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Verizon Iphone - Poor battery life?

Z

zenit

macrumors member
Original poster
Sep 2, 2010
50
0
I've had the iphone since monday now and since the first day I've noticed rather poor battery life (compared to my older Fascinate that it is replacing).

For example today over normal days of use I am down to 25%, which is frankly very poor. I normally was down to 50-60% over similar amount of time on the Fascinate.

My usage includes some browsing, SMSing, about 6 google chat messages over eBuddy, and about a bit of talk time over the phone. Screen brightness is set much dimmer than my older Fascinate.

Is this kind of battery drain normal for iPhones?

Also, the phone gets pretty hot on the right side, especially on the metal bit after 5-10 minutes of use. Is that normal as well?
 

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Give it a bit. It's most likely not accurate. You'll probably sit around >5% for quite a while before it actually dies.

It's not uncommon for batteries to be a bit off on their reporting at first. They tend to balance out in a week or two due to the sync becoming more accurate. Try letting it run down as much as possible before charging it, and then charge it completely before taking it off. That tends to help.

Sort of what this article gets at:
http://www.apple.com/batteries/
http://www.apple.com/batteries/iphone.html

Kind of gives you a rundown of everything.

Use iPhone Regularly

For proper maintenance of a lithium-based battery, it’s important to keep the electrons in it moving occasionally. Be sure to go through at least one charge cycle per month (charging the battery to 100% and then completely running it down).
Click to expand...

By charging it completely down, and then back to 100% it keeps it in sync with what truly is 100% and 0% as far as detection by the phone.
 
zenit said:
I've had the iphone since monday now and since the first day I've noticed rather poor battery life (compared to my older Fascinate that it is replacing).

For example today over normal days of use I am down to 25%, which is frankly very poor. I normally was down to 50-60% over similar amount of time on the Fascinate.

My usage includes some browsing, SMSing, about 6 google chat messages over eBuddy, and about a bit of talk time over the phone. Screen brightness is set much dimmer than my older Fascinate.

Is this kind of battery drain normal for iPhones?

Also, the phone gets pretty hot on the right side, especially on the metal bit after 5-10 minutes of use. Is that normal as well?
Click to expand...

Depends on what you're doing. Based on what you have described it sounds like it's draining awfully fast. My screenshot is from just now - I used my phone to make a few calls (no more than 10 minutes of talk time), and used Reeder to read and download about 300 news stories (with one picture each) - decent amount of data there. And I also browsed a fair bit today.

Make sure WiFi is off if you're not using it. Bluetooth appears to be off so that shouldn't be your issue. Also I have my phone set to fetch manually and just push. Having it fetch every 15 minutes or whatever is definitely a waste of battery life. It's also new and perhaps not "broken in" yet (although I'm not sure if I believe in battery break-in, in fact I'm inclined to say it's a myth). You might also be in an area with poor signal strength. CDMA is a power hog and especially in areas with poor signal strength, it can absolutely destroy batteries.

What I would say is a possible cause is that you haven't discharged and recharged your battery fully according to Apple's instructions yet. This will allow the battery to actually calibrate itself and determine its charge capacity (and therefore charge level) accurately: http://www.apple.com/batteries/iphone.html

byRbk.png
 
Mine is having fantastic battery life! I had moderate use and only used 20%. Coming from a Droid Incredible that's great.
 
My usage numbers almost match yours, and I'm at 48%. Mine is 5 months old, battery life gets better, fully cycle it once a month and use battery saving tips to maximize each charge.

5432606435_a52dbac1cb.jpg
 
I completely second the above statement about using your battery completely and then charging it to 100%. I do this with all my electronics and it really helps battery life in general.

Mine's on a fairly exact 24 hour cycle right now. It is done charging at 100% at close to 4 am. Then I go a through the night and day with out plugging it in. I didn't notice how long the battery takes to charge, mainly because I was loading iTunes so I don't know when it hit 100% exactly.

