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To all the 3G battery complainers.....

I think turning off WiFi is a little more acceptable as hot spots are (for most) not as readily available. I think turning off 3G for those who are in predominantly 3G coverage area and only turning it on when you need it is a bit rediculous. Part of the point of a device like this is "quick access" with efficient work flow to capture and send data. Stopping to turn faster data on would simply be sand in the vaseline.

I haven't had the phone long enough to determine if battery life is too short for me, but if it is I'll simply buy a dock to conveniently drop it into each evening vs watching the battery meter and charing it ever 4 days (+ or -) like I did with my old iPhone.
 
tomjleeds said:
3G is a replacement for GSM, not a replacement for GPRS/EDGE. It does both voice calls and data, so yes you will benefit from 3G for voice calls.

The biggest battery drains are probably push and GPS.
Click to expand...
What exactly does push do?? If I don't have MobileMe or a email provider that offers a push option should I take it off?? What would a normal person use Push for?? Sorry... I'm on a roll for noob questions lately.
 
I think I agree regarding push being a particularly potent battery drainer. I refuse to disable 3G unless I'm in a 3G-poor area where I know EDGE/GSM support is stronger (i.e. in my apartment). I also refuse to turn Wi-Fi or GPS/LBS off because, as an earlier post points out, taking a few extra steps to activate those functions disrupts the streamlined workflow that is the beauty of the iPhone UI.

I just returned from a 1h45m drive where I left 3G active, set my MobileMe to check email every 15 minutes ("Fetch"), and left the iPod running over the car system using the headphone port for about 1 hour of the drive (with email checking and downloading every 15 minutes in the background); I then activated Pandora for the last half hour of the drive. Screen was set to turn off after the 1 minute interval. I also had Bluetooth active and connected to my Contour surfacesoundcompact BT speakerphone. I made and received phone calls for about 10 minutes for the whole drive. Prior to leaving, I had used the device for approximately 10-15 minutes over Wi-Fi and left it in Standby. My battery had remained fairly steady somewhere between 95-100% during iPod playback for the 1 hour and dropped to 85-90% after the Pandora streaming. In my rough guessing, it seems that these processes drained the battery by approximately 15%, which doesn't seem that bad compared to my iPhone 2G.

Tomorrow is my first day back to work; I'm going to start running some real-world tests, but I think it's safe to assume that I will leave Push disabled and instead allow for Mail.app to fetch my email every 15 minutes.
 
tomjleeds said:
3G is a replacement for GSM, not a replacement for GPRS/EDGE. It does both voice calls and data, so yes you will benefit from 3G for voice calls.

The biggest battery drains are probably push and GPS.
Click to expand...

Push drains the battery way way less than actually having to hit the data to check your email every 15 min or so. This is my experience from other PDA type of phones that used push with Exchange.
 
People, People.

This is dejavu from a year ago. The iphone's batteries need several good cycles before they can give good numbers. I bought an iphone last year and went thru all the headaches with terrible battery life, then I realized two weeks into my iphone that the battery life was great.

I am not sure why this is, but trust me, give it a few more cycles.

eyephone
 
didn't the old iPhone have this problem. I remember the old phon lasting only 12 hours. I thought my battery was shot. But it got better and better. Now it last 4 days.

Remember a couple things. 3g is a battery drainer so continuos use on it will drain. Think of it as continuous wifi. But what makes it worse is that 3g is not everywhere so if your bars are low then it will be try harder and your battery will die. Take any phone, to a no cverage area and see your battery die.

Just be rash and logical and understand before openi g your mouth
 
goodcow said:
But you're wrong, this could be solved, partially, if AT&T (or Apple pressured them to) allowed an EDGE/200 SMS plan for 3G iPhones with the old pricing.

Battery life would be the same as first-gen, and they wouldn't be price gouging.
Click to expand...

at&t is subsidizing the 200 bucks of the phone for you, if you want to pay full price for a 3g iphone, then it would seem fair on there side to offer the onld 20$ data plan. otherwise, why should they bother giving you such a deal?
 
michaelmaxwell2 said:
Awww you can never make people happy. This was the main reason why apple did not create 3g because it sucks battery and it does not effectively use the battery. But most of us said to hell with that we want 3g so they created it. Its not their fault that they simply could not make the battery stretch to 6 billion hours. And we would complain if the battery was bigger and we would have a huge brick for a phone. Just get over it and shut off the 3g when not in use.
Click to expand...

+1
 
Dammit Cubs said:
didn't the old iPhone have this problem. I remember the old phon lasting only 12 hours. I thought my battery was shot. But it got better and better. Now it last 4 days.

