Recharging best practices?

If you are at all confused as to when your iPhone is using the most juice, here's a simple tip: the operations that give off the most heat (make your iphone hot to the touch) are the battery killers. The you tube video play tops my list.

Sammy with iPhone 8GB

I have never gotten to the glowing full charged battery indicator. Do I need to put it in Airport mode to turn off WiFi to get to the full charge? I tried letting the battery run down and then charging it with the usb power adapter while it was turned off, and that helped me get the usage stats that were missing before, but I don't think I ever saw the glow.

i have never seen it glowing anymore than the green it is when its plugged in..but there is a small ico at the top in black..... that either shows that its charging (the lighting bolt) or merely plugged in (the little plug icon) whe i see that i know mine is fully charged..... but i did the optimizing practise... and have had no problems with the battery..... by doing this it also means i will have it plugged in to recharge lees often.. and hpefully will lessen the life hours of the battery... hence not having to replace the expensive 79 battery...its my understanding that the lifetime of the battery is somewhat based on charging hours...

The apple guy told me to set my brightness level down low and to manual. My battery lasts twice as long.

there a lots of things that will help.... and the support page has those.....turning off wifi if not using it...bluetooth, small little apps like auto spell check, but i stand by the optomizing practise..... trully.... now if i could only get better service from att&t it might be great.....

I have also noticed a flaw in the software. When using the phone in a normal mode, the display will be off with the phone against your face. While using the earbuds, the display will not turn off. When using the earbuds, you do not typically need the display (however, you may). Whenever possible, manually turn it off using the button on top of the phone to LOCK the phone during a call. To keep the display on during a 30 minute conversation will significantly drain the battery compared to display black.

How low did you set it to? 25%, 35%? Did it really make that much of a difference?

I wonder how the video quality looks like at lower brightness.

Actually, with Li-ion batteries you can shorten the life of the battery by repeatedly depleting them before recharging. The way to get the best life out of your battery is to recharge it frequently, long before it is depleted. This is true of Li-ion camera batteries, too.

Apple suggests periodically running your MacBook Pro battery down and recharging it, but I am not sure why other than perhaps as a way of resetting the % charge remaining icon.

The battery in your iPhone will eventually need to be replaced, but you probably will not notice it for years. Although the battery life will start to get shorter in about a year, it will be a long time, perhaps even decades, before the battery life gets so short that a daily charge is not enough -- unless you go about all day listening to iTunes or something.

By "glowing" I mean that the battery indicator (the large battery icon visible when the iPhone is on the charger) is green all the way across from end to end and there is a kind of green halo around the battery icon.

Actually the issue of some users NOT getting a fully charged battery icon even after hours on the charger WAS a software issue. This issue was solved by the iPhone 1.0.1 update, so you should now have the glowing green battery icon when your iPhone is fully charged.

Thomas

This is true of all devices you plug into a USB port. Computers usually shut off the USB ports when they sleep, so there is no way they can charge anything.

Another favorite is electrical outlets in hotel bathrooms. A lot of those shut off when you turn off the bathroom light. You toddle off to bed. You think your phone is charging while you sleep, but in fact it is still draining. Now I check to see if the charging light goes out when I flip a switch before I trust a strange outlet.

Hotels are notoriously stingy with electrical outlets anyway. You have to wonder how they manage to vacuum the room sometimes. (I have stayed in a lot of places where it is obvious that they don't.)

One nice thing about the iPhone charger is that, like all Apple products, it works on 220. So if I am in the Philippines I can just plug it straight into an outlet without a transformer. My wife blew up her Sony/Ericcson doing that, but an iPhone is safe. A street vendor charged her $2 to repair her phone charger, which seemed like a good deal to me. Filipino electricity is 220, but uses the same outlet as the 110 in America (often with no grounding plug, though), so traveling Americans blow up a lot of appliances and there are a lot of very handy guys experienced at repairing them. 🙂 You can bet there are street vendors in every big town in the Philippines by now who know how to unlock your iPhone so that it works with all carriers. The price will be high -- perhaps $20 - $50, and they might inadvertently disable some features if they are not careful. It is scary watching those guys poking around in your expensive phone with a soldering iron, so it is best not to look.

But I digress.

My point is, just because you think it is plugged in does not mean the iPhone (or anything else) is recharging. Make sure the outlet or USB port is actually turned on.

Jim,

When your iPhone is fully charged, the battery icon (the large one visible when iPhone is connected to the dock charger) is green all the way across from end to end and has a kind of green halo effect around the battery.

Some users were not getting this fully charged indication when the iPhone was first released. This was actually a software issue and not a battery issue (as far as I know) because ever since the iPhone 1.0.1 update, the problem has been solved for me.

If your battery icon is not indicating a full charge, then I would recommend either cycling the battery (see my previous post on this thread) or taking the phone to the Apple Store for a replacement, because your battery might be faulty.

Cheers!

Thomas

Not only will the battery indicator be completely solid, but the system setup "Usage" will tell you how long it has been since the battery has been fully charged. It will not tell you that unless the battery was fully charged at some point.

There is another factor that no one has mentioned. Battery life depends on where you live or use the phone. I suspect this may be the problem here. All cell phones remain in contact with towers. If you live in an area with weak cell phone signal strength it will reduce battery life. The phone will automatically turn up the power to maintain its contact with your tower. With Wi-fi off and blu tooth off you should be able to go perhaps as much as 4 days or more if your phone in standby mode in a neighborhood with 5 bars of signal strength. If you are in a location with only 1 bar, or intermittent signal you may be challenged to have the phone last 1 day without recharging.

This is how different people can experience different battery life results starting with identical phones.

You'll have to turn the brightness back up when watching video b/c it's too dim otherwise.

i only have purposely depleted the battery the first time.. granted... i have run out in the middle of doing things..... but the reccomend doing that the first time...if only to set the charge level *certainly im not using the correct tech terms *

now why is it recommended for the macbook pro and the ipod....* ithink i read that about the ipod** but i know the say to do that once a month on the MBP especially if you dont use it without the plug, and let it run out while using??? its suggestested to reoptimize once a month..... according to the support from apple techs???? different sort of battery???