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Level 1

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iPhone 4 Poor Battery Life? (Usage stats included)

I've made appointments at the Genius Bar and they said it was okay, however when I called Apple they said it was low battery life for an iPhone 4 so I'm kind of left hanging. I occasionally play games, but probably no more than 10 minutes or so. I mostly just use data for internet. Brightness is on 1/4, fetch email every hour, never more than 8 apps left in the multitasking bar. iOS 4.1.

I compared with my friend still with a 3GS and it doesn't seem like mine is any better. I've restored it as a new phone and have done multiple charge cycles. Current usage is below.

36% battery right now
4 hours and 26 minutes of usage
1 day 19 hours of standby

Is this normal? And if you can, please post your usage stats too. Thanks.

HP Pavilion dv7-1245dx, iOS 4

Posted on Sep 13, 2010 7:04 PM

44 replies

Sep 15, 2010 3:56 AM in response to KC7GNM

Charge till 97% afternoon,now 20%

USAGE: 3hrs 25minutes
---surfing net while listening to music,online gaming and non online gaming
---14 apps push notifications On
---1 email acc fetching every 1hrs
---brigtness around 65%

Standby 5hrs 27minutes

Message was edited by: Thoma51987

Kayswah

Level 1

0 points

Sep 15, 2010 10:36 AM in response to GeorgeAngelo

Here's what I've gotten at various battery stages. This was done over a three charge cycle lasting a week. Hope this helps others determine if you have decent battery life or if your phone has a battery issue.

80% = 1hr 52min usage, 3hr 58min stdby

69% = 2hr 54m usage, 6hr stdby

53% = 4hr 29m usage, 7hr 50m stdby

44% = 5hr 24m usage, 9hr stdby

39% = 5hr 10m usage, 11hr 23m stdby(21m talktime)

36% = 4hr 37m usage, 16hr 52m stdby(21m talktime)

32% = 6hr 21m usage, 11hr 23m stdby(not but 3 min used for talktime)

24% = 6hr usage, 22hr stdby(27m talktime)

19% = 6hr 10m usage, 1day 8hr stdby(31m of talktime)

Sep 19, 2010 6:28 AM in response to Kayswah

I dun understand how u guys gt such incredible batt life?

djroomba

Level 1

0 points

Sep 21, 2010 2:11 PM in response to GeorgeAngelo

My usage is similar. its OK, not great and definitely nowhere near what Apple says the battery would be on their site.

I have 5 hrs, 6minutes usage and 22 hr, 11 min standby with 24% remaining . Only made a few phone calls, checked several emails, and heavy surfing use on the web.

Any suggestions if this is normal would be greatly appreciated!

Wi-Fi/3g on
Bluetooth on
Fetch email once an hour

Injector

Level 1

77 points

Sep 21, 2010 2:13 PM in response to djroomba

I'd say that's fantastic battery life. You've used your phone heavily for almost 24 hours with wifi, bluetooth and push enabled. What more do you expect?

GeorgeAngelo Author

Level 1

0 points

Sep 21, 2010 2:14 PM in response to djroomba

Lately I've been thinking that my usage isn't all that bad compared to others. I get about (on average) 5 to 5.5 hours of usage with nearly 2 days of standby time. My recommendation is to dim the brightness and turn of bluetooth if you don't need it.

Injector

Level 1

77 points

Sep 21, 2010 2:20 PM in response to GeorgeAngelo

I have 3G off, bluetooth off, push/fetch off, screen on auto, wifi on for around one hour per day, 4-6 hours of talk time, 30 mins of sat nav and probably send 50 texts....and my battery lasts for a day and a half on average.

Sicy

Level 1

4 points

Sep 21, 2010 2:59 PM in response to GeorgeAngelo

I think my battery life is pretty bad.

