If you were like the 1 million+ (in 3 days!) who purchased the new iPhone 3GS, one of the biggest and noticeable upgrades you enjoyed was the increased processing speed and battery life. However, if you were like myself and millions of other 3GS users who just couldn’t justify the HUP (darn Rogers and their plans), then you probably settled with the OS 3.0 update.
I found some of the biggest consolation prizes in landscape texting and the spotlight / search function. But with the upgrade, I found my battery draining at almost double the rate. I used to be able to go at least 2 days with regular usage on a single charge. But since the upgrade, I’m finding my battery draining within 12 hours – even keeping it on mostly standby will last only about 24 hours.
Now Apple is usually pretty good with Customer Relations – their reps are polite, helpful and considerate (on the most part). But amid increased reports of poor battery life, it seems there are rumors of an Apple software that will monitor battery usage. If this is true, this little package will keep a log of your battery levels and the consumption each application/function consumes, thus helping Apple narrow the problem down.
A more practical guy, I dug around to see what I could find. Some users tried turning off notifications or wifi while otherwise turned off Push and chose to use Fetch for less frequently. (Desperate, I even turned my brightness down!) Clayton Lai from theAppleBlog suggests that Push Mail setting, may in fact be the culprit at hand and gives us several steps to try and fix the problem.
1) On the Home Screen, tap into Settings
2) Select Mail, Contacts, Calendars
3) Select Fetch New Data and turn off Push (This method turns off Push for all your mail accounts, while preserving Fetch)
4) Do a soft reset of your phone by holding down the Sleep button and the Home button simultaenously until the red slider prompts you to turn your phone off
Though this method has mixed reviews (some have even reported increased battery life, though this doesn’t make sense to me, with the increase in memory processing), some other things that are being suggested on this matter include:
1) Backing up and then reinstalling OS 3.0 (or try running it on factory settings for one day)
2) Doing a hard reset (same procedure as soft reset but keep holding until Apple logo comes on)
3) Draining battery fully and then charging it to full, all on stand-by. As of yet, I haven’t found a perfect “be all, end all” fix, but I’m open to ideas. If this continues, I’m clicking here. What about you? What are you experiencing with your iPhone and what information do you have on it?
Clayton Lai on Battery Saving Tips via [theAppleBlog]
Battery Logging via [iClarified]
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I noticed a slight decrease in battery on 3.0 but not much. I have my phone set to fetch every 15 minutes
Same here, 15 minutes is my fetch time.
I still am not sure either but perhaps a small decrease in battery. Hardly noticeable though.
I’ve definitely noticed decreased battery life since upgrading to OS3.0. I kept all my settings the same, too. I’m not running any Push based apps, and I’m set for fetching every 15 minutes. It’s frustrating, and I’m considering rolling back to 2.2.1. 3.0 offers little I didn’t already have via jailbreak apps anyways. At least until apple sorts this out.
Some apps seem to use the battery, even in standby. For instance, I was running Scramble, and put the phone in standby without exiting. A few hours later my battery was almost dead, where it should have been about 3/4 full.
I now exit back to the menu before putting the phone in standby.
I noticed it too, but I’m on exchange server…I don’t want it to fetch!
Tried the “drain the battery and recharge it” trick…seems better!
my iphone 3gs battery life i would say is equivelent to my 3G on 2.2.1 that i had for 1 year and recharged next to every day..
My battery lasts for about 10 – 12 hours now. I just figured it was because I was using a stereo Bluetooth headset
Stereo bluetooth headsets kill the iPhone battery’s! I have noticed this since I bought my first iPhone 2G and have been using stereo bluetooth headsets and the battery would only last a couple hours with music, then a couple with just normal use. Same goes for my 3G and stereo bluetooth. But its worth it! 😉
Drain battery -> recharge: This will do absolutely nothing for a lithium ion battery, other than waste a cycle.
There is only 1 type of reset using sleep/wake buttons http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1430… and to shorty please educate yourself prior to posting. For Calibrating your iPhone battery read bottom of link http://www.apple.com/batteries/iphone.html for those lazy ppl here
“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).”
Sorry to break it to you, but the only thing you might accomplish by a drain-recharge cycle is resetting where the device thinks the charge is at. It will do absolutely nothing as far as the ‘health’ of the battery is concerned. It will not make it perform better. It will not make it charge better. It will not make it last longer, per-charge, or in relation to its entire usable life. Like I said, the only thing you will do as far as the battery itself is concerned is waste a charge cycle, of which it only has so many before it starts to keel over. I suggest you try a little of that educatin’ on your own self about battery technology prior to posting. And, no, sorry, that does not include a trip to Apple’s website. Nice try at putting me in my place, though, heh. If only you actually knew what you were talking about… (Even a quick trip to wikipedia and their article on ‘lithium-ion battery’ will do you some good, if you can pay attention for the couple minutes it should take you to read that.)
