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What drains my iPhone4 battery so fast??

R

RealSkyDiver

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jun 15, 2010
570
167
When I leave it on standby for 8h I notice that it uses 40% of the battery even-though wifi and Bluetooth are off. How come? One time I left for 2-3h. Bluetooth and wifi on and even-though Bluetooth wasn't used (only gets through when a call comes in while I'm driving) and the internet just a little bit it used almost 50% by the time I was back. I'm pretty sure thats not normal.
I wonder if the battery doctor app will do any improvement to that...
 
If you are not using the turn off BT and WiFi... and the number one cause for my drain was notifications for so may apps... turn that or those off if possible. When I was at the Apple store the Genius there reset my iPhone and I turned off notification and since then the battery has improve by a little over double.

Now I do use notification but sparingly ...
 
Notification itself was turned on but it was turned off on all the apps so I'm pretty sure that didn't caused the drain. I'm not really sure what push does since it doesn't push the email to my mailbox the moment I receive it.
 
Have you calibrated your battery yet? let it drain until it shuts itself off then recharge to 100%. Let it rest plugged in @ 100% for an hour or so. Repeat. That should get your battery draining normally. If not you may have a defective battery if you have location based services and mail is set to manual.
 
I turn my phone on airplane mode when I sleep. No one needs to be waking me, if need be we have a house phone for that. When I do this it usually drains 1-3%. Not bad.
 
Pretty sure 3G with low signal is a battery killer if you have that enabled.

I read 3G has much higher transmission power at low signals compared to EDGE.

Turn off 3G when not in use, at least when I turned mine off my battery was soooo much better
 
Try setting the brightness lower than 50% with auto brightness ON. In darker surroundings, your screen will dim on its own and save your battery. And calibrating your battery once a month or so will help to keep your battery display accurate.
 
3G consumes more power than wifi even when you aren't doing anything so leave wifi on.


Alonzo84 said:
Try setting the brightness lower than 50% with auto brightness ON. In darker surroundings, your screen will dim on its own and save your battery...
Click to expand...

While you are correct, he is talking about standby, which is with the screen off.
 
There is also the possibility that a couple background apps are the culprit.

TuneIn and Trapster are two bad apps that I've run into so far. Pausing TuneIn while in the background will cause it to keep recording in the background. Trapster will keep using GPS in the background and the only way to get it to stop is to kill it.

Any app in the foreground will keep running as well, so if it eats at the CPU, it will continue to do so even when you turn the screen off.
 
I would suggest you try it with.

Location off
Wifi on
Mail push off and fetch set to manual
Kill all apps in the multitasking tray except for phone and mail.

Doing this yielded 1% drop over 8 hours for me.
 
darngooddesign said:
3G consumes more power than wifi even when you aren't doing anything so leave wifi on.




While you are correct, he is talking about standby, which is with the screen off.
Click to expand...

You're right, I guess I missed that part of the post. My battery only loses about 1% or so during 5-8 hours of standby. OP, I would have it looked at, you may have a defective battery.
 
Mine also only drops by a % or two overnight. This is with notifications on, bluetooth on, 3g on, wifi and locationservices off. I am leaning toward you have a bad battery.
I do wonder if you have any of the music streaming apps open, if they are active even if paused.
 
Alonzo84 said:
http://www.apple.com/batteries/iphone.html

It's burried at the bottom, but there are some other good tips for prolonging your battery life.
Click to expand...

I've already seen that page, and all it says (way at the bottom) is:

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...

It doesn't mention any of the other steps he included.

And FTR, I've never done that with any iPhone I've ever owned, and my battery life has been excellent.
 
Surely said:
I've already seen that page, and all it says (way at the bottom) is:



It doesn't mention any of the other steps he included.

And FTR, I've never done that with any iPhone I've ever owned, and my battery life has been excellent.
Click to expand...

The only step he really added was to let it rest plugged in. I'm guessing he got that idea from calibrating the MacBook batteries.
 
how has anyone not mentioned facetime? Facetime is the biggest battery killer of all. You are probably not realizing how little battery you have after a facetime call and then putting it to sleep with little battery.
 
BigOrangeSU said:
how has anyone not mentioned facetime? Facetime is the biggest battery killer of all. You are probably not realizing how little battery you have after a facetime call and then putting it to sleep with little battery.
Click to expand...

I started with 100% battery yesterday when I left for work. I browsed the net, watched some videos, listed to a podcast, took some calls, AND made 2 FaceTime calls for about 5-10 min each. I had 50 % battery by 8pm. The iPhone 4's battery is a beast.

In response to the OP, I only lose ~10% battery over night, and that's with wifi on, BT off
 
RealSkyDiver said:
Notification itself was turned on but it was turned off on all the apps so I'm pretty sure that didn't caused the drain. I'm not really sure what push does since it doesn't push the email to my mailbox the moment I receive it.
Click to expand...

I would turn it off all the way anyway. It might need to do some extra work even though no apps are actively using it.
 
I have a Samsung Travel charger with 100-240V ~ 50-60Hz 0.2A Input and 4.4V - 400mA Output. How fast will that charge?
Even after turning everything off except a simple alarm clock app it still drained 40% after 7h on standby and I can't imagine this one app draining that much so I'm gonna do a full cycle charge.
 
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