Very poor battery life since 3.0.1

WisdomSeed wrote:

Here is some other weirdness. I leave my iPhone plugged into the computer over night and I get up this morning and the battery is at 96%. WTH?

Perhaps your computer goes to Standby overnight and stops charging. Then you are losing 4% for standby on the phone, which is about normal. For a real test plug it in to a wall charger overnight. If it isn't at 100% in the morning you have a bad battery.

I bought the 3gs last week from Hong Kong too. It came with 3.01 loaded.. For the first 2 charges, I charge the phone to at least 12 hours each charge... never give me any problem on battery usage.. have been using wifi for at least 3 hours today, spend 1 hours using the GPS, send / received company emails the whole days, spent about 30 mins on a call with a client... the battery indicator is still 3 quarter full.

Is the earlier batches of iphones having these issues... would like to know how to find out which batch of iphone I am having though...

I'm having issues as well.

I bought my iPhone 3GS last Friday on an O2 contract, took it home, synced it, updated to 3.0.1 and then fully charged it. Since then, I've fully charged it once more but I am getting the same issue as many others here in that my battery indicator is registering wildly different amounts of charge. It's just dropped from 68% to 31% and before that dropped from 89% to 44% and back up to 89% again.

Simply put, can anyone confirm if this is a software, firmware or hardware issue. I've only installed two apps since I got it and those are Facebook and Twitteriffic. I think apps are largely irrelevant in this issue though as even the effect of Push or background running or whatever it is shouldn't cause wild fluctuations as I'm experiencing.

Are there any known solutions to this at the moment or are we waiting for some confirmation from Apple and a fix? Or is it simply I've been sold a dodgy iPhone?

Any help would be grand.

Flayla09 wrote:
I'm having issues as well.

I bought my iPhone 3GS last Friday on an O2 contract, took it home, synced it, updated to 3.0.1 and then fully charged it. Since then, I've fully charged it once more but I am getting the same issue as many others here in that my battery indicator is registering wildly different amounts of charge. It's just dropped from 68% to 31% and before that dropped from 89% to 44% and back up to 89% again.

Simply put, can anyone confirm if this is a software, firmware or hardware issue. I've only installed two apps since I got it and those are Facebook and Twitteriffic. I think apps are largely irrelevant in this issue though as even the effect of Push or background running or whatever it is shouldn't cause wild fluctuations as I'm experiencing.

Facebook is the most likely cause of your problem. Try temporarily removing it and see if the problem goes away.

LawrenceChee wrote:
I bought the 3gs last week from Hong Kong too. *It came with 3.01 loaded..* For the first 2 charges, I charge the phone to at least 12 hours each charge... never give me any problem on battery usage.. have been using wifi for at least 3 hours today, spend 1 hours using the GPS, send / received company emails the whole days, spent about 30 mins on a call with a client... the battery indicator is still 3 quarter full.

*It came with 3.01 loaded..*

Ahhhhhhh.....?

Neilio

yes, seriously, it came with 3.0.1 loaded.. that is why I was wondering if the earlier batches of 3gs have the battery problem..and not the later batch.. can anyone able to tell from the packaging which is the latest batch?

An easy fix??? I have replaced my 3gs twice already and after extreme battery conditionting, almost every settings off for optimal use and many tests battery life in general *****!!!. I dont understand how people say they go by using the phone for lets say 3 hours and only drop to 80% by the end of the day, that just not realistic. I went to the genius bar and the tech said they are all like this, he has a battery case and ends up using both the 3gs battery and his external battery in a day. The answer is simple- the small bump in battery capacity in the 3gs in nowwhere to power a cpu twice as powerful as the 3g- hence poor battery life. Just look at the gigantic thread on the forums with like 30 pages of posts titled incredibly poor 3gs battery life. Btw sorry for typos- got to run.

