gdgt

I was experiencing some serious battery life issues. Seemed to die quickly using nothing.
Went to see a Genius at the Apple Store. He did a few checks and simply replaced the phone.
Big difference in battery life.
The no questions asked exchange makes me think that there are issues that are well known to Apple

Just a quick tip I read on another forum (iphoneclub.nl):

People who use apps with notifications (Beejive, other IM apps ...) when you're not on 3G or EDGE or WiFi, the iPhone will constantly try to make a connection through GPRS ... Apparently the guy on the forum was able to find this out through looking at iTunes logs.


I had problems with extreme battery drain when I was in Belgium as compared to when I'm in Holland (for work). And this was the problem, as I can only catch GPRS in Belgium.

I found one of my causes of battery drain and it's more than just push settings.

I had my car SYNC audio system paired with the OS 2.1's phone headset profile. This allowed me to use the car audio system for handling all phone calls. With the SYNC voice command, it works really nice for me.

OS 3.0 brought a new Bluetooth Stereo headphone profile. Without haviing to re-pair the devices. The car audio system automatically connects with the phone headset and stereo headphone profiles. The action of iPhone's iPod application is to begin to play music over the Bluetooth stereo headphone profile as soon as something connects to it.

So, I enter my car with iPhone in pocket. The car's SYNC system connects to the paired iPhone on both profiles. The iPhone is playing music out the Bluetooth adapter, using battery. And because I am listinging to either FM or Satallite radio, I have no idea iPhone is playing music, sucking down the battery.

Questions

1) Is there a way to turn off the Bluetooth Stereo Headphone Profile leaving the phone headset profile active?

2) Is there a way to change the iPod app behavior of immediatly playing content when there is a connection to the Stereo headphone profile?

I just got back from the Apple Store and I'm really really mad. Genius I had was total idiot. Ok so he ran a couple diagnostic tests and told me I'm getting sh1tty battery life because I have turned 3G and wifi on for the same time. HOWEVER, after running another test with both 3g and wifi off, it gave him same result. I requested new phone but he refused. He said apple's new firmware would fix this battery thing up and I need to wait few more weeks.

Yeah, restoring your phone is a fool's dream, and a waste of time, do not do it.

I think I posted before. There are battery defects in the 3GS. Apple will not admit to them yet. Not all users have it. If your phone drains relatively fast, seek help at an apple store. Don't deal with this turning to edge mode crap. The phone if you read the specs, can handle wifi for 5-7 hours or 3g for 5-6 hours of full use. Combine that with podcasts, email, web, chat, sms, and calling, your phone battery will be drained by the end of the day. Also, make sure you fully drain your battery till your phone dies the first time you get the phone, and do a full charge to condition your battery. You will use this phone a lot compared to anything else you have ever used. It is crack, it is cocaine. It is your body.

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.

My iPhone 3GS also has terrible battery life. Even after the updates and restores it still doesn't get any better.

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.

Groucho logic

"with push on, I get maybe 8 hours of standby..."

well, turn push off!

My 3GS is fine battery wise, i don't view it as JUST a phone so i obviously wouldn't expect it to last as long as a normal mobile phone.

thenewologist.blogspot.com/

I am confused by people and this "extreme battery drain". I've had great battery life with my 3GS. If you have this problem, I'd take your 3GS to an Apple store immediately. It must have a defective battery.

I have found the 3Gs battery life to fall short of my old 3G. Sometimes the iPhone gets in a mood and will drain just with music playing. The 3G had similar battery life issues when it first came out so I hope Apple fixes battery life with 3.1 Firmware update. This does beg the question should we start treating iPhone OS revs as Windows updates and wait for the first .1 release before updating? The reason I ask is Apple does not seem to be investing time into optimizing battery life till after the major updates. 2.0 battery life sucked. 3.0 battery life sucks yet after a few updates to 2.0 battery life became great. I am getting a bit sick of battery life back tracking with every new release of firmware and this fact will be considered next summer when I start looking fir a different phone next summer. This summer I almost made the jump to the Pre. Next summer I expect the Pre app store to be on par with useful apps and maybe even more useful if Apple & AT&T don't stop killing every good application because AT&T's network sucks. Firmware 4.0 must step up the game and provide better battery life with better notification system, and background applications as well as brand new hardware optimized for a brand new updated UI. This year Apple has a lot of work to do but so does Palm and HTC. No pre order for the iPhone next summer unless they hit it out of the park during WWDC.

Sorry for errors typed on iPhone. (if there are errors)

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?

Ok here's the thing. Restoring your phone as a new phone DOES NOT improve battery life. It's a myth. It's just psychological feeling that you have better battery life now with new set up and stuff. I've tried it myself and it's just pure bs. I called Apple and they booked me an genius appointment. I will update you guys how this goes.

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.

