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The biggest battery hog on all iPhones

I

Iphone5preorder

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Sep 20, 2012
873
466
**warning** this may be obvious to some hardcore iPhone people. )

Since my first iPhone (3GS), I've had a theory that keeping you brightness on high all day will draw more battery than any other feature (equalizer enabled, Bluetooth, LTE, wifi enabled when not using wifi, and anything else you can think of). Obviously if you turn on airplane mode it lasts forever.


Now, I don't know it this is true, it's just my speculation, but it would be awesome to finally get the opinions of some crazy hardcore iphone guys because everyone I've shared this opinion with just says "maybe, hey, do you know when breaking bad starts?" :mad:

So what do you guys think? If you have two phones and turn brightness up all the way on one and down on the other, the one with the lower setting will last significantly longer. Thanks.
 
Iphone5preorder said:
**warning** this may be obvious to some hardcore iPhone people. )

Since my first iPhone (3GS), I've had a theory that keeping you brightness on high all day will draw more battery than any other feature (equalizer enabled, Bluetooth, LTE, wifi enabled when not using wifi, and anything else you can think of). Obviously if you turn on airplane mode it lasts forever.


Now, I don't know it this is true, it's just my speculation, but it would be awesome to finally get the opinions of some crazy hardcore iphone guys because everyone I've shared this opinion with just says "maybe, hey, do you know when breaking bad starts?" :mad:

So what do you guys think? If you have two phones and turn brightness up all the way on one and down on the other, the one with the lower setting will last significantly longer. Thanks.
Click to expand...

yes....also if I have two cars with full tanks of gas and drive one around all day and let one just idle all day the one that just idled all day will have more gas. Seriously your question is basic common since, higher settings of anything use more power:rolleyes:.
 
Merkyworks said:
yes....also if I have two cars with full tanks of gas and drive one around all day and let one just idle all day the one that just idled all day will have more gas. Seriously your question is basic common since, higher settings of anything use more power:rolleyes:.
Click to expand...

Hmmm. Maybe I jacked up the question.



If you were to change one thing on your phone to save battery, what would have the biggest impact in your opinion? Brightness? Wifi? Location services? Etc.
 
Having wifi on could drain your battery more if you were on the cusp of two open wifi networks with weak signals. But still, yes, obviously the battery is going to drain fastest with the brightness turned all the way up if you're using the screen.

It depends on how you're using the phone though. If you were going for a run with a GPS tracking app then the location services are going to eat up your battery more than the brightness.

Best practice is to keep your phone's brightness at the lowest setting you find comfortable or appealing.
 
Hard question to answer.

Having wifi on and not browing the internet will use less power than browsing. However the screen is the most power hungry.
 
Yesterday morning I switched off all of the spotlight options and got over 9 hours of usage which I'm pretty happy with.

I have location services on including frequent locations, background refresh is on for 3 apps, and I have quite a few notifications switched on.

Thus usage included steaming spotify on 3G for 2 hours and web browsing extensively through the day on 3G and wifi.
 

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Cool. Thanks for the opinions guys. I turned off wifi and location services. Gonna try this out.
 
brightness is very likely the biggest battery drain. also if you don't have a cell connection and your phone keeps searching for it, that will kill your battery in a couple of hours even if you're not using it at all.
 
I'd say turn on location services when you actually need it. You never know when you update a social status or look through an app, that app may be using location data.
 
So I guess the best question here is how much does screen brightness affect battery life? Obviously, the brighter the screen the more power it uses. But how much? If I get 10 hours of usage on 40% battery, how much can I expect on 80% battery? 8 hours? 9? 9.5?
 
The best way to tell would be to test yourself. Results will very anyways. I've always had my 4s at a bit below 50% brightness and I get some really good battery life, even on my 2 year old 4s.
 
NYY FaN said:
brightness is very likely the biggest battery drain. also if you don't have a cell connection and your phone keeps searching for it, that will kill your battery in a couple of hours even if you're not using it at all.
Click to expand...

Not true about brightness. The biggest draw is the power amps for the RF. This is why location services can be a problem. All those apps in the background sending location information to the towers. I say turn all the location off for everything but "find my phone". Then add back apps when you feel it is really necessary (like maps if you use it a lot).

Playing videos for 8 hours versus talk time of 3 hours tells you what the pareto is.
 
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