IPhone 3GS Battery Drain and Push E-Mail

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Level 1

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IPhone 3GS Battery Drain and Push E-Mail

Dear All,

I am currently testing the IPhone 3GS for our company. We are currently using Blackberrys with Microsoft Exchange and think it is time to move to a modern smartphone...

Here are my results from testing the battery life over the last 2 weeks:

*1. Test of 300 hours standby time*
Settings (as recommended by jmonaco; see http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=9809826):
- Clean phone (no mail, apps etc)
- 3G activated
- Wifi on for home network ("No" on join available networks)
I tested this for c. 30 hours. The drain rate implied a battery life close to the 300 hours from the Apple specs
=> Result: battery seems fine and within specs

*2. Battery life with push email*
After testing the standby battery life on a clean phone, I connected the IPhone to our 2003 Exchange server and activated push. There are 20-40 emails a day to sync plus contacts and calendar.

Battery life went down significantly to 50 to 60 hours standby time (no usage).

This is a more than 80% decrease in battery life!!!!
Is this deemed to be appropriate???
I understood that according to Apple, activating push should decrease battery life by 10-20%...

Just as a comparison: My 2 year old Blackberry Curve (probably 50% of battery capacity remaining) has more than 120 hours standby time with push activated. From what I hear from colleagues, the Blackberry Bold on 3G has a much better battery life as well.

*3. Problem of battery draining within 5 hours*
Several times I experienced a battery drain in standby within 5 hours.
This is definitely linked to push with exchange.

There are two things that stop the battery drain:
a. Deactivate push (battery life improves immediately)
b. Make a reset of the phone (Press and hold both the Sleep/Wake button and the Home button at the same time for at least 10 seconds. Do not let go of the buttons when the Restart arrow appears, but instead keep pressing them until the Apple logo appears)

Every time this behavior is experienced the Iphone gets slightly warm on the back (in standby mode). There are apparently background tasks running that are deactivated by either a. or b.
This looks like a bug in the current Iphone firmware (3.0).
I was not able to reproduce this behavior by specific actions. It just happens sometimes.
Really annoying…

*In summary:*
1. Battery is perfect and in line with specs
2. A decrease in battery life by more than 80% by just activating push email does not seem appropriate to me. What is your experience?
3. The occasional battery fast drains are awful. If you don’t watch out your Iphone is dead without noticing.

I really love the Iphone. But I think a battery life of 50 hours standby with activating push email is really not what you expect from a modern smartphone. How can it be that other smartphones are able to produce a much better battery life with push emails?
I think that push emails are essential for business users and deactivating push is really not an option.

This post got a bit longer than expected…

What do other users experience / think?

Regards

Message was edited by: sheaven

Iphone 3GS, iPhone OS 3.0

Posted on Jul 15, 2009 2:02 AM

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Answer 1

nick101

Level 5

5,138 points

Jul 15, 2009 3:19 AM in response to sheaven

I just want to say that this is an excellent and informative post. Thanks.

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Answer 2

w7ox

Level 4

2,407 points

Jul 15, 2009 3:21 AM in response to sheaven

Yes. Very interesting data which I'm sure will be useful to many.

Phil

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Answer 3

Jul 15, 2009 4:04 AM in response to sheaven

I'm going to go for it here, so bare with me...

I use my iPhone for business, with Push activated. I also experience a drop in battery life though it has never concerned me. Unless you are in the middle of the Sahara, no-one is typically far from a USB port or electricity point. The longest I use my iPhone with the risk of the battery draining is when I am on a boring flight and I'll play games or listen to music constantly. I remedied that by buying a Kensington power adaptor which charges the iPhone on the go. You can get various types of adaptors just through a Google search.

I previously used a BlackBerry. One day I was sat in an airport terminal gate with about 100 other BlackBerry users, all feeling important, all checking business emails like it was a matter of life or death. On landing at the end of the flight, all I heard was the sound of those 100 BlackBerrys waking up and pushing emails so far up the a**es of its users that I was annoyed at myself for being associated with them.

The iPhone is 50% smartphone, 50% entertainment... if the battery life is not as great, who cares? The iPhone is a joy and breath of fresh air compared to its so-called rivals. The iPhone user interface is far superior, is highly customisable and beyond that, it keeps getting better with each FREE software update. Of course, there will always be bugs, but that is because Apple are at the forefront of technology and constantly introducing new features, and they are learning quickly from any mistakes that have been discovered and reported by its millions of users... BlackBerry doesn't give a s**t what its users think. The iPhone does everything I need from it and if my circumstances change and I need something else, I can get it from the App Store.

