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I totally know what you mean. I feel like battery life got worse. However, the percentage meter that they added makes me think that I am thinking too much about it. Then again, I used to be able to get through the day with 40% remaining on average. Now its averaging at 25% a day. I don't know what to think.
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I was experiencing battery issues in iPhone 3G with OS 3.0. Managed to fix it with a hard reset and wiping of all settings
www.manu-j.com/blog/fix-iphone-os-30-bat...
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Here's what I've learned about combating battery drain.
1. Turn off push emails to "Manual."
2. Turn off Wi-Fi
3. Turn off 3G and rely on Edge
4. Don't use any app that relies on power.
Seriously, doing the first three things gives you an extra 2 hours to battery life. This is my first IPhone (had three Blackberry's all with great battery life). Love the phone, hate the battery life.
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Yes, always turn Wifi off when you aren't using it. The 3G and push emails I'm not really sure about. Maybe put it to check every hour or 30 minutes instead of every 15?
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Its about the same as the old 3G for me. No difference.
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PUSH = Server receives data, notifies and syncs ("pushes") data to device.
FETCH = Device queries server for changes, server syncs ("pushes") data to device.
So, PUSH is FETCH without the device-side query. Explain to me how push is a significant drain on power (being ultra-popular on aim/social networking doesn't count).
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So I'm an idiot and learned how push really works and feel 1) like an idiot (see earlier) and 2) cheated by this no longer marvelous push tech.
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Turning on Wifi has no noticeable effect on my battery. Turning off push definitely helped and the phone runs cooler. But this is after I had done a hard reset. Before that the iPhone wouldn't even charge. Heard that 3.1 update has fixes for battery issues.
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I am having the same issues. Came from the original iPhone where I would get 2 full days of use even after owning it for 2 years.
Got the 3GS and dont even make it though one day using the same settings. I realize 3G takes more battery but I am getting less than half of the battery I was before.
Heres to hoping this can be fixed with a software update!
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"1. Turn off push emails to "Manual."
2. Turn off Wi-Fi
3. Turn off 3G and rely on Edge
4. Don't use any app that relies on power."
Damn, now that's what I call a smartphone.
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I'm actually happy with the battery life my 3GS has been giving me. I take short pictures/videos of my son, upload them to MobileMe, use apps such as Tweetie throughout the day, and listen to a lot of music and audio books and it lasts all day for me. Having said that, I don't have Push or BT turned on, but do have 3G on all day.
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Yes, I've noticed this. Much worse than the 3G with 3.0. I thought they promised improved performance. Ended up having to buy a car charger.
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Yeah I feel your pain but I really think we are noticing excessive battery use because it is new and also being used quite a bit more. Also if you're using video camera, gps, push, etc. a lot it is going to pull the battery towards zero very quickly. Just having the screen on and active all the time is a great drain on the battery and then pile all the other things on that and there goes your battery. It is really bs that battery technology hasn't kept up with the rest of the tech but it is amazing we can get as much out of the tiny little battery that is in the iphone as we do. Another thing to think about is every time I have upgraded these iphones to a major firmware revision battery life has tanked and then they start tweaking the modem firmware and doing things with userspace, etc. to squeeze more battery life out of it. We have a cpu running at a 600mhz clock in our pocket and being powered by a battery about 4 credit cards thick it is amazing we are getting the battery length we do really. The recommendation I have is to put the 3gs back in the box and pull it out again when the Apple Engineers manage to get it right. The battery life and not being able to jailbreak the phone yet combined has made me decide to not use it for a while. The 3g iphone is good enough, but if only it had another 128MB RAM it would be wonderful. Anyways kind of a rant there but I can't really complain to Apple, I mean what to expect when you're buying the first version of a product? I think I may already be tainted though being used to these battery woes from Apple being that I use their laptops and get about 20-35% less out of them running debian then I do if I would run OS 10. Maybe it is just me but i'm willing to put up with a few problems when the pros vastly outweigh the cons.
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We need an APP for that!
seriously, some sort of quick click that would set all the phone settings into a "power save" mode. Then another click to turn it all back on (of course each phone could adjust which settings are which)
APPLE are you watching?