Remember a couple things. 3g is a battery drainer so continuos use on it will drain. Think of it as continuous wifi. But what makes it worse is that 3g is not everywhere so if your bars are low then it will be try harder and your battery will die. Take any phone, to a no cverage area and see your battery die.

Just be rash and logical and understand before openi g your mouth
Click to expand...

Right. People just need to be smart with their phones and their battery life will be fine. If you aren't playing the iPod all day, roaming around on 3G all day, or calling people all day, your phone will drain as every other cell phone on the market
 
goodcow said:
I didn't pay $300 for a phone with a $75 monthly plan to micromanage and babysit it like this. The battery life is garbage. Period. I may return the phone as a result and go back to Verizon, who I didn't even want to switch from in the first place, because AT&T sucks compared to Verizon.

I LOVE this phone. I HATE this battery.

Apple should update the firmware to dynamically switch between EDGE and 3G based on bandwidth need.

What's the point of a 3G phone if I have to keep it off to save battery? Let me buy a $20 EDGE with 200 SMS plan then instead. Oh wait, I can't, because AT&T is a horrible company.
Click to expand...

Well bye.
 
View said:
It's a hassle to have to go to settings and turn it on/off.. Seems like someone at apple would be smart enough to write a program to auto manage this!
Click to expand...


Nikhil72 said:
I think I agree regarding push being a particularly potent battery drainer. I refuse to disable 3G unless I'm in a 3G-poor area where I know EDGE/GSM support is stronger (i.e. in my apartment). I also refuse to turn Wi-Fi or GPS/LBS off because, as an earlier post points out, taking a few extra steps to activate those functions disrupts the streamlined workflow that is the beauty of the iPhone UI.
Click to expand...

Isn't this just laziness.... i mean disrupt the steamlined workflow!!! A whole two or three seconds come on!
 
The other thing we need to realize, is that we are not paying the increased data charges FOR "3G." It's not like 3G costs more to use, phones two years old that werent even considered 'smartphones' were using 3G.

We are paying increased prices because, At&t is lining us up with the rest of their data prices. We payed a subsidized price for the phone so now we are paying NORMAL data charges (as in what everyother blackberry user with At&t pays). The first iPhone was not subsidized in price so in order to entice users to pay the full amount being that it was the first iPhone At&t lowered the data charges and included 200 SMS to make it more appealing.

Now they very well know people will buy the iphone no matter what, they increased the data charges to what they normally charge, along with regular SMS plans which have been the same for a while now.

So whats my point...we are not paying MORE for 3G as some of you have been stating. So to think you are and then think you have a non-competent battery does not make sense.

Im sure some people will figure out that they can use the iPhone 3G with the older iPhone plans....im sure it will happen. Its bound to....I would assume the 3G would work on a 3G iPhone with an 2G iPhone plan.
 
thaprofessor33 said:
Here is to everyone complaining...Some people expect way too much all of the time. The iPhone still has better battery life than other smart-phones. Stop all of your bitc****

http://www.pcworld.com/article/148348/3g_iphones_mediocre_battery_life_still_beats_rivals.html
Click to expand...

No, it doesn't. I have a smartphone sitting right next to the iPhone and they're almost identical in this aspect. They look identical when I check them, it's not like there's an accurate meter on the iPhone, but I figured I'd be kind. In addition, the WinMo phone and iPhone both look sick when compared to my Blackberry. That thing can run forever on a charge. More to the point, why do people need 3G all the time? Because it's a pain in the ass to have to click once, twice, there's the setting...on/off. Who's going to do that? Geeks, of course, but the whole point of the phone was to appeal to more than a relative handful of geeks, was it not? I like the iPhone, sure, but that doesn't mean I'm going to lie to myself about the battery life or tell myself that it's as good as the least common denominator, why bother improving it?
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 2_0 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.1 Mobile/5A345 Safari/525.20)

anim8or said:
View said:
It's a hassle to have to go to settings and turn it on/off.. Seems like someone at apple would be smart enough to write a program to auto manage this!
Click to expand...


Nikhil72 said:
I think I agree regarding push being a particularly potent battery drainer. I refuse to disable 3G unless I'm in a 3G-poor area where I know EDGE/GSM support is stronger (i.e. in my apartment). I also refuse to turn Wi-Fi or GPS/LBS off because, as an earlier post points out, taking a few extra steps to activate those functions disrupts the streamlined workflow that is the beauty of the iPhone UI.
Click to expand...