I'll be flying from London to Madrid next Monday and I guarantee you that as all those BlackBerry-using businessmen and businesswomen play BrickBreaker, they'll be looking at my iPhone intrigingly as it plays my chosen movie, endless music collection and challenges me to some awesome gaming... I can still check my email if I get bored!

I love it. And so will your colleagues.

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Answer 4

sheaven Author

Level 1

0 points

Jul 15, 2009 6:54 AM in response to epsilon delta

I absolutely agree with you. The iPhone is an awesome phone.

When constantly using the phone I get 5 to 6 hours usage time which is completely appropriate - thus no problem during a normal work day.

But when travelling on short trips (i.e. over the weekend) I really would like to be in a position to only carry the phone and come through at least 2 days with light usage (no gaming, videos etc.).

And I fully agree that standby time is perfect as long as push is deactivated. But I think an 80% drop in standby time by activating push seems way too much. When comparing to Blackberry this just seems to be a bad implementation of push emails. I do not know the impact of activating push on Windows Mobile phones but I would guess that the impact is quite lower.

This gets especially strange when comparing to the announcement of Apple that push should impact battery life by only 20%.

Therefore, the question is: Do other users experience the same impact or might this be an error on my side?

I do not think that there is disagreement about the functionality of the iPhone. The problem is only the impact of push email (a standard feature for business users) on battery life…

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Answer 5

Jul 15, 2009 7:04 AM in response to sheaven

first of all... great post full of useful data.

i agree with everything said above. I've been using iPhones since they came out and while i love almost every aspect of the phone i am slightly (only slightly) disappointed with the battery life.

i've followed all the battery "tuning" techniques and i've still found my battery life to vary wildly from day to day (sometimes i get a single day per charge, sometimes two, sometimes a few hours) with no rhyme or reason... all settings being exactly the same. Sometimes it will vary from update to update, which i'm sure has everything to do with the fact that Apple will tune services when they issue the updates.

i would also love to be able to replace the battery so i could at least carry a spare. This is one area where the Blackberry outshines the iPhone.

The other thing to mention is that the other area where the Blackberry shines is in email in general. It was designed (way back in the day) to be an email device... and only an email device. It does everything else poorly, but i always tell folks, if all you ever do is email, you can't go wrong with a Blackberry and an iPhone is overkill.... but, if you do ANYTHING else, iPhone is your best friend.

all this being said, i just got a 3GS... so we'll see how it's battery does. 🙂

- sean

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Answer 6

Randy Fast

Level 4

1,426 points

Jul 15, 2009 7:04 AM in response to sheaven

That 300 hours of stand by time is probably if you have it in air plane mode and everything off. I've never seen any cell phone approach their claimed several hundred hours of standby time, I wouldn't even consider 100 to be any where close to an accurate measure.

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Answer 7

sheaven Author

Level 1

0 points

Jul 15, 2009 8:00 AM in response to Randy Fast

I can just say that I it tested the 300 hours with the settings by jmonaco ( http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=9809826).
These seem to be official settings used by Apple to determine the 300 hours standby. And I can confirm that the 300 hours standby are real (no airplane mode).
The settings are:
- Clean phone (no mail, apps etc)
- 3G activated (full reception)
- Wifi on for home network ("No" on join available networks)

That also fits the test environment metioned by Apple:
http://www.apple.com/iphone/battery.html

Therefore:
- Standby without push: 300 hours
- Standby with push: 50-60 hours (at least for me)

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Answer 8

sheaven Author

Level 1

0 points

Jul 15, 2009 8:34 AM in response to sheaven

I just found this picture in the German forum apfeltalk.de:
http://s3.directupload.net/file/d/1576/i84ifeft_jpg.htm

5 days standby and more than 3 hours actual usage. Battery indicator is still green...
Settings are:
- NO Push
- NO W-Lan
- NO Bluetooth
- 3G only activated for internet surfing otherwise EDGE
- NO GPS (activated when necessary)

Here the link to the thread:
http://www.apfeltalk.de/forum/iphone-3g-akku-t158164-11.html

I think this is a very impressive battery life and definately possible (as long as push is not active).

I do not want to deactivate push emails...

Message was edited by: sheaven

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