Hey guys, when I'm at home, what will drain the battery faster on my iPhone while surfing the web: the 3g or wifi? Any info would be great. Thanks!
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
What drains battery faster?
- Thread starter mikethebigo
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Mad Mac Maniac
macrumors 601
Thanks, just what I needed to know. I guess I'll use it for browsing when I can but otherwise keep it off
I would add bluetooth to that list. when I am at home and I turn bt off I can clearly notice the battery draining less...
Hands down for me the battery x-factor is AT&T. This is why it is so hard to compare to other people.
I just moved 2 weeks ago. My previous home had full strength 3G indoors in my basement! I would get 2 days on a charge using Email fetch, some calls, some safari, some calendaring.
I move where my signal bounces between no service to 4 bars (there really is no method to the madness) and my battery lasts 1 day. My usage pattern is the same. I think the phone is simply spending too much time managing the AT&T network.
I just moved 2 weeks ago. My previous home had full strength 3G indoors in my basement! I would get 2 days on a charge using Email fetch, some calls, some safari, some calendaring.
I move where my signal bounces between no service to 4 bars (there really is no method to the madness) and my battery lasts 1 day. My usage pattern is the same. I think the phone is simply spending too much time managing the AT&T network.
You find push email to be the biggest drain, huh? What about push notifications? (I use beejive). I wonder if turning off all push features in a crunch would help. Do push notifications and push email still drain the battery when nothing is being pushed?
This is exactly what I'm dealing with. While at work, my service goes from "searching" to five bars and back with no movement at all. My battery life is pretty sad but I know this is the reason.
Since I'm always at work I hardly have the time to do a test during regular usage and steady service.
In short, AT&T is a joke.
seems so
in my five days of tests, it seems the push is the worst drainer. Turning that off, regardless of 2G or 3G, and the phones lasts 1.5 days AT LEAST with 6-8 hours of usage.
in my five days of tests, it seems the push is the worst drainer. Turning that off, regardless of 2G or 3G, and the phones lasts 1.5 days AT LEAST with 6-8 hours of usage.
Yes they do.
After about a month of owning my 3G I turned off Push permanently.
The battery improvements were clearly noticeable.
Speaking of this, I just went in and turned push off in Mail, Contacts, and Calendar but the notifications section remained on. Does turning push off disable notifications from apps as well?
Yes in fact, did you know that the "bars" concept has nothing to do with signal quality but instead is an indicator of the gain required to reach an acceptable SnR? Basically it means that the fewer bars you have the more power is being used by the radio. If 3G is on that means a lot more power drain.
This of course applies to every phone radio out there, it's just that 3G radios are kind of power hungry.
leaving the phone in edge, and keeping wifi on while in hot spots, and doing voice over edge network has help my battery feel like a regular phone. In NJ, i find if i need to travel long distances (like driving 40 miles to work) keeping the phone in edge gives me much better reliability, i have yet to drop a call on edge, 3g, is a whole nother battery draining monster 
I only use 3G when Edge is too slow and I just can't wait. Otherwise I'm on Edge all the time unless I'm on wi-fi.
I have not had Push turned on in the email section in 6 months.
BeeJive is pushing fine here though.