Apple Event: May 7th at 7 am PT
Just upgraded to iOS 6, Battery life has reduced, appears to only last half a day.
iPhone 3GS, iOS 6
I also have the same battery problem since upgrading. I have a 3Gs and my daughter has the same phone with the same problem "Come on Apple sort it out" or maybe we should upgrade to another make of smartphone that is more than just a paperweight. I was thinking of buying a 4Gs soon but maybe I will rethink that now.
APPLE I am Pleading PLEASE do something!!!!! 😀
Because I can't work with my failing iPhone 3GS, I was forced to buy a new phone. Because the iPhone 5 is way too expensive, I picked up a cheap Samsung. At least it works and I can use it for 1.5 days on one charge instead of a few minutes with my iPhone 3GS.
YOU LOST A LOYAL APPLE USER (since 1983) APPLE !!!
Though, I must say syncing this Samsung with my MacBookPro is a pain in the neck.
But what was my choice? Having a working phone or a useless gadget that doesn't work?
Thi is so sad. I am also along time Apple user since 1984. I own a 3GS, a 4S and a 5. Now 2 out of 3 phones are unusable and I still have a contract on my 4s. APPLE, do not screw this up, you cannot afford to **** off your loyal subjects when Samsung is trying to eat your lunch and Blackberry seems to be rising from the dead. FIX THIS, how hard can it be since it was fine before the iOS6 update. Or at least let us go back to iOS 5.x when it all worked.
Based on what other people have stated, I checked my Location Services & Notifications settings. I discovered that practically all my apps had Location Services enabled; that wasn't the case before upgrading to 6.0. Something in the 6.0 upgrade (which required me to re-authenticate with iCloud) must have changed the settings.
I disabled Location Service for all apps except those that really needed it: 9 out of 27. I also disabled Notifications Centre except for the critical apps: Phone, Messages, Calendar, Trademe (eBay equiv.) Note: removing from Notifications Centre does not affect badges, etc.
Having done this, my battery consumption has diminished to pre-iOS 6.0 levels.
The phone has had 1 hour usage + 15 hours standby since the last charge and is currently 80%.
Seems that Location Services is the culprit. It may be a particular app which is responsible, but I am pretty agressive at killing apps when I am not actively using them, so I suspect it to be iOS itself.
this actually works....thanks a lot.
It appears that the battery drain is caused by many different things for different users. A fix listed here or elsewhere that works for one may not work for another. The following fix, however, worked for me and appears to work for many. It may require you to completely restore your phone and its contents from backup, but it's better than having a phone that dies after a day doing almost nothing but standby mode. There's no need to abandon your older phone and upgrade to a 5 just because the battery-drain problem has stumped you up to now.
You need to do a DFU reset (device firmware update), which basically will allow you to reinstall the iOS. I just reinstalled the same version I was running, 6.1.3, and my problems were fixed with the DFU reset.
You may hear people on these boards say that "Apple doesn't support DFU reset" and blah, blah, blah. However, Apple also isn't offerering any advice on how to fix this problem, or even acknowledging that it exists.
Here's an excellent article that will walk you through possible fixes, including DFU reset. I believe the article is referring to connecting your phone to iTunes via a PC, but I did it on a MacBook. Good luck:
... 2 months later. Although the DFU reset did reduce my battery drain problems, it did not fix the problem. What did fix it was replacing the battery. If you think about it, the 3GS is an old phone now. If you're still on your original battery, it's more than likely beyond its useful life. When you upgrade the iOS, most of us probably were seeing more problems because the upgraded iOS was more battery intensive, and the weak batteries started failing with greater iOS demands. I'm happy to say that my 3GS is working like it should now. I can get a day and half of consistent use of the phone -- much longer on standby. No more crashes, either. The phone continues to work all the way down to the single digits on the battery meter. Before replacement, it had gotten so bad that it would crash browsing the web at 80% battery. I did my own replacement with the $25 kit at ifixit.com. If you've tried everything else in this thread and elsewhere regarding this problem and had no luck, start thinking about the battery.
I am currently using a 3gs IOS 6.1.2 jailbroken, i actualy don't know what fixed my battery problem, for i tried every suggestion from this apple support community (thankful).. and somehow those solutions worked! last time i have to charge my phone 3-4 times a day (annoyed) because i am losing 1% every 2-3 minutes on standby, and now my phone last 1 day with calls/internet use and 3 days on standby..
my gut tells me that its the wifi/3G connections the culprit.. maybe??? (confused)
here's what i recall that fixed the problem.. (proceed at your own risk 🙂)
1. go to settings and delete all email accounts like yahoo mail, facebook, icloud, appstore what ever account you have just delete them all.. that's what i did!
2. then go to general-reset- and tap reset all settings..
3. here's the trick, either you put back/sign back in all the email acounts you deleted or leave it and sign back in later..
4. remove your sim card, turn off all wifi or 3g/4g connections you have leave nothing connected to any internet connection 😀
5. do a hard reset (press and hold the home and sleep/wake button) Continue holding both buttons until the iPhone shuts off and begins to restart. This will take anywhere from 15-60 seconds.
6. drain whatever battery percentage left then re-charge your phone to 100%
this works for me and i hope it works for you too..
(pardon my english) 😝
On the advice of my IT expert son I in iTunes backed up my iPhone 3GS and then restored it. I now get very good battery life considering it is about 4 years old. When I restored it iTunes reported that I there was an upgrade to the Ios , intersting as I already had the latest IO6 fro my 3GS. We suspect the IOS was corrupted and this fixed it. The phone will last all day if hardly used, before it went down very quickly.
The same problem is happening to me right now.And maybe it's even worse, because the moment I unplug my iphone charger...it's not even a min ago yet and it is still 100% but it will suddenly shut off,meaning it's lowbat again...so now, I tried several times charging it again but it will shut off over and over again..
I can only use it while charging WHICH IS BAD for the iphone...this only occurred when I updated my software to ios 6.1.6. I tried installing an app "Battery Doctor" and follow all the tips and instructions but it's useless. So I think the only solution to this is to wait for the new software updates...
About the only conclusion you can come to on this is that it is a deliberate attempt by Apple to get us so annoyed with our old phones that we will go buy new ones. Mine started to go flat in less than a day. Fitted a new battery and no difference. Apple are masters at pretending none of these issues are their fault.
iPhone 3GS iOS 6 and poor battery life
