iPhone 2.1 battery dramatically WORSE than EVER before

I have the same issue however my phone doesn't turn off its screen when inactive.

This seems like a bug to me, unless Apple has an algorithm to condition the battery by completely draining it. If this is so then they need to tell owners that this will happen and to prepare for it.

Its is a 1st Gen iPhone and 2.1 software.

I'm glad to see I'm not the only one with the battery issue. I started having the battery issue that everyone is reporting about two weeks ago. I do not have the 2.1 update installed. I still have 2.02 update on my iPhone. I'm in a hurricane affected area from Gustav so I chalked up some of the battery drain due to low signal strength in the area. I typically get 5-6 hrs of standby and 1 hour of usage before the battery drains completely. Prior to two weeks ago, I was getting 36-48 hours of standby and 4-5 usage before the battery completely draining. I have Wi-Fi OFF, Push OFF, Fetch MANUALLY, Location Services OFF, and Bluetooth ON. This had been a royal pain in the ### the last two weeks. I went to a football on Saturday night and my battery drained completely before I could get back to my car or home to charge it. I am now wondering if it is something more than just the update because I am currently running 2.02 like I mentioned before.

I have a 1st Generation iPhone I have owned new since January of '08. Since the 2.1 update the phone has started to have battery issues where before there were none. My experiences are very similar to those of BlueX.

*The phone drains its battery rapidly when idle and simply sitting on the desk overnight. I'm going to bed with a phone that was used for 5 minutes the day before and waking up with it completely dead.

*The battery life indicator is inaccurate. After sitting on a charger for 3 hours it showed a red charge level. After hard restarting the phone it showed a green charge.

*Moderate use is bringing up %20 percent and %10 percent battery life warnings that are accurate.

I have Push on for my MobileMe trial and a Yahoo email address.

"The post by jkent95 is IRRELEVANT to this forum. This forum and thread is about 2G (Edge) iPhones. In the jkent95 post you state "I admit I don't have 3G turned on" so this means that you have a 3G phone. As far as I can tell, the serious problem reported in this thread only pertains to the original 2G iphones. Our problem of worse battery life is not mentioned in the 3G forum. So, If you want to comment about the great battery life after the 2.1 update, you should post to the 3G forum - not here - because what you have written here does not pertain to our 2G problem"

Nice job of slamming the guy

Same here, battery is tanked since 2.1.

I see others saying it might be because of different usage levels but I have absolutely the same usage every single workday so I have a year of control data to compare to.

The thing charges fully overnight & sits on my desk all day unused. I virtually never get or make calls during the workday & receive emails on it over Edge but never view them as I have a PC & a Mac that receive the same mail. At lunch I do about 15 to 20 minutes of web browsing on Edge. At home I switch to wifi with a little web browsing & read & reply to a few emails. With this daily pattern I was able to easily get 2 full days of usage after an overnight charge. By the end of the 2nd day I would recharge but never did I even get the 20% remaining message.

After the 2.1 upgrade & a full overnight charge, I unplugged it as usual around 6:15 this morning, it sat on my desk untouched until 1:00pm when I grabbed it to go to lunch & it was 30% +/- exhausted. Most days I can barely notice any decrease in the battery indicator when I go to lunch. By the time I got back from a half hour lunch it's approaching 50%. I'll be lucky to get home tonight before it dies.

Prior to 2.0 I would often get 3 full days of the exact same usage. SInce 2.0 I can't make a full 3 days but easily get 2 & I just charge at the end of day 2 because I know I can't make it all the way through the 3rd day.

At this rate if they have many more upgrades I'm going to have to stay very close to a power outlet or I'll not be able to use the thing at all.

I had the same thing with an early iPod upgrade when one of the stated fixes was improved battery meter performance (which I had never had any problem with). After the upgrade my battery meter never worked right again.

I just don't see how it's possible for a supposed fix to actually make things worse. There are few bigger Apple fanboys than me (all the way back to an Apple IIe) but it's becoming totally obvious to me that they are in over their heads here.

To BlueX:
Please confirm the setting you made to turn "push email" off. Did you set Push to OFF in "Fetch New Data"? Or did you turn off something else?
For your information, I have had my Push (within Fetch New Data) set to OFF for the past two days. And, my battery charge continues to bleed at a ridiculous rate - 10 times the rate before I upgraded to 2.1.
One other thing I have noticed is that my screen does not automatically turn off (as it did before the upgrade); Now, I have to manually turn it off by pushing the rectangular button on the top of the phone. I have no idea as to whether this is a factor in the battery drain.
I am about ready to reset my iPhone back to its original settings - as provided in iTunes. I can reload all of my settings. But, I need to try everything I am able before I visit the Apple store.
Everyone's reports about this problem are helpful.

Never had Push turned on since about 2 days after upgrading to 2.0 back in July. I just checked to see if it might have been on by default after the 2.1 upgrade but it was still off.

Not an issue contributing to my battery woes.

