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iPhone 3G battery losing charge very quickly

I purchased my iPhone on Friday. The battery seemed to hold a charge very well over the weekend. But today I noticed that when I was in a 3G area the battery seemed to lose its charge very quickly. If you went to the, settings/general/usage it showed that I only had 2 Hours 25 Minutes of usage but the battery was almost completely drained. Help!

Mac Book Pro 15.4", 2.4GHz, 4 GB Ram, Mac OS X (10.5.4), iPhone 3G

Posted on Aug 18, 2008 7:19 PM

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Posted on Aug 18, 2008 7:26 PM

If you don't plan on using 3G then turn off the 3G. That does use a lot of battery usage, if you compare with 2G that is. Also if you are not using Push, then i suggest turning that off too, also the location thingy as well.
6 replies

Aug 18, 2008 9:17 PM in response to joeythefish

The bottom line is 3G uses a lot of power compared to EDGE, so it will eat power.

Push mode requires a constant connection to the Internet, so it will eat power.

GPS reception and updating the associate Google map will eat power (unlike a regular GPS device, the iPhone has no built-in maps and thus must download a new map from the Internet every time you move.)

Combine those things and you get a lot of "idle" power draw.

If you use your phone just for calls on an EDGE network, you'll get maximum battery life.

It's not just the iPhone; all smartphones use battery like that and arguably the iPhone has the best battery life of any 3G-capable smartphone.

You are, of course, welcome to return your phone if its capabilities aren't what you had expected or hoped; Apple can't please everyone.

Oct 6, 2008 4:02 PM in response to Dogcow-Moof

Just posted this message below to apple's feedback for iPhone. Perhaps Apple will hear this if more of us post messages like this. Thanks. LTK
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I just bought an iPhone 3G and heard that I can stretch the battery life if I turn off the 3G, GPS (location services) & Wifi radios when they are not in use. I did this for the last 2 days but found this to be terribly inconvenient & thought his can be easily automated.

Perhaps Apple and add a feature in the form of a switch which turns off these radios when the "standby" button at the top is pressed to turn off the screen. I can not use any of the radios if the screen is off anyway. The only inconvenience I can see is a slightly longer response time when the screen is turned back on but I think I would live with is if this meant 20+% more battery life.

Hope his helps.
Leung

iPhone 3G battery losing charge very quickly

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