The battery: how to make the most of it?

[GuillaumeB]

Hi all,

So I got my iphone a week and a half ago and i am wondering how to make the most of the battery life.
I have optimized the settings and turn off the wifi when i'm not home and haven't set it too permanently search for wifi spots. However, when I am at work i do set the phone to check my emails on a hourly basis.

Now I have read that if your battery is completely dead you would need to send it to Apple and get another one for...$100. I dont know if this is still true. Also there is this video which explain how to change it yourself.

My battery lasts about 3 to 4 days and i'm honestly quite satisfied with that.

Now how can I get as much battery cycles as I can?

Sometimes I'm like "OK i'm not gonna sync my phone because it will also charge it and it might be more valuable to charge it when the battery is really low". Am I correct to believe that if you keep charging your battery(or plugging your phone) everyday, it will weaken the overall battery life?
I think I heard that to optimize your overall battery like you have to use it in full cycles.
What do you think?

 

[GoCubsGo]

I was not aware that if your battery is completely dead you must sent to apple for a new one. I drained my battery to a point where it shut off. Even when plugging it in I was unable to use it for 10 minutes at least while it at least got to about 1% battery life. The draining was completely intentional. Where'd you hear a completely dead (drained) battery required replacement?

As far as I understand the battery in the iPhone can be charged and recharged as often as you'd like. It doesn't need to only be charged when completely drained. I plug mine in every night. Some days I hardly use it others I use it down to at least 40%. Do a search on the iPhone battery on this board and someone actually explains it much better than I can.

As far as optimal settings. It sounds like you have done everything you can to optimize settings. I have my e-mail checked manually. I don't really need it to check every hour or less and I'm not using this for work so push mail is unnecessary for me. Either way, even checking e-mail every hour you can limit the amount of time it does that by limiting the amount of e-mail accounts you have on your phone. I saw someone with about 5 accounts. I asked why he didn't just forward 4 accounts to 1 to be able to check mail on one client...he didn't think of it before.

The other thing is I have the screen set to auto brightness or whatever that setting is.

 

[GuillaumeB]

What I meant is that when your battery is dead, and therefore cannot be charged anymore due to intensive use, then you would need to send the phone and pay like $100 to get a new one

 

[mrgreen4242]

The battery in the iPhone (and all the iPods) have a certain rated number charge cycles before they get down to a certain non-optimal percentage of their original capacity (I think it's around 60%, but I can't remember). That typically takes around 300 cycles.

A cycle is a charge from 0% of battery charge to 100% of battery charge. If you are at half battery and charge it until full you've used 1/2 of a charge cycle out of 300. So, waiting to charge the iPhone until it's completely drained doesn't help you any.

If you drain the iPhone fully every 3.5 days, on average, you're using 1 cycle every 3.5 days no matter how often you plug it in to your computer to charge. After 300 cycles your iPhone battery will be diminished to a usable, but less than ideal capacity. That will take 1050 days, or about 2 year and 10 months. You'll notice that it will slowly lose battery capacity over that time, though, and accelerating towards the end.

You'll get the same 3.5 days from it for the first, say, 150 cycles. Then you'll start to lose a little more and a little more until you're only getting 2 days, then 1... but that process, as I say, under your usage pattern will be around 2-3 years, and even after that you'll get another year or two of a full day between charges pretty easily.

By then, you'll either what a new iPhone with super high speed 4g WiMax, hyper-accurate GPS, 64gb of flash memory, a 1080p digital camcorder, and 720p 3.5" multitouch screen with simulated tactile button response, or will be able to pay someone ~$60-80 to replace the battery for you or buy the battery and install it yourself for ~$40 (likely with one that has more than the original capacity).

 

[redgaz26]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/3B48a Safari/419.3)

3 to 4 days?????? You must have a super iPhone. I have to charge mine every night!!!!!!!

 

[TurboSC]

yea you shouldn't use it with the worries about charging issues, by that time, your iPhone will be out of warranty and battery replacement kits will be readily available

Or yes, you'll wanna purchase an iPhone 3.0

 

[silbeej]

To be honest, i wouldn't fall for one of those DIY or cheap battery replacements, because they are not as high quality as the original parts, and they would probably void a warranty. I find that i can get about 3-6 days out of a full charge, but hardly ever go a full charge. I typically go between 1 and 3 days between charge after using it for 1-4 hours. At first i would say i don't get as much time out of the iPhone as i did my Treo, but i use the iPhone a lot more for there is a lot more stuff to play with.

 

[kdarling]

To be honest, i wouldn't fall for one of those DIY or cheap battery replacements, because they are not as high quality as the original parts, and they would probably void a warranty. ...

By the time it needs a battery, it's going to be long out of warranty anyway, for all those who didn't pay for an extension.

I quite often buy cheap battery replacements for my other devices. Love them. Takes about ten seconds to swap in. Sure beats paying $75 and losing use of the phone for three or four days. OTOH, the fact that you'll most likely get back someone else's refurb could be good or bad.