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i'm confused. is the battery life 8 hrs for you on standby? or after 8 hrs including some video and youtube you're at 60%? You seem to be reporting two entirely different anecdotal experiences. doesn't create much credibility...
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I have noticed that if you do not have it ask you to join wifi networks it saves almost as much battery. My first gen iphone got much better life that the 3GS with most of the settings turned off.
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I really can't confirm any of those problems…!? Never had any battery troubles with my 2G, my 3G and neither do I notice any with my 3GS that I've had and used ever since it was released…!
It runs up to about 16-24 hours, depending on how much I use the iPod features though…but I always have Push and WiFi on, why would I want to cripple my iPhone by turning that kind of stuff off…?!
Maybe people don't take the time to calibrate their battery the very first time, as Apple actually does suggest…?! Even though it's an easy thing to do many users seem to neglect it…
I do that with all my iPhones and MacBooks etc. and enjoy the full feature set and speed of my 3GS every day for the whole day…! ;)
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I'm getting absolutely fantastic battery life with my iPhone 3GS. EsPECially considering the use of Find my iPhone and push notifications. Better than it every was with the 3G. I honestly don't know what's wrong with the settings on people's phones, but I definitely noticed a HUGE improvement with the 3GS when it comes to battery life.
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Hi Chris
Ive had my new 3gs for a couple of weeks now and I originally ditched the old 3g because of battery life.
This phone is in a different legue!
I regularly get up 30 or so hours standby, with good use of the games, wifi, email video, infact anything this thing does.
I think the secret is, if your not using it dont!
I turn off wifi, gps, turn down screen brightness, ipod equalizer off, just a few common sense things when its just sitting in my pocket. If I wann use stuff I just turn it all on again, no problem
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Agreed 100%, it would be so nice to turn off push, 3g and edge and even lower the brightness of the screen in a power saving mode w/ one tap.
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I get a full day's use out of the 3GS. This include some surfing and phone calls. However, two days is out of the question.
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I get a full day's use out of the 3GS. This include some surfing and phone calls. However, two days is out of the question.
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this is why i had my 3GS for approximately 48 hours. (while waiting on the RA for my N97) ... sitting on my N78 again until either the Hero piques my interest. i'm done with "awesome" devices that don't make it a day on a charge. and no, shutting off features isn't an options when it's those features that sell the device.
...
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My 3GS has great battery life. Significantly better than the old 3G. I have wifi always turned on. I don't use push email though because I don't need it. And not only has it better battery life, but I'm much more productive with it. Due to the improved speed, I can get a lot more things done in the same amount of time. Very satisfied.
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I notice a big differece between 2.X and 3.0 on my first gen iPhone. I honestly think it's 3.0 as well as the percentage visible in place of the bar. 3GS may drain more power, I dunno, still don't have one (waiting to try the Hero), bu I can say that I notice a faster drain on my old guy after 3.0.
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This is my first iPhone, so I can't really compare it to anything other than my old phone (Nokia Navigator). I have not really had battery life problems, or none that I have noticed. I use the iPod function almost all the time. That's the real reason I upgraded, my iPod was stolen, so I can't say how much power anything else is using.
Running the iPod function all day, or most of it, runs it down to about 25%. I have noticed that when I turn on Wi-Fi, you can almost see the battery life drop. I lose about 10% an hour while I have it on, so I keep it off unless I need it.
I plan on using the navigation functions and really would like a turn by turn application, but have not tried it yet. I played around with several other apps, all of which want to pinpoint where I am, which I have noticed is sometimes not that accurate, but have not noticed any percetable battery drain while in use. I don't keep mail turned on that often and only check it about once a day. Unless I use Wi-Fi and not 3G, it does not seem to affect the battery.
I guess, bottom line, is I re-charge and re-sync every night and mostly, the power is at about 25% at that point. It will be an issue if I don't have access to a power point but so far, not a problem. Just for comparison, my Nokia would last 4 to 5 days between charges, no matter what I used.
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Location Services also uses a lot of power. While it's harder to run down my battery on my 3GS inoticed significant drain when push was off and location services was off too. I only keep push on during the day now but I turn on location services when I need it.