Shorty just tell me who you work for oh that is right not Apple. I have worked for Apple for the past 3 years that would include the original release of the iPhone and no you would not be wasting a cycle it will calibrate your iPhone battery so it does not retain Memory. Of course you wouldn’t know this because your simple mind can’t grasp that, oh by the way I worked for ATT and then Cingular another cell phone company. So Shorty before you post your next reply just stop because you don’t stand a chance…. no chance in hell…
umm shorty is right…it does nothing to a lithium battery.
In a way, you are both right.
Discharging an Li-Ion battery completely does not necessarily improve battery life. However, doing this about once a month or once every 2 months will recalibrate the battery meter on the iPhone. So in a way, you could see what may seem like better battery life, but it is only “better” because the iPhone is now properly reading the charge of the battery.
If you discharge the battery frequently, as in multiple times per month, you will quickly destroy the iPhone battery. A Li-ion battery is not meant to be completely discharged frequently.
This is my rule of thumb, and it has served me well since the iPhone 2G.
Once a month, charge the battery to full and then drain it all the way. Charge the iPhone when it is on and when the charge reaches 100%, leave it charging for 3-4 more hours. After this, charge the iPhone at your convenience, because a healthy Li-Ion battery is a “moving” (keeping electrons moving) Li-Ion battery and do not drain it all the way again until the next month or two…atleast not intentionally.
I got about 5 hr of usage (mostly wifi since I didn’t put a SIM card in) and 1 day standby according to the iphone usage page, is it good or is it bad?
I end up charging every other day on OS 3.0 – standby time ends up being about 40 hours (overnight charging) and usage is around 4 hours – mixture of phone, internet on 3G, text messages etc. My phone is around 10 months old at this time.
I have not noticed an improvement with battery life on 3GS FW3.0, seems the same as iPhone 3G (Doing the same daily stuff too)
Having issues with iPhone battery life? Check what apple released (Apple to Provide iPhone Battery Life Logging) Check out the forums for the app and comment on your battery life… https://www.iphoneincanada.ca/forums/showthread.php?t=5708
I have a new 3Gs and the battery life is definitely a lot shorter than my old 2G. The 2G would go for a few days between charges, but the 3Gs won’t even do a day, even after turning off most features. Bugger.
Scastill, I am really sorry to break this news to you but Shorty is perfectly right. Had you done your research, you would have found that Li-based batteries do not ‘like’ deep discharge cycles as these would contribute to shortening the life of the battery. Also, these types of batteries do not have a memory effect. If you worked for Apple, ATT or Cingular, you were probably one of those CSRs who misinformed the clients. As Shorty suggested to you, please do some reading before arrogantly posting wrong information. You could begin with this great resource called the ‘Internet’…
You guys are both right, letting the battery run down does lose one of it’s many cycles. However, for a lithium-ion battery it’s recommended that you let the battery drain at least once a month to let it recalibrate. Alot of companies that use lithium ion batteries let their devices fully drain out of battery each time they use it so they can get the most out of a complete charge
Rawbear,
If you’ve moved from the 2G iPhone to 3G or 3GS you should experience shorter battery life. That is normal.
Yup. The 2G battery life is pretty phenomenal, but given there’s no 3G to kill the battery, that’s expected. It can last on standby forever!
Battery life is short even if I disable 3G.
Since you’re so lazy…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-ion_battery
This post goes to Shorty and his 2 boyfriends (MichaelS and Tony). Listen you 3 Stooges let me make this simple for your tiny little brains to comprehend. Did any of you dirty hillbillies help in creating the iPhone…..NO! I thoughtso if the company posts on their website to calibrate the battery then they must be wrong. What great things have you 3 goofs accomplished aside from bringing me great laughter from watching your show on tv… let’s just agree to disagree because I feel like I’m trying to train a chimp(s) finite… 😉
I love how you change your tune after you’re proven to be ignorant, and start chirping the things that we used to prove you ignorant. Classic.
This is off topic but has any encounter this problem when the iphone 3GS is connected to itune and I got this message.
“An iPhone has been detected, but it could not be identified properly. Please disconnect and reconnected the iPhone, then try again.”