Isn't this just laziness.... i mean disrupt the steamlined workflow!!! A whole two or three seconds come on!
Click to expand...

it's not laziness. These interfaces are designed with smooth workflows in mind. A major point of a device like iPhone is to simplify, not overly complicate things.

And a random sidenote...are you capable of commenting on things in a mature manner? Geez.
 
ki2594 said:
are me AND my dad just really lucky? our batteries are greattt!
Click to expand...

What do typical days look like for you usage wise?
Hours of talk time?
minutes surfing?
ipod minutes?
video watching?
% of edge / wifi / 3g connection
GPS usage?
push email;?
how often does it check you accounts?

THX
 
digitalfx said:
First, 3G is hardly up to date technology, My HTC Titan had it 2 years ago, and I can keep 3G active, talk and surf all day and have battery left at 10pm. This is at least 2X the battery life of the iphone.
Click to expand...

Can you explain this given the following specs:

iphonetitan.jpg
 
goodcow said:
I didn't pay $300 for a phone with a $75 monthly plan to micromanage and babysit it like this. The battery life is garbage. Period. I may return the phone as a result and go back to Verizon, who I didn't even want to switch from in the first place, because AT&T sucks compared to Verizon.

I LOVE this phone. I HATE this battery.

Apple should update the firmware to dynamically switch between EDGE and 3G based on bandwidth need.

What's the point of a 3G phone if I have to keep it off to save battery? Let me buy a $20 EDGE with 200 SMS plan then instead. Oh wait, I can't, because AT&T is a horrible company.
Click to expand...

WHO CARES!! Why do everyone whines about every little thing. WE DO NOT LIVE IN A PERFECT WORLD PEOPLE AND SPEND WAY TOO MUCH TIME WORRYING ABOUT THE DUMBEST THINGS. Have you heard of maybe charging your phone? Maybe while you are in the car or at your desk if you are the concerned with battery life? If you look at the tests that were posted today out of all the 3G phones, THE IPHONE HAD THE BEST BATTERY LIFE. SO GET OVER IT ALREADY AND JUST ENJOY THE PHONE. AGAIN, IT IS JUST A FREAKING MOBILE PHONE. NOT A $30,000 CAR
 
Macsterling said:
WHO CARES!! Why do everyone whines about every little thing. WE DO NOT LIVE IN A PERFECT WORLD PEOPLE AND SPEND WAY TOO MUCH TIME WORRYING ABOUT THE DUMBEST THINGS. Have you heard of maybe charging your phone? Maybe while you are in the car or at your desk if you are the concerned with battery life? If you look at the tests that were posted today out of all the 3G phones, THE IPHONE HAD THE BEST BATTERY LIFE. SO GET OVER IT ALREADY AND JUST ENJOY THE PHONE. AGAIN, IT IS JUST A FREAKING MOBILE PHONE. NOT A $30,000 CAR
Click to expand...

I have to agree with you. If the iPhone is so horrible, get a different phone. No one forced anyone to buy the iPhone 3G. I feel the battery life was a known issue at launch; turning 3G on/off a couple of times a day in order to conserve your battery isn't a lot to do.
 
Macsterling said:
WHO CARES!! Why do everyone whines about every little thing. WE DO NOT LIVE IN A PERFECT WORLD PEOPLE AND SPEND WAY TOO MUCH TIME WORRYING ABOUT THE DUMBEST THINGS. Have you heard of maybe charging your phone? Maybe while you are in the car or at your desk if you are the concerned with battery life? If you look at the tests that were posted today out of all the 3G phones, THE IPHONE HAD THE BEST BATTERY LIFE. SO GET OVER IT ALREADY AND JUST ENJOY THE PHONE. AGAIN, IT IS JUST A FREAKING MOBILE PHONE. NOT A $30,000 CAR
Click to expand...

+1 I have lived with the fact that the phone dies, now I walk around with a irecharger.
 
I'm confused with the 3G turn off idea.
I thought 3G used less power than 2G in standby, just more when in use, as such turning it off when not in use then back on when in use would actually make your battery life worse.
I take it I must be wrong in this assumption?
Does 3G drain battery more than 2G when in stanby?
More importantly (for me at least) 3G surely does not drain battery life if you have it on yet you are not in a 3G area? Right?
 
You guys are nuts. I'm still on my same charge from when I left for work 12 hours ago. Everything turned on. Relax people.
 
this should not have been made into a thread.

anyways, I will add in...

I have not done extensive battery tests but with modest 3G browsing, GPS, texting, etc., I've gotten about 2 days of battery life, with a lot of standby time. Nothing terrible, but I haven't been using it "that much".
 
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