Basically, LS is a big drain that isn't as "necessary" push notification/email.
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I'm getting absolutely fantastic battery life. Prior to the 3.1 beta (yes, I have a dev account) I was feeling your pain. Now with 3.1, I'm getting about 2 3/4 days of standby time with rather significant texting use and email "fetch" turned on. I average 2+ days of standby by with Youtube, texting, email, twittering, alot of iPod use, Safari usage and the use of quite a few other apps and games too. The setting I have are as follows:
--Email: fetch
--Location Service's: ON
--Wifi: OFF
--3G: enabled
--Brightness: at ~1/4th the max with the ambiant sensor enabled
--Bluetooth: OFF
When I turn wifi on and my brightness up, the battery is pretty much shot in about a day and a half, max. With one or the other, I still average about 2 days ish.
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I too am getting terrible battery life. I am only able to make it about four hours before the 20% warning comes on. This is with no phone use. Maybe 2-3 text messages. And only light checking of email - probably about 10 messages. I would say that I'm getting about 30 minutes of actual usage before the 20% warning. Wifi should make life longer than 3g, according to Apple. Bottom line, I am experiencing less than half of the battery life they advertised with very little use. I have a genius appointment set up, but they probably won't do anything about it.
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Battery Life has been dismal! I've beena able to get down to around 12% when I wasn't able to charge the phone one nignt, and this is with light use. Super Lame, I regret ever upgrading.
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I am completely satisfied with the battery life of my 3GS. It lasts all day. My 1st Gen iPhone lasted all day too.
I have everything turned, Bluetooth, PUSH, Wi-Fi, screen brightness at about 70%, auto-lock set to 2 minutes. I also charge my phone EVERY night? Maybe once a month I will do a full battery cycle. Meaning I let it go till it dies and shuts off on it's own. Then I plug it back in and LEAVE it plugged in till it's fully charged.
The other thing that maybe a difference in battery life is that I am in an area with no 3G service. So I'm rocking Edge when not on Wi-Fi. So maybe 3G is why everyone is complaining about battery life? *Note: I have 3G switched on even though we don't have 3G.
My question is are you guys charging your phones every night? Or do you not sleep?
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I have had mine off the charger since 10am this morning(12hrs ago). My battery is at 84 percent. I have an exchange account set up, push enabled, location service and 3g all on. Ask Apple for a replacement.
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My iPhone 3GS also has terrible battery life. Even after the updates and restores it still doesn't get any better.
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I haven't done any video recording or YouTube uploads, but with same usage patterns I had on the 3G, I'm seeing much better performance. My 3G would start hitting 20% late day/early evening, but I haven't even seen that on the 3GS yet.
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I'm with you on that one....Same usage ....even more calls and ipod usage actually....and noticeably, demonstrably better battery performance. And I'm one of those guys who exchanged 3 original iphones because his battery was draining "too quickly"
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Battery problems have been very common along with overheating in a lot of iPhone 3GS' It's not effecting everyone though. Are you perhaps running beta software? (That killed my 3G battery)
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yeah, mine seems to drink the juice, and coming from an n95 i was suprised i noticed it as much as i do, because people moaned about that phones battery. I've just updated to 3.1 to see if it will make any difference. I didnt even have any push stuff turned on. I am not very impressed with the battery life, i mean, yes, its 'ok' because i can plug it in at work, and in the car and so on and so on, but if i was to go away on a camp or something (like i am doing next week) then the poor battery is really going to be an issue if 3.1 hasnt done anything to sort it.
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I have noticed slightly better battery life in my 3GS than my 3G. My primary usage has been cell phone and push sync to MobileMe at 15min intervals.
Wouldn't it be nice if Apple introduced a 'sleep' timer setting in the OS? I remember using such a setting in my first Blackberry to put the phone in 'sleep' mode between midnight and 6am, which really helped extend battery life.
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You could... Turn it off between Midnight and 6am? That'd help too, even better, put it on to charge while you sleep.
But a Sleep Mode may be more beneficial to you than I.
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There is the timers ability to put the phone to sleep. But I must say it would be nice if it could put itself to sleep or turn itself on and off at a particular time each day.