Did that and still got the same message. Reboot both the PC and the Iphone but still the same. Anyone knows what the problem and solution is?
Thank you so much !
Try repairing your iTunes install by running the installer again.
Scastill,
Why do you have to be so rude? Some people are stubborn and will never believe anything but what they decide. Don’t get offended by it. To each their own. As far as battery discharge, who really gives a *#!!. Either you do it or you don’t. Some think it helps and others don’t. There is so much more to worry about and why waste your energy and time to try and prove them wrong. Peace.
And some of us believe what the scientists that work in the battery field actually tell us about their designs and how they work, rather than believing a phone monkey from Apple.
I don’t know if any of you with the horrible battery life have jailbroken phone.
Mine was with 2.21 and I updated directly from it (no restore). After that, it was like some jailbroken apps were still working in the background without really being there. I had the worst battery life i’ve ever had with the iphone !
After a restore, I saw that it would still leave traces of the jailbreak so I completly deleted my iphone (with the delete all data in the settings). It took 2 hours to do and I am still in the process of reinstalling all my apps (did not jailbreak yet).
The battery life is back to normal with this, so maybe it’s a problems 3.0 as with old data on the phone and/or old jailbreaks.
I have a 2G and I did suffer from the battery life since 3.0 upgrade… I wrote a guide on things I did to get the battery life to be as it was before.
iPhone 2G avec iPhoneOS 3.0 :: Problèmes et solutions
Now, I’m basically back to what I was before! 😀
Ive notived a shorter battery life on my 3G, but not super drastic. Probably a couple hours less of usage.
The 3GS is great though 😉
I don’t know if I have a lemon or not, or if it’s just the 3.0, but since I got my 3GS I feel like my battery life has gone down a bunch. I don’t think I’m using my iPhone 3GS anymore than when I was using my 3G, but I just got off a 8.5 hr shift and I’m at 35% after being at 100% at the beginning of it…
I had jailbroken mine in 2.2.1 and used bluetooth a lot. I had bossprefs and winterboard running, as well ass ssh. Battery drained super fast. Then I cut back all jb apps but voipover3g and prerequisites, and stopped with bluetooth. Back to normal. Surf and do video games maybe 5 hours a day.
I have seen no difference under 3.0
PS I have jb’d 3.0 and once again run voipover3g
I never had a chance to test the OS prior to 3.0, I do notice that playing with the phone on a normal basis (normal for each person is different) and I get the 20% battery life warning close to about 14-16 hrs.
3G for sure sucks juice so whenever there is Wi-Fi I use that; if you hav the NewYork times app, ensure to set the sync intervals to be as long and far between, disabled location services, brightness level at the mid level; turned off PUSH (but thought this only worked on mobileME?). I also have Mbox, I disabled auto fetch and I’ve set it for manual. It seems that the battery life is better.
Hi Djelimon,
Would you mind telling me how to voipover3g?
Thanks a lot.
I wasn able to charge the battery …this is how I fix it
Turn off fetch data
turn off wifi
restart
greetz
I noticed a slight decrease in battery on 3.0 but not much. I have my phone set to fetch every 15 minutes
I still am not sure either but perhaps a small decrease in battery. Hardly noticeable though.
I’ve definitely noticed decreased battery life since upgrading to OS3.0. I kept all my settings the same, too. I’m not running any Push based apps, and I’m set for fetching every 15 minutes. It’s frustrating, and I’m considering rolling back to 2.2.1. 3.0 offers little I didn’t already have via jailbreak apps anyways. At least until apple sorts this out.
Some apps seem to use the battery, even in standby. For instance, I was running Scramble, and put the phone in standby without exiting. A few hours later my battery was almost dead, where it should have been about 3/4 full.
I now exit back to the menu before putting the phone in standby.
I noticed it too, but I’m on exchange server…I don’t want it to fetch!
Tried the “drain the battery and recharge it” trick…seems better!
my iphone 3gs battery life i would say is equivelent to my 3G on 2.2.1 that i had for 1 year and recharged next to every day..
My battery lasts for about 10 – 12 hours now. I just figured it was because I was using a stereo Bluetooth headset
Drain battery -> recharge: This will do absolutely nothing for a lithium ion battery, other than waste a cycle.
There is only 1 type of reset using sleep/wake buttons http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1430… and to shorty please educate yourself prior to posting. For Calibrating your iPhone battery read bottom of link http://www.apple.com/batteries/iphone.html for those lazy ppl here
“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).”
