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Original iPhone 3.0 upgrade - No battery life and running warm to hot

I upgraded my original iPhone to 5.0 with no problems. After playing around with some of the new features I noticed that my iPhone was hot to the touch. I left it alone for a while in standby and it was still warm. I turned off "Find My iPhone" thinking it had something to do with running hot, it made no difference. I also noticed my battery life is shot. At 4:30 I had a full charge and only used the phone once. It has been in standby mode since that call, it is now 8:20 and I am down to 10%. Something is running that is killing my battery. Anyone else experience this problem?
Any help here will be greatly appreciated.

iMac G5 iSight/Macbook Pro 08, Mac OS X (10.5.4)

Posted on Jun 17, 2009 5:21 PM

Reply
162 replies

Jun 23, 2009 11:12 PM in response to BenLin

gud day,, same hir,, also having problem with my batery life after update from 2.2 to 3.0 my batery keep dis charging even im not using it. also it keep geting hot. and if icharge it, batery icon disply the plug icon on the batery bar insted of the electric icon that notify it is charging.pls help.

ive tried restoring it but problem keep goin.
bfor updating my iphone,,, it works wel, but after the update to 3.0,,,,, im having this prob..................
can you help me pls

Jun 24, 2009 2:13 AM in response to Vito A.

I'm having similar issues with my battery life after the update to 3.0 using my iphone 3G. It seems to be related to the mail in my case. Every time I check my email, it crashes while trying to download messages. After that the battery life goes teets up and the phone heats up. Sometimes the auto time out does not work hence if I leave the phone at rest it never shuts itself off. This issue however is inconsistent. I've also had the battery die once while it was plugged in. I was playing an app game at the time and had been for awhile, but it was plugged in. Most Curious. I wish they had some sort of verbose log to check out for troubleshooting.

Jun 24, 2009 8:28 AM in response to Vito A.

Here's an extreme and slow process but it's likely to solve or find your battery problem...

1. Restore as new (not from a backup) and don't sync any apps, music video, etc
2. Don't sync or add anything to the phone, i.e. email, apps, etc.
3. Calibrate the battery meter by fully discharging and the fully recharging the battery.
4. Turn off Push, Wifi, 3G, Location services and BT.
5. Use it just as a phone and see how battery life is
6. One at a time, add the things that are most important to you, i.e. email, music video, apps, etc
7. Check battery life between each one.
8. If the battery/heating problem is solved, over time you'll be able to add all your 'stuff' back on. If not, you'll find the culprit. If the culprit is actually the battery, perhaps it's time to get it replaced.

I realize this may take a while (a few days to a week) but it may be worth it to those that are having real problems.

Jun 24, 2009 10:20 AM in response to bimmer91

I upgraded my Original 2g iPhone to 3.0 two days ago. The first day, my battery ran down before the end of the day, it died. I turned off Location Services. I didn't see much improvement. Today I turned off Push email services. So far, that seems to have done the trick and the phone is holding power.

So it MAY be the push service. I now have mail on "Fetch". No big deal to me one way or the other, but this is not what the new software was designed for. We should have Push w/o a problem.
Tomorrow, I will turn back on Push and see if the problem re-occurs. If if doesn't, then the problem lies elsewhere. One thought I have had is that my contacts may have taken some time to update from MobileMe and this runs in the background. As it was a fresh install, maybe that could have been a source of power-drain in the first 24 hours. We will see...

Jun 25, 2009 12:52 AM in response to Vito A.

Another "same here". I have a 2G phone, which had a 1-2 day battery life before upgrading, and had approximately 8 hour battery life afterwards. Also warm to the touch.

Disabling Push & WiFi & setting manual fetch times helped dramatically, but not enough, the battery just made 15 hours before finally going completely.

Message was edited by: plasmaboy

Jun 25, 2009 6:03 PM in response to plasmaboy

Yet another same here. It seems as though Apple is at least aware of the problem(s), i.e. an OS3 bug that seems to be hardware independent (impacting ALL 1G, 2G and GS phones, but not consistently).

SYMPTOMS: Include some or all of the following . . . rapid discharge (less than two hours from a fully charged phone, failure to charge (by AC adapter or USB to computer), failure to charge completely, perpetual dead battery icon, inability to boot, inability to automatically sleep, quite warm on upper back side, slow email, indication of a full or partially full charge dropping to no charge or dead when removed from charging source.

CAUSE: OS3 Bug prevents consistent charging, draining the battery even when plugged in to a computer via the USB or into an A/C adapter (although I've been able to intermittently charge on an A/C adapter). In push mode, the Exchange email client on the iPhone continually queries the Exchange Server, cycling the iPhone CPU and continually draining the battery at a high rate (can

WHAT I'VE BEEN TOLD BY APPLE:

1) Defective Hardware (though I'm on my third 3G in a week, so I don't think hardware is the problem . . . Apple will consider replacement with a new 3G if my third 3G has the same problem)

2) Corrupted App in iTunes - so I manually reloaded each app directly over wi-fi, one app at a time, this worked until I configured Exchange Email, at which time syptoms immediately appeared . . . so corrupted app unlikely.

3) Initial data transfer after email configuration . . . but symptoms continued long after this.

4) Wi-Fi - but turning wi-fi on or off had little effect, beyond normal.
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*SOLUTION: Turning off "push" on your exchange email account*

1) Go to Settings - Mail, Contacts, Calendars - Fetch New Data
2) Set Fetch Setting to 15 minutes to approximate the much more frequent "push" uploads and downloads. NOTE: Turning off "push" at this level MAY NOT turn off push on your exchange email account
3) Select - Advanced -
4) Identify and select your Exchange Server account
5) Select - Fetch -
6) Leave settings

Phone should cool down in a few minutes and work normally. I was told that this is likely to be the "fix" until a patch is issued. No time frame was given for an actual fix that allows Exchange users to use push technology. Disappointing, since broader use of "push" technology beyond exchange was one of the big benefits of OS 3.0.

NOTE: THIS PROBLEM DOES NOT OCCUR ON ALL iPHONES WITH OS3 USING THE EXCHANGE CLIENT. I have second 3G phone, identically configured (including push to exchange email) that has no symptoms at all. Go figure.

Jun 25, 2009 11:08 PM in response to look4uinmi

I upgraded 2 phones, my wife's 2G and my 3G. Hers worked fine immediately and has no battery life problems or overheating even with mobile me push on. My 3G had battery life problems and overheating even with the push settings configured the same way as the 2G. Several restores did not help. I finally did a recovery mode restore of 3.0 firmware without loading a backup of my old configuration. I ran that for a while with no problems then restored the backup, did an "Erase All Settings" and everything has been running fine for the last two days. My battery life is now the same as it was with 2.2.1. I don't know if I just got lucky with the restore or whether there is something to the sequence I tried.

I'd also had problems with my contacts and calendar missing when I first put 3.0 on the 3G and didn't get them back until the last procedure that fixed the battery problem.

John

Message was edited by: Endymion42

Jun 26, 2009 1:40 AM in response to plasmaboy

A follow-up, I tried about a million little things yesterday, and my issues appear to be gone. Push was already disabled, and though I am extraordinarily skeptical, the last thing I bothered trying was two hard-resets as per someone else's post. It's been almost 12 hours now, with wifi enabled, and my battery still shows full charge.

So don't give up hope?

Original iPhone 3.0 upgrade - No battery life and running warm to hot

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