I AM NOT IMAGINING THIS. My iPhone 3GS was bought in Hong Kong. I had it for a couple of weeks now and was fine until I came to New York. I put in a T=Mobile sim and noticed this afternoon, that my battery indicator was down to almost 30% by noon (after a full charge in the morning). By 3pm, I was at 12% and I had to shut it off to preserve battery so I can use my iPhone's subway app to get me back to the hotel. I thought it was just a fluke so I charged it full again just an hour ago. I woke up to check on a few emails and noticed my iPhone's battery indicator is now at 50%. How could that be? A BATTERY DROP OF 50% IN STAND BY MODE??? I am seeing this problem with my own eyes. I shut it off and switched it back on. The problem is still there. It has dwindled to 47% as I write this post, and I have not touched my phone. What gives?

Had an appointment at the Genius Bar at the Apple Store tonight and the solution to my battery problems was a brand new iPhone. I'm still not sure it is really a battery problem, or a software problem but I got a new phone so I'm happy for now. I'll reload all my apps, and set this new phone up the way I was using my old phone and see how the battery life is. I'll post back up in a day or two with my results.

tuesday nite i put my 3gs into the charger to let it charge overnite- wednesday am it showed 98% (?!)

i decided to reset the LiON indicator by allowing the battery to run down after 14 hours of very heavy use (i was out of the office most of the day and in the car- so lots of phone calls/email/surfing (3G)/gps!& ipod listening plus push applications on ) it had run down to 20% left so i turned up the brightness full blast- turned on the ipod had it continuously loop a playlist and for good measure (i was home by then) turned on skype the battery finally gave out @ 2% after 16 hours of what i would call extremely hard usage

i put it in the charger wednesday nite and this am it registered 100% the moral of the story - i think we are all looking at the %bar too much- and a recalibration of the indicator once a month is appropriate

and we are b*tching in my case much ado about nothing

Yeah u have a point -
the night before last my 3G S' battery jumped from 60ish% to 34 to 12 in a matter of minuits , (while not over using it whatsover) to a stage were it went 11, 10, 9 etc with around a 30 sec jump between.
Then it got to 6% and completley shut down with no warning before I had a chance to look for the charger

I find my 3GS stays on 100% for a while, after 4 or 5 hours of being on my desk at work it'll be 97% and by the end of the working day will be about 90% if I haven't used it much. if I use WiFi for a few hours then it will be about 40%, if I play music then less so. What really uses the battery is games.

Still, I charge it every day so I don't mind. If I were ever to be in a situation where I knew I'd be unable to charge it then I wouldn't avoid playing games or browsing the web. Those two things really seem to kill the battery life.

It's hard to believe that all these issues are faulty batteries. I would suggest anything having troubles does a full restore of their iPhone, then runs the battery all the way down, then charges it it fully over USB.
Unlike other phones you can't take the battery out, which can help sometimes to reset the hardware.

I think some of "problems" here are not really problems - it's just the way the iPhone is. You basicly have a computer in your pocket running a flavour of Unix, which despite Apple's limitations, is probably running many processes to check for email, manage alarms and push notifications - not to mention a GSM radio, and a 3G radio - it will be constantly checking signal strength, to determine which tower it needs to connect to.

Hope that helps. Good luck.

I agree, I think usage along with a weak signal (being inside a building all day) contributes to a draining battery. The 3.0.1 update contributes to battery drain about as much a southerly wind at 2 mph!

I think I would know a battery issue when I am confronted with one. This is the third iPhone I've owned. I had the first generation for a year and I owned a 3G for a year before getting the 3GS. This morning, my battery went from folly charged to 69% on the 45 minute commute to work. When I first got it, it mght drop 5% in that time. My 3G may have dropped ten per cent on that ride. I listen to NPRs podcast and play Bejeweled2 or Canfield on Solitaire Forever, neither of which is a battery draining app.

It is an issue. And anyone familiar with Apple knows that Apple is loathe to admit an issue before the lawyers get involved. So I will make an appointment at the Apple Store, but I ain't trying to brook nonna that "you can't use phone features b.s. that is going full flow in this thread.

It's not just a battery meter problem or a battery recondition issue. Since my problem suddenly came about Sunday morning I have let the phone fully discharge until itnshuts itself off, then recharge fully every single charge time. My battery has always showed a 100% charge after a full charge. I've also done a full restore to new iPhone a couple times a day fron Sunday night to yesturday with no resolution. Put simply, from a full charge of 100% the phone would only last about 2.5 hours of use and it would shut itself down. I wake up at 5am, and my phone was litterally dead before 9