Sorry to break it to you, but the only thing you might accomplish by a drain-recharge cycle is resetting where the device thinks the charge is at. It will do absolutely nothing as far as the ‘health’ of the battery is concerned. It will not make it perform better. It will not make it charge better. It will not make it last longer, per-charge, or in relation to its entire usable life. Like I said, the only thing you will do as far as the battery itself is concerned is waste a charge cycle, of which it only has so many before it starts to keel over. I suggest you try a little of that educatin’ on your own self about battery technology prior to posting. And, no, sorry, that does not include a trip to Apple’s website. Nice try at putting me in my place, though, heh. If only you actually knew what you were talking about… (Even a quick trip to wikipedia and their article on ‘lithium-ion battery’ will do you some good, if you can pay attention for the couple minutes it should take you to read that.)
Sorry to break it to you, but the only thing you might accomplish by a drain-recharge cycle is resetting where the device thinks the charge is at. It will do absolutely nothing as far as the ‘health’ of the battery is concerned. It will not make it perform better. It will not make it charge better. It will not make it last longer, per-charge, or in relation to its entire usable life. Like I said, the only thing you will do as far as the battery itself is concerned is waste a charge cycle, of which it only has so many before it starts to keel over. I suggest you try a little of that educatin’ on your own self about battery technology prior to posting. And, no, sorry, that does not include a trip to Apple’s website. Nice try at putting me in my place, though, heh. If only you actually knew what you were talking about… (Even a quick trip to wikipedia and their article on ‘lithium-ion battery’ will do you some good, if you can pay attention for the couple minutes it should take you to read that.)
I got about 5 hr of usage (mostly wifi since I didn’t put a SIM card in) and 1 day standby according to the iphone usage page, is it good or is it bad?
Same here, 15 minutes is my fetch time.
Stereo bluetooth headsets kill the iPhone battery’s! I have noticed this since I bought my first iPhone 2G and have been using stereo bluetooth headsets and the battery would only last a couple hours with music, then a couple with just normal use. Same goes for my 3G and stereo bluetooth. But its worth it! 😉
I end up charging every other day on OS 3.0 – standby time ends up being about 40 hours (overnight charging) and usage is around 4 hours – mixture of phone, internet on 3G, text messages etc. My phone is around 10 months old at this time.
Shorty just tell me who you work for oh that is right not Apple. I have worked for Apple for the past 3 years that would include the original release of the iPhone and no you would not be wasting a cycle it will calibrate your iPhone battery so it does not retain Memory. Of course you wouldn’t know this because your simple mind can’t grasp that, oh by the way I worked for ATT and then Cingular another cell phone company. So Shorty before you post your next reply just stop because you don’t stand a chance…. no chance in hell…
I have not noticed an improvement with battery life on 3GS FW3.0, seems the same as iPhone 3G (Doing the same daily stuff too)
Having issues with iPhone battery life? Check what apple released (Apple to Provide iPhone Battery Life Logging) Check out the forums for the app and comment on your battery life… https://www.iphoneincanada.ca/forums/showthread.php?t=5708
I have a new 3Gs and the battery life is definitely a lot shorter than my old 2G. The 2G would go for a few days between charges, but the 3Gs won’t even do a day, even after turning off most features. Bugger.
umm shorty is right…it does nothing to a lithium battery.
Scastill, I am really sorry to break this news to you but Shorty is perfectly right. Had you done your research, you would have found that Li-based batteries do not ‘like’ deep discharge cycles as these would contribute to shortening the life of the battery. Also, these types of batteries do not have a memory effect. If you worked for Apple, ATT or Cingular, you were probably one of those CSRs who misinformed the clients. As Shorty suggested to you, please do some reading before arrogantly posting wrong information. You could begin with this great resource called the ‘Internet’…
In a way, you are both right.
Discharging an Li-Ion battery completely does not necessarily improve battery life. However, doing this about once a month or once every 2 months will recalibrate the battery meter on the iPhone. So in a way, you could see what may seem like better battery life, but it is only “better” because the iPhone is now properly reading the charge of the battery.
If you discharge the battery frequently, as in multiple times per month, you will quickly destroy the iPhone battery. A Li-ion battery is not meant to be completely discharged frequently.
This is my rule of thumb, and it has served me well since the iPhone 2G.
Once a month, charge the battery to full and then drain it all the way. Charge the iPhone when it is on and when the charge reaches 100%, leave it charging for 3-4 more hours. After this, charge the iPhone at your convenience, because a healthy Li-Ion battery is a “moving” (keeping electrons moving) Li-Ion battery and do not drain it all the way again until the next month or two…atleast not intentionally.