49%, usage 1 hour, 33 minutes, standby 8 hours, 9 minutes

GeorgeAngelo Author

Level 1

0 points

Sep 21, 2010 3:06 PM in response to Sicy

Yeah I would definitely get that checked out. Unless all you do is play games.

mdcec87

Level 1

0 points

Oct 13, 2010 10:32 PM in response to GeorgeAngelo

I'm also having this problem. I got my iPhone 4 on Tuesday, 2 days ago now, and I've charged it to 100% twice, and yesterday after a full charge it lasted 8 hours, and today, after charginh it to 100% overnight, and taking it off the charger at 8am, it's now down to 36%. I've played games for no more than 15mins in total, turned Push e-mail thing off, not written any emails, written 5 text messages and made one 3 minute call. I literally watch the battery go down 1% every minute when I'm playing a game, or typing a text or on a call. This is ridiculous!!!

I rang AppleCare and they said to contact where I bought it from, after doing a Restore - I'm gathering that Restoring the product is the 'standard' response they give to everyone because when I was having issues with a previous iPhone and MacBook, they said exactly the same thing, and nothing changed - Esp the battery life.

So I rang Harvery Norman, and of course as I expected they said to call Apple. So I rang Apple, and finally got through to someone and she made an appointment for me at a Genius Bar tomorrow - but now I'm worried, after reading some horror stories on the net, that they'll tell me nothing is wrong with it, when it clearly is.

Any advice on the situation, or any thing I can maybe do to prolong the battery life myself before taking it in tomorrow?

Injector

Level 1

77 points

Oct 14, 2010 3:11 AM in response to mdcec87

mdcec87 wrote:
I literally watch the battery go down 1% every minute when I'm playing a game, or typing a text or on a call. This is ridiculous!!!

If you're playing games, why wouldn't the battery go down 1% every minute? Same goes for a call? If you're using 3G and have less than a full complement of bars, your phone is working harder to keep a signal.

If I had 3G permanently on, wifi on, bluetooth on and push/fetch on...my battery would last less than a day. I make sure 3G is off unless I need to surf over the cellular network, in which case I turn it off when I've finished. Bluetooth is always off and I toggle wifi on and off when I need it. Playing games is a massive battery drain, the biggest! It stands to reason that 15 mins of game playing will reduce your battery levels significantly and some games are more power-hungry than others.

Tonga

Level 1

0 points

Oct 14, 2010 3:18 AM in response to GeorgeAngelo

Hi George,

take a look at my post [1] where I described some test I have done and I give my interpretation of the results and a possible cause for poor battery life of the iPhone 4 (specially in comparison to the 3G)

In my opinion it all seems to be due to an error in one of the algorithms in iOS 4.1. However, that's just my guessing based on the observed behaviour. Hopefully someone with knowledge of the iOS internals can shed some light into this.

[1] http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2611816&tstart=75

May 27, 2011 10:14 PM in response to GeorgeAngelo

IPhone 4 fix for poor Battery Performance

Is your IPhone 4 connected to an exchange account? If so, easy fix to rectify battery and get excellent performance.
1. Simply delete exchange account
2. Completely shut down IPhone and leave off for 10 seconds
3. Reboot IPhone
4. Re-enter exchange information
You will now have dramatic improvement on IPhone.
When Apple introduce a new OS upgrade, and you preform this upgrade on your handset, the bug will re-appear. Simply follow steps above and all will be fixed again.
Please let me know if you battery performance has been resolved after following these steps.

Sep 30, 2011 2:03 PM in response to NK@TelephoneTechnologies

Hi Vic

My iPhone 4 is finally working again thanks to your help. It was running dog slow I nearly threw it in the Thames with utter frustration, it would have skimmed across it well I'm sure!!! (Apple fix this bug please).

Anyway simply did what you suggested and its like I have a new phone.

Cheers for that :>)

Will - T

Level 2

169 points

Oct 18, 2011 2:22 PM in response to KC7GNM

@KC7GNM

That purely depends on your situations, if you keep getting mails regularly, PUSH will deplete your battery quicker, where if you have it on FETCH, at least you'll get them in batches at intervals set. The same could be said for FETCH, have no emails and you'll be wasting battery at each interval, so PUSH will be better in this case.

So it all boils down to personal preferencing. We all have different criteria's on what must be on and off.

iPhone 4 Poor Battery Life? (Usage stats included)