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Haha, iPhone users don't have a choice but to charge it every night, trust me I know :P.
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There is a sleep timer, it's in the clock app under timer. It just puts the phone to sleep though, doesn't power it off. I use it when I'm listening to music before I go to sleep.
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I had amazing battery life on the 3g during the last few 3.0 beta's. I was able to watch almost an hour and a half of video without bringing the battery down even a notch. I'm not seeing anything close that with the 3GS.But considering how atrocious the battery life was when the 3g was released and how the 2.1 firmware fixed that significantly I'd expect to see the 3GS hitting the marks Apple advertised soon.
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I turn WiFi off when I'm out of range for an extended time. That seems to help battery life a little.
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Most iPhone battery issues are software related. Many times if you go into settings/general/usage, you will see that your usage times are drastically unreal. Basically a process is hanging so your phone isn't truly going on standby. This can be fixed by doing a software restore in iTunes. When prompted, you can restore from the backup, but be aware that it may bring the problem back. In this case, restore again, but set it up as a new phone when prompted. This will mean that you have to re-sync your data and media. Hope this helps.
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I had major battery problems. Like 3-5hrs of listening time. So I restarted the phone. Then did a complete restore of the phone through iTunes. After I did that my Battery stopped over heating(as much) and battery was great.
Seems like it just needed a hard reset.
Try it. Hope this works for you.
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I had a lot of battery drain.
So I
a) Hard reset the phone to factory default (didn't even restore form backup, just said goodbye to all my SMS etc)
b) Turned off push notifications for all apps
c) Updated to 3.1 beta (I have a developer account)
Battery life seems a lot better now.
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These are the best suggestions so far. Restoring the phone may kill runaway processes that may be contributing to a drained battery. Ideally not restoring from backup for the cleanest possible reset. Push notifications are absolutely killing battery life right now (so much for this being more efficient than allowing multiple open apps), and turn 3G off whenever possible. Remember the 3GS has increased battery life on everything BUT 3G talk time. 3G vs EDGE talk time is 5:12 hours. That's a huge disparity for something like voice calls, especially if you're using push.
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or you could do what I saw today. A gentlemen at Fry's Electronics while waiting in line for a return, pulled his iPhone out of his jacket pocket, turned it on, waited for it to boot up ( I saw the apple logo), once on he checked to see if he had any messages (this took him only 10 secs at the most to check for messages, I don't think long enough), then powers it off.
Your battery will last for months this way, LOL
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Yeah so will not using your phone.
I'd add adjusting the brightness to a level that you're comfortable with but not being overkill.
I plug my iphone in every night. That helps too.
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I have to say, using 3G is a battery killer, sucks my battery dry! Currently I'm living somewhere where there is no 3G signal, so my phone lasts the whole day without any trouble, but when I'm in a 3G area I lose charge noticeably fast. Such is the consequence of 3G. I am planning on investing in one of those portable batteries.
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you could just turn off the 3g antenna?
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This is true, the purpose of my post was not to complain about 3G, but to bring to light the fact that it does take a lot of battery life, and Apple don't hide the fact that while using 3G you'll get 5 hours out of the phone, so if you want the speed that 3G provides, like myself, then it's probably a good idea to invest in a portable battery.
Another thing would be to only turn 3G on when you needed to use it, you don't need 3G on to make calls or to send texts, so unless you are web browsing or downloading apps etc. (which you don't need 3G for anyway, but it's faster) leave 3G off.
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Everyone keeps saying apple said the battery life would be better - yes this is true for talk time on 2G and wifi, but NOT for overall standby time, which is the same. So the battery life isn't really better unless you turn off 3G and use mainly wireless.
I'd like to have better battery life, but let's face it, all the good touchscreen smartphones have crap battery life unless you buy bigger batteries or the device itself is bigger. That's life, if you want push + 3g+ wifi on all the time, expect your battery life to suck. If you turn off at least one of the above your battery life will improve significantly.