Considering I'm playing with it a LOT because it is new, I'm honestly impressed with that battery life.

If you honestly feel it is draining faster than it should, try killing some of the programs running in the background. Click the home button twice and it will show you the running apps. Hold one for a moment and little minus badges appear and you can kill them all. It will not affect the app when you need to use it next.
 
drj400m said:
Mine is having fantastic battery life! I had moderate use and only used 20%. Coming from a Droid Incredible that's great.
Click to expand...

I know how you feel! I had the incredible before picking my Ip4 up! Im glad im back with ios ugh so amazing although I do miss my 3gs but the ret. display is sexyness
 
Just to clarify a bit on my settings - I've had wifi off, push enabled on email and eBuddy only (disabling push email and chat is simply not an option for me, I might as well go back to a dumbphone then). Brightness at about 30% with autodimming on. I keep my background apps very tidy, just had phone, browser, settings, messages running in the background most of the day.

I just watched a 8 minute youtube video and battery dropped further 6%.

I will now try to drain it completely and charge it overnight to see where I end up.

Does iOS have a battery diagnostics mode to see which bits are taking drawing most juice?
 
My new iPhone drops a little lower then my bb too. But it is true with CDMA if searching for signal it will drain the battery mine has done this before at work with my old bb
 
After yet another day and full drain/charge cycle the battery hasn't done any better. I am now at 2h 3m use, 12h standby, and the battery is at 50%.

This is worse than battery life i experienced on my HTC incredible.

To make the matters worse, while using today in my work building I found that the cell/data reception is absolutely terrible. 3g works only if I am close to the windows in the building and speed tests show 800-1000ms pings. The upload speeds hover around .02 and .08 mbps, download around .6 mbps. And to add insult to injury I had 3 dropped calls throughout the day and people complained that I sounded "broken up". This is probably the first time ever i've experienced a dropped call.

I wonder if the battery drain is due to poor signal in my building. What is weird is that I have never experienced this on any of my other phones. On my fascinate and HTC incredible before, I've never lost 3G connection or had a dropped call.

Updating PRL with *228 didnt help at all.

I am afraid i'm going to have to send this phone back, which kind of sucks, because i really like it otherwise.
 
I find it to be a silly numbers game at times. theres times where my iphone lasts me over two days and I look at my usage and it isnt as much as I hoped. But in the end it lasted 2.5 days, so who cares?

Plus, I dont think android has a real usage stat. I looked at a friends and it only seemed to show the general time its been on, but not the time its actually been in use. (which is far more important) I could be wrong though.
 
This is a picture of my battery life. My iPhone was always turned off at night. It lasted me almost 4 days of using it.

photo4c.png


It seems like you may have a bad battery. I would get that replaced. I use my phone just about the same way you do, if not more, because I play a bunch of games. You should be getting a lot more hours than that. Also what you can try is to restore your phone. There could be an application that's eating a way at your battery and you don't even know.
 
Give it some time and see if it improves. Right now, on my 3GS: 6 hours 35 minutes usage, 1 Day 21 Hours Standby .... 9% left.
 
xAnthony said:
This is a picture of my battery life. My iPhone was always turned off at night. It lasted me almost 4 days of using it.

It seems like you may have a bad battery. I would get that replaced. I use my phone just about the same way you do, if not more, because I play a bunch of games. You should be getting a lot more hours than that. Also what you can try is to restore your phone. There could be an application that's eating a way at your battery and you don't even know.
Click to expand...

Anthony,

You are comparing Apples and Oranges. Your Rogers iPhone is a GSM iPhone. zenit is on Verizon.

FACT: CDMA technology requires more power than GSM technology, particularly in standby. The difference is quite large in standby. CDMA maintains a constant connection with the tower. GSM just "checks in" every once in awhile.

zenit,

Are you leaving apps running in the background? Certain apps will drain your battery VERY quickly. Apple's included apps are very battery friendly (when left running in the background). 3rd party ones are notorious for running down the battery when they are running in the multitasking tray. Particularly some games. I recently installed 'Words With Friends' and that sucker REALLY eats the battery if I leave it running in the background.