Yeah my 3gs has bad battery life. Ive restored and set up as a new phone after 3.0.1 and its still bad. i know 3.0.1 was just for the sms fix (which i heard it still doesnt fully fix at all) but i heard restoring can sometimes improve. Ive turned off wifi and push but i feel as if i shouldnt have to jump through hoops just to make the battery last. No way am i turning off 3g... thats what we pay extra for each month!

I have had my 3g iphone for three months as a replacement to a Nokia N95-1, another phone with a sub-par battery.

The iPhone has helped redefining my concept of sub-par battery.......

In fact I am one of those which tend to consider that an appliance should serve the purpose of getting things done hence, the appliance should be working for me and not the other way round.

The iPhone is a crappy gadget which does two things very well: surfing the net and handling third party widgets. All the other functionalities you get in any half-baked cellular nowadays is crippled on the iphone. We had to wait through three firmware releases to get copy and paste, so far we still have an half-assed sms app, no mms, a crippled bluetooth, bad voice reception, a very bad gps stack and one too many problems.

When I went to the seaside two weeks ago, away from office, car, home, laptop, I had nowhere to charge the darn thing which would just die while being in standby and doing nothing after one day, not even the Nokia N95 which was a battery hog would do that and believe me! I've read it all!
All the advices, all the opinions, all the comments, all the suggestions; and I've tried everything, restoring, resetting, reinstalling, cleaning, purging, erasing, swithching on, off, on again, keeping up and down, here and there, left and right but in the end, after three months of constant hassle and of having an utterly unreliable phone I had to work for in order to keep it switched on I did the only thing I should have done since day two after noticing how poor this gadget was:

Brought it back where I had bought it and got it replaced with something completely different which, does not display row after row of nice coloured third party widgets but, does everything else without failing and keeps going on for almost four days at a row between charges with 3g and push on and constant use of wi-fi, BT, texting, voice, web, apps, location, music, movies and so on. And the best part is that even if my new phone's battery were not that brilliant I'd just have to get a spare one.

Do that with an iphone......

That said I'm positive that Mr. Jobs will eventually come up with a full featured, perfectly tuned and working iPhone; some time in 2011 with the fifth revision of the same model, and we will of course have bought all the four previous incarnations in the hope that each will be the "ultimate" one, and Mr Jobs will insist in calling such operation an "upgrade" as if buying (and paying in full) for a new device could be considered an "upgrade".....

Who's making fun of who?

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.

I get about the same battery life out of the 3GS than I did on my 3G. I bet battery life will improve with OS 3.1. I also think people need to be realistic about 3G battery life. I know many people who have 3G non-iPhones with poor battery life. Unfortunately, its the nature of the beast. Apple has a high profile device, so they get more flak, but they are certainly not alone.

I've noticed that with 3.0 the non jailbroken devices have some problems due to Mail iPod and Safari opened in background...

I found that killing them with SBSettings helps a lot and the battery lasts more and more and more !! ;)

For sure those apps could be shutted down simply entering the app, press the power button and after the slide to power off the device appears, just hold down the home button.


I've seen that I've lost 20% with those apps openend within few hours in standby. Killing them drain the battery just 5% for at least 8 hours in standby...


Hope that helps

I found that calibrating the battery helped out a lot. Drain the battery completely (until the phone dies) and charge it completely (without unplugging it until its fully charged). Its still nowhere near as good as my first gen iphone, but its better than the out of box experience.

Post stating that you shouldn't turn off unused radios or services because the phone is sold to do these things are absurd. Would you drive your car with every feature turned on because it has them? Turning off location services, wifi, bluetooth, and 3G when not needed makes a big difference. The iphone is a great little computer that does so many things, but making a pocket size computer has to have some compromises like battery life.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Please!

Don't worry. I posted earlier that I had 3.1..., well I've got 3.1 beta 2 and it's EVEN BETTER.

Hold out, it won't be much longer.

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.
...

I think the battery is drained a little more then the 3G but nothing huge, if your using your phone constantly then yah its going to drain, But if you have it in standby mode it drains but not all that bad... idk i guess apple could of tried to have a little better battery/ cpu management but this battery drain could be slightly fixed with a software update.

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is the principal reason for jailbreaking. You install SBSSettings and then you can just swipe the top of the screen at any time to get a popup with large toggle buttons for wifi, bt, gps, 3g, phone etc etc. I hate reading reddit articles with their own app and then having to exit to go lower the brightness. It doesn't remember what article I was on. With SBS you can do it from anywhere without ever exiting the app.

I've had some pretty abysmal battery life on my 3GS as well. I'm hoping 3.1 improves things.

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.

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...

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.

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.

I have always wanted an iPhone but you have all put me off it! :)

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.

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.

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.

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.

Make sure to check some of the apps you installed. HeyWay for example solved a lot of people's battery 'problem' after deleting it.

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

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.

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…! ;)

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!

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.

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...

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?

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.