, play apps, and text for 4-5 hours with screen at 75% brightness and still have battery for the rest of the day.

Tips: Turn push notifications off, screen brightness low, bluetooth off, turn cellular data off when not in use (kind of a pain).
 
Vox409 said:
I will be picking up an iphone in February, with my old cell phone [Dumbphone] I had a charger at home, a charger in the car and a charger at work. Will I need the same set up, or is there a stategy on preserving battery life?
Click to expand...

The iPhone 4 has phenomenal battery life. On an average day I'll end up with 55% battery after 10+ hours of normal usage. Now, keep in mind that normal for me likely isn't normal for the next guy, but here are some tips for better battery life:

1) Watch your multitasking. I'll say it now: the iPhone has a stupid multitasking UI. Every app that you close automatically goes into the multitasking dock. If you are/were playing big games or using big apps just make sure to close them out completely. That will save you a lot of battery life.

2) Don't automatically pull your email. There is a lot of research that says that email has become an inherently disruptive tool. Ideally, you shouldn't be checking your emails more than once every hour. So, why set the iPhone to pull email every 30 minutes? Better yet, unless you need your email pushed to you all the time, why not just set it to manually pull email - so that it'll only pull email when you open the app. This alone will save a lot of your battery life.

3) Don't OCD with your iPhone. A lot of people live in their phone. The key is to spend as much time as you need to in your phone and then go back to the real world. The best way to save your battery is to throttle your own usage. Realistically, those that run their battery out in half a day should probably ask themselves "am I using my device too often?"*

Otherwise, you should be fine! Fortunately, iOS doesn't support proprietary plugins like Flash, so browsing the web won't risk your battery; if you hit the rare ancient website that still uses straight Flash it simply won't load - thus preserving your battery life.

*Granted, some people need to use their phone as much as they do. Those people also often invest in things like car chargers, battery extender packs, and so on. I'm not really talking about those people; I'm talking about the people that excessively text, play games while driving, and other OCD usage cases.
 
I am still with more than 50% of battery charge and have been using the phone for 3 days (did some calls, browse some e-mails..). It haven't the best battery life but is pretty good.
 
I use the Richard Solo products...
http://www.richardsolo.com/iphone_and_ipod.html

I used the iPhone/iPod with cable with my original iPhone for a couple years. I still have great battery life on that 3 year old phone as I kept it plugged into this battery charger (kept it in my work bag during the day).

I now have the bigger one -- white plastic 5000mah -- for my iPhone 4 and soon to be iPad 2. It goes on sale every couple of months and I got it for $35-$40. It has 2 USB ports so I can charge 2 devices. 1 is a higher output port so it will also charge an iPad - I believe 5000mah will do a 50% recharge of an iPad.

With my iPhone 4, I do the same thing. When I am at work for 8 hours, the phone is connected to the charger and sits in my work bag. Thaty way it is not depleting the internal iPhone battery and using up one of its limited # of cycles. On weekends when I am out and about, I don't use it. My kids like to use these when we are on long car drives or airplane trips. They never run out of power for iPods.

Using these back-up batteries with your iPhone if it is sitting around for large periods of time will make the internal battery last longer.
 
I just got back to the iPhone world after using an EVO for 6 months. My days start at 6am and end at 9pm. I had to charge the EVO everyday at 2pm. With the iPhone 4, I get through the day without charging and still have 40% remaining. The iPhone is hands down great with battery life.
 
Just got one of these for a long flight I will be taking. Have been using it and it is awesome. Did a lot of research first, and totally happy. As well, if you buy now, they are giving an iphone 4 charging case (I was a bit too late unfortunately) as a bonus.

http://www.newtrent.com/product-p/imp1000.htm

This one here is a fantastic product (I have the 3GS version, waiting till the next phone comes out to upgrade):

http://www.mophie.com/mophie-juice-pack-plus-iPhone-4-battery-case-p/1160_jpplp4.htm

I also have a car charger (its actually a usb that plugs into my car stereo) and when at work and out and about, I carry a usb cable and a plug, just in case I have down time (sometimes hours) and I want to watch movies, play games, etc.

Enjoy!
 
Wowzera said:
Yep. Usage time of this charge is 1 hour and some minutes 🙂
I just didn't use my iPhone for entertainment. 😀
Maybe that's the trick for a longer battery life.
Click to expand...

So if you don't use it much the battery doesn't run down? That's just crazy enough to work. 😀
 
darngooddesign said:
So if you don't use it much the battery doesn't run down? That's just crazy enough to work. 😀
Click to expand...

Hahaha. Yes but no. If you use games, lot of programs, etc you cant expect that your battery lasts longer than 1 day with the current capacity.
One thing that made by battery last longer was disable the Mail app from get new messages automatically.
 
I must say, I have experienced battery life to be really random sometimes... I always keep the same settings on my iPhone:
- brightness never changes - bluetooth is always off - cellular data/3G is always on - mail checks every 15 minutes - ...
The result: sometimes my iPhone4 will do 1,5 days, other times it will do 3 days. And sometimes... it will do even more!
Last week I got up to 5 days and 14 hours! Same settings. I had 17% battery life left at that moment. That was a good week.
After the next charge I was hoping to see this happening again, but it got to 2 days.
SO IMO, there's no way I can estimate how long the battery will last after each charge.

But, however way you look at it, the iPhone's battery is really great. It 'averages' between 2 and 4 days for me.

But yeah, as mentioned before: watch your settings. If you don't need a certain function to be running, disable it.
 
X2thaP said:
I must say, I have experienced battery life to be really random sometimes... I always keep the same settings on my iPhone:
- brightness never changes - bluetooth is always off - cellular data/3G is always on - mail checks every 15 minutes - ...
The result: sometimes my iPhone4 will do 1,5 days, other times it will do 3 days. And sometimes... it will do even more!
Last week I got up to 5 days and 14 hours! Same settings. I had 17% battery life left at that moment. That was a good week.
After the next charge I was hoping to see this happening again, but it got to 2 days.
SO IMO, there's no way I can estimate how long the battery will last after each charge.

But, however way you look at it, the iPhone's battery is really great. It 'averages' between 2 and 4 days for me.

But yeah, as mentioned before: watch your settings. If you don't need a certain function to be running, disable it.
Click to expand...

I think the battery life depends a lot of the area you're. If you are in a place with constantly good signal your battery will last longer. But if you are in parks, metros and any other place with low signal or none it will use more battery.
 
Just got one of these for a long flight I will be taking. Have been using it and it is awesome. Did a lot of research first, and totally happy. As well, if you buy now, they are giving an iphone 4 charging case (I was a bit too late unfortunately) as a bonus.

http://www.newtrent.com/product-p/imp1000.htm

This one here is a fantastic product (I have the 3GS version, waiting till the next phone comes out to upgrade):

http://www.mophie.com/mophie-juice-pack-plus-iPhone-4-battery-case-p/1160_jpplp4.htm

I also have a car charger (its actually a usb that plugs into my car stereo) and when at work and out and about, I carry a usb cable and a plug, just in case I have down time (sometimes hours) and I want to watch movies, play games, etc.

Enjoy!
 
milani said:
1) Watch your multitasking. I'll say it now: the iPhone has a stupid multitasking UI. Every app that you close automatically goes into the multitasking dock. If you are/were playing big games or using big apps just make sure to close them out completely. That will save you a lot of battery life.
Click to expand...

No, that is not how it works. The "multitasking dock" is really just a "recently used apps dock." Just because an app appears there doesn't mean it is consuming processing power or battery. There is no need to manually close apps from there in order to conserve resources. The OS handles it intelligently.
 
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