If that's still not good enough for you there are a heap of options out there to improve the life. My fave is a little add-on plug pack which uses the same power port as the iphone and plugs in to charge the phone - get it from 0 to 60% in 30 mins! Cheap as well. There are many different brands of these around, example below. If battery life is a big problem, worth thinking about investing in one (they're cheap anyway at USD$12)
www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.21998
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Everyone keeps saying apple said the battery life would be better - yes this is true for talk time on 2G and wifi, but NOT for overall standby time, which is the same. So the battery life isn't really better unless you turn off 3G and use mainly wireless.
I'd like to have better battery life, but let's face it, all the good touchscreen smartphones have crap battery life unless you buy bigger batteries or the device itself is bigger. That's life, if you want push + 3g+ wifi on all the time, expect your battery life to suck. If you turn off at least one of the above your battery life will improve significantly.
If that's still not good enough for you there are a heap of options out there to improve the life. My fave is a little add-on plug pack which uses the same power port as the iphone and plugs in to charge the phone - get it from 0 to 60% in 30 mins! Cheap as well. There are many different brands of these around, example below. If battery life is a big problem, worth thinking about investing in one (they're cheap anyway at USD$12)
www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.21998
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Yes I'm finding the battery life stinks...can't get through the day.
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I am completely hating the amount of battery life im getting on the 3G S... everyone keeps mentioning doing restores and what not, an that may very well work, its just the point that as us consumers shouldnt have to be fixing Apple's problems... its rediculous I wake up in the morning with 100 percent by 6 @ night im at almost 30% battery life, and thats from a few text messages, NO PHONE CALLS, an checking some email... FAIL!
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I am completely hating the amount of battery life im getting on the 3G S... everyone keeps mentioning doing restores and what not, an that may very well work, its just the point that as us consumers shouldnt have to be fixing Apple's problems... its rediculous I wake up in the morning with 100 percent by 6 @ night im at almost 30% battery life, and thats from a few text messages, NO PHONE CALLS, an checking some email... FAIL!
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As an iPhone noob, and by no means an Apple fanboy, I'm sure I'm rehashing some of what people have said but I've found with monitoring how many "services" I have turned on, it can make quite a difference. You can turn off bluetooth if you're not using it and I doubt you need "location services" turned on 24/7. With those off, plus killing WiFi when I'm on 3G, I average about 7% usage per hour and that's with push always on, texting and listening to iTunes.
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Here's a great list of tweaks to extend battery life.
gizmodo.com/5025150/how-to-maximize-your...
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I had a 3G for a year and now have the 3GS. I find I'm using the 3GS more and now have it linked to an Exchange ActiveSync account and MobileMe which both use push. Battery life is greatly decreased vs. my previous 3G. I've resorted to getting a Mophie Juice Pack Air to go on mine to give me that extra life I'm looking for.
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i also have the mophie juicepack air. it's worked out pretty well for me so far. i don't feel like i'm using the phone too much (no regular video recording or playback, manually fetching my mail, wifi and bluetooth usually turned off, brightness turned down), but even with the juicepack air on it yesterday, i went through the entire iphone battery and almost the full recharge from the juicepack battery in the course of the day.
guess i gotta stop checking grindr every 15 minutes, eh?
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Hey, I did the same thing -- bought a Mophie Juice Pack Air to provide a bit more juice when I need it. I don't want to turn off all the cool features just to conserve battery life. The only issue with the Mophie is that it reduces call reception when I have it on. So I take it off if I need to make an important call...
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I turn push to manual and turn off wifi when not in range. Still having to recharge at the end of the day, just like my 1G.
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I read through this entire post of comments and all I can add is this....
I'm doing something on this iPhone that I have not done on the last two. What is it you ask? I'm NOT draining the battery all the way down the first time like they tell you to do. I'm just using it and then fully charging it back up. This new 3GS is out performing my old 3G in battery life and I am using the phone pretty heavy with tons of apps, browsing, many phone calls, shooting some videos and pics, etc. I just use it and charge it back up, but have never run it all the way until it shuts off. I started today at around 9am with a full charge and it is 6:30pm and I still have 55% of my battery. Go figure.
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I find myself charging my iPhone 3GS 2-3 times a day with normal usage. I hope the next update address these issues
we are having.