To see what apps you have running in the multitasking tray, double click the home button. At the bottom you will see all of the apps that are still open. To close the apps, hold your finger on one of the icons in the tray until they start to wiggle. Then touch the minus symbol to close out the apps that you want to close. Press the home button to stop the wiggle.

Unfortunately, the addition of multitasking to the iPhone resulted in iPhone owners needing to manually monitor the apps that are running. I wish Apple would just include a setting to turn multitasking off for those that don't want to use it.

Mark
 
^ Wow thanks for that, I couldn't figure out how to close my apps and now I know. Also I thought having your phone connected to wifi saved battery since it wouldn't be constantly looking for a signal? Not true?
 
Mark Booth said:
Anthony,

You are comparing Apples and Oranges. Your Rogers iPhone is a GSM iPhone. zenit is on Verizon.

FACT: CDMA technology requires more power than GSM technology, particularly in standby. The difference is quite large in standby. CDMA maintains a constant connection with the tower. GSM just "checks in" every once in awhile.
Click to expand...

It shouldn't, but when I see people say "FACT" and then write something that's not fact, it bothers me.

So, just to set the record straight, everything that you said about CDMA is incorrect.

Have a nice day.
 
I also experienced poor battery life on my AT&T iPhone 4 in the beginning, but it quickly changed and I was getting a full day and having about 30% remaining, after heavy usage during the day.

Just a little tip of my own: don't use the battery percentage indicator. It's not really a battery saving tip, but I used to watch my battery dwindle, and be obsessed with what percent it was at. I turned it off in December sometime, and honestly, my battery icon doesn't seem to be falling anywhere near as fast as when I knew the "actual" percent it was at.

EDIT: Only activated my Verizon iPhone yesterday, so can't really say much for it's battery right now, but it's been off the charger since about 11AM, and it still seems full (after some moderate usage).
 
drj400m said:
Mine is having fantastic battery life! I had moderate use and only used 20%. Coming from a Droid Incredible that's great.
Click to expand...

Yes, just like a laptop, the display consumes the most from the battery. Therefore the iPhones small 3.5" display will allow longer battery life.

That said, since I have a car charger, I really enjoy a spacious 4.3" screen like the one on my Droid X. Less scrolling and more viewing space.

It's all in what is best for you.

If you'd like even longer iPhone Battery life, get a GSM Model from AT&T. I have both, and my GSM iP4 gets about 25% more life than my CDMA iPhone 4.
 
Lots of misinformation in this thread.

Did you list your email account anywhere? What accounts you have and how often they are polling are important. This goes for your contacts and notes as well.
 
zenio said:
Yes, just like a laptop, the display consumes the most from the battery. Therefore the iPhones small 3.5" display will allow longer battery life.

That said, since I have a car charger, I really enjoy a spacious 4.3" screen like the one on my Droid X. Less scrolling and more viewing space.

It's all in what is best for you.

If you'd like even longer iPhone Battery life, get a GSM Model from AT&T. I have both, and my GSM iP4 gets about 25% more life than my CDMA iPhone 4.
Click to expand...

For CDMA, the power amp consumes the most power. You can watch 10 hours of video but only talk for 5 hours. Display is 2nd most though.
 
The CDMA iPhone hasn't been out nearly long enough for anyone's battery to be properly conditioned. Give it a week and see how it does. I bet it gets a bit better.
 
Another big factor here is that people tend to use new gadgets a lot when they first get them.

Everything gets tried out, and probably repeatedly.

The usage patterns are skewed and biased all to heck.

Then, after the user settles into more, uh, sane usage patterns, then the battery life will seem better.

Plus, as others note, the battery will be more conditioned and the prediction of battery life gets better as well.
 
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