I just wanted to post an update regarding my situation, as it differs somewhat from some of the posts in this thread. So, as I stated earlier in the thread, on Sunday morning I noticed that approximately 75% of my battery mysteriously drained overnight. While writing my original post, I charged my phone through my computer (thus syncing it with iTunes)and let it charge until the battery was completely full. I proceeded to use the phone all day as I normally would (I guess you could say it was used "moderately") and, at the end of the day, I still had most of my battery. I put the phone back on the charger and, after the phone had charged completely, disconnected it and went to bed. When I woke up this morning I still had all of my battery. I've been using the phone all day and I still have about 60% of a battery left. Most importantly, I haven't changed any settings on my phone during this time either ("Push" was, and still is, on).

While this whole battery/firmware problem is still very strange, hopefully it is just a temporary problem and, like my phone (hopefully) has, any phones that have been affected by this will eventually return to normal.

If I notice that my battery does anything else "strange," I'll be sure to post it here.

Message was edited by: n83

I was reading another discussion about a related topic & someone said to check if the Location Services was turned on. I had this turned off previously but it must have gotten turned back on during the 2.1 upgrade or otherwise by accident.

I turned it back off & will fully charge my phone overnight & report back if that had anything to to with my dramatic decrease in battery life since the 2.1 upgrade.

Fingers crossed................

Update: After completely losing battery life, I left my iPhone 3G on the wall charger until battery was totally recharged. Then I synced it to my MBP for the 1st time since the update to 2.1 and moved it back to the wall charger for 12 hours straight. Took it off and here are the results while running on Edge,Locations Services "OFF"(half time),Bluetooth "ON" once I received the "20% battery life remaining" warning: 14 hours 17 minutes on standby, 5 hours and 5 minutes of usage. Now I have to backpedal...This may not sound like much to some of you, but this is MUCH better than the results I was getting before 2.1. I used to get nervous when I was more than 10 feet away from my MacBook Pro, wall charger, or power-jolt after an hour had passed since my last charge before this update. Now I can go all day (on Edge) without having to plug up for a quick recharge. In other words, I take back my complaint for now. Tomorrow I will go all day running 3G/with Location Services & Bluetooth "ON" and will post those results, so stay tuned...

Here is my report about how I fixed my 2G battery problem. My previous posts in this forum describe the problem, so I won't repeat them here. A) My earliest attempts to fix the issue by turning stuff off on my iPhone was a failure. After I i) turned off every possible option, and ii) I deleted all of my Apps, and iii) I disengaged from Mobile Me, and iv) I recharged my phone to full capacity - the battery still drained at rapid rate. Nothing worked. B) The solution that worked for me was to restore my iPhone to its original settings (second "Version" on the Summary page for my iPhone in iTunes). This process deleted everything on my phone. It reloaded software version 2.1 (I was given no other option but to accept the latest iPhone software version) and the latest firmware update. Then, from iTunes, I reloaded my Address Book, Calendars, Bookmarks, eMail, etc. After this process, the result is that my battery issue has been resolved. The battery did not drain rapidly overnight. I cannot say whether or not my current battery usage is better/worse than before 2.1 - but is does not drain at the rapid rate I experienced right after my initial 2.1 update. C) At some point, I will begin to add Apps and begin other functions (one at a time) to see if the battery issue reappears. I will also reactive Mobile Me on my iPhone (currently removed). If I learn something new, I will make another report to this thread. D) Final comment: I have no idea what caused the battery drain issue after initially loading 2.1. It was a negative, frustrating and time consuming experience - one that I should never have had to experience. But, reloading everything from scratch did the trick. If others decide to follow my experience, be certain that you have all of your data (Address Book, Calendars, Bookmarks, eMail, etc.) fully up-to-date on your computer. You will need to reload this data via iTunes after you wipe your iPhone and reload the software. Dale

The 2.1 upgrade seems to have been geared to the 3G phones as it did not do anything for my 2G phone. Reception is worse, voice quality has deteriorated substantially, battery life tanked and the phone now gets hot. And no I don't have push enabled. I found a site with older software and I plan on downgrading. It looks like Apple has totally abandoned purchasers of the original phone, which I will certainly keep in mind when my contract expires with AT&T in a few months.

stockscalper: Before you go back to an older version of the software, why don't you follow the solution I described in my last post in this forum pertaining to my 2G iPhone? Although none of us should have to reload the software after the 2.1 update (as I described), it did resolve my battery problem. Furthermore, my reception and voice quality are fine. I think you would be pleased with the results.

hmmm...i guess its not ALL first-gen phones. mine seems fine, in fact, a bit better than 2.0.2

currently, on 2.1, i'm over 1 day of standby and over 5 hours of usage, and i still have more than 50% battery left. i did recently "calibrate" it though (letting it drain ALL the way, then recharging). most of the usage was probably the ipod tho (which uses considerably less battery than other functions), and some light web browsing.