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I am admittedly an apple zealot. That having been said 3g was better than
the 3gs. Hope 3.1 fixs this
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I've been able to dramatically improve my battery performance (I was burning 1% of battery e very 3-4 minutes before) by doing a restore/set up as new phone (rather than restoring from a backup). Worked like a charm, except for having to re-load everything.
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I leave push on, but only use wi-fi or 3g when needed, and am really pretty satisfied with my battery life. Keeping in mind that I use Twitter apps and Facebook a lot, but don't really play a lot of battery intensive games, I charge about every day and a half.
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I use my 3GS to it's limit probably. I've figured out that if you leave WiFi off when your know your not going to use it and disable push for things you may not need such as calendars it greatly helps. I talked for about 3 hours one day and ended up with about 50% battery. I believe I was on 3G a majority of the time. One thing I have noticed is that it charges a lot faster then my 3G did.
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This is Apple iPhone. Turn off all services you need so you can get 3 hours of use. Besides, with iPhone - its form over function. In order to get even close to comparable battery life that most other smartphone users enjoy, you have to cripple every service that makes the iPhone usable. Turn off wi-fi, no push, no pull, turn brightness down, dont listen to music, dont record too much video, etc.
BlackBerry for life. On my 3rd day without a recharge. (and have a spare battery if it were to die).
Not bashing. I love most other Apple products and am buying a new MBP soon. Just think the battery life issue is ridiculous for most users other than kids. I gave my 3G to my wife. She loves it.
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I upgraded from a 3G to 3GS, and battery life was great the first day, until I restored from my 3G backup. After that, I had horrible battery life (just a few hours) and a very warm 3GS. Because I found that I could repeat the scenario (restoring from that backup), I played with it a bit found the following solutions:
1) Resetting to factory, and then syncing my apps and manually configuring my mail settings completely avoided the issue.
2) Disabling ONE SPECIFIC IMAP ACCOUNT also made the issue disappear. Thats right; it appears the phone would loop and burn CPU like mad when talking to one particular IMAP server. It was one I manage, running WU's server on a Linux box. Perhaps I had a problem with mailbox locking on WU's software. When I stopped syncing to that server, the problem disappeared. I just now access that mail through a different server (I was planning on doing that anyway), and things are golden.
I'm now using push notifications, Activesync with Exchange, a GMail mailbox (checking every 15), and mail/calendar/contacts with MobilMe. WiFi is turned on, and I use tweetdeck and other apps consistently through the day. Even with a little gaming thrown in, I can make it to the end of the day with no problems.
So, if you are running hot & burning battery, try turning some things off individually and see if you can find where the problem is. It may be something you can fix, and it definitely isn't defective hardware.
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It's laughable that so many of the tips given here include turning off 3G, turning off push, turn off WiFi. These are the features that make the iPhone great. If you turn off these features, what's the point of upgrading from an original iPhone. Apple needs to work some of their magic in the battery department. I love the iPhone, but the battery life has always been a problem, and I was hoping Apple would have a solution for it by now.
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I am having the same issues. Came from the original iPhone where I would get 2 full days of use even after owning it for 2 years.
Got the 3GS and dont even make it though one day using the same settings. I realize 3G takes more battery but I am getting less than half of the battery I was before.
Heres to hoping this can be fixed with a software update!
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I had major battery issues with my 3GS too, but what really helped is calibrating the battery. Let it drain completely, until it shuts off, then charge it to full overnight. It REALLY helped. I think the issue is just that the software does not read the amount of charge left in the battery accurately, until you calibrate it. Hope this helps!
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I haven't had any battery problems - so far it lasts longer than my 1st gen Touch. I run my iPhone with push and fetch off, and I only use location services and WiFi when needed. I usually browse on it for 2 hours (train commute) and then another hour or two at home. I only talk on it about 20 min a day. The battery lasts about once every day and a half.
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No battery problems here, and I never charge at night. Here's my trick:
My Calibre has a 115V power outlet built in. I get in my car, I plug my phone in. When at work, I sync with my laptop or plug in just for the charge. My batter seems to hover between 50-90% and I have yet to have a problem with it dieing on me.
I do notice that when I use it for an hour or so to play a game or surf the web the battery can go pretty quick, so I could understand through heavy usage without an outlet it would be quick to deplete.
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I really think that one of the oddest things with regards to battery life is the new percentage meter that you're allowed to enable. Seeing my iphone go down a precent just by checking email is really odd. But I think overall the battery life is about the same as my old 3G... although I have no actual data to back that up.
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First of all- I run apps all day long, I'm constantly emailing texting and calling. My 3gs is never in standby and I easily get 12 hours and often more. Second- I never need anymore because between my car, laptop, and home- I am always able to plug it in. 8 hours to 60%? what do u expect? Drain it to 0% then come see me.
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I use the "free memory" application to monitor my battery, it provides a percentage which is way more accurate than just using the battery icon.
To save battery I turn off 3g and use EDGE when I'm not surfing... it seems to help a bit.
I just read about how the battery percentage meter is available on the 3gs, so if you have a 3g or 1st gen then buy the free memory app for .99 cents.
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I just bought my wife a 3GS and i have a 3G. She gets about double the battery life that I do with wifi on all the time and 3g on all the time. She doesn't use it QUITE as much as me (She just texts on it all day and looks up weather and a few websites, while I use bluetooth and other crap all day long) but she only has to charge every other night while i must charge every single night. I've been really impressed with the battery life she gets.
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I find it kind of strange that as the Macbooks get increasingly better battery life, the iPhone just keeps dropping. Actually decent battery life is the reason I've stuck to the iPhone 1g. I think as soon as Steve Jobs is well enough and back into full swing at Apple, they'll release an iPhone with great battery and redesign.
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I noticed a HUGE decrease in battery life too. On my old EDGE iPhone, I could play a ton of games, listen to a few tracks, and watch some movies and still have enough power to have a 5 hour phone call. I understand 3G does add a little drain to the mix. But it's rediculous! I watched a 20 minute video and lost amost 15% of my battery! That's just stupid. At that rate, there is NO way I could get the 10 hours apple claims. Also, I was using the GMaps, and tracking myself with the GPS down the route I was taking. I have a holster that charges the phone in my car. I had it charging while doing this and actually lost 5% over the course of a 30 minute drive. It was charging and LOST 5%?! Really, this is rediculous. Why? I hope 3.1 will fix this. Otherwise I may have to visit the genius bar and get it replaced. But I think I'll try the restore people say will work. I'll let you guys know how it fares when I get around to it. I'm using 28 of the 29 available gigs, so restoring will take some time.
laterz!
God Bless!
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Make sure to check some of the apps you installed. HeyWay for example solved a lot of people's battery 'problem' after deleting it.
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My battery life has been fantastic....noticeably better than the 3G battery. The key to good battery life with iPhones is to leave wifi off unless you are using it at the time and leave bluetooth off.
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To be honest, Wi-fi doesn't affect the battery much comapred to the 3G mode (check the apple site they even recommend it). I leave my wi-fi on when I'm at home and the battery barely drops in major percentage.
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I use push for email, am usually online at least every hour for a few minutes, play apps etc. and have not had any issues with battery drain.
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I've been getting 2 days worth of juice out of my 3GS: Wifi on (my workplace has a hotspot); 3G on; Push on (15 min intervals); Brightness set to auto; I check my emails about a dozen times throughout the work day; listen to about 4 songs a day; do some web browsing; usually fall asleep to 45 minutes of 'Naturespace'. I have noticed that if I view a lot of video or use some of my heavier apps (Hero of Sparta) the drain is significant.
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I have always wanted an iPhone but you have all put me off it! :)
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Hmm...I have bluetooth and wifi turned on...and mine gets several days of battery life. I've have the exact same experience with the exact same stuff on from both the original and 3G models...
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Got my 3GS on launch day. I get a full days usage out of my 32gb white 3GS. Had an N95 before and the battery on that was MUCH worse than this. That thing would drain overnight. The 3GS is like a breath of fresh air after my N95 battery wise.
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I've had some pretty abysmal battery life on my 3GS as well. I'm hoping 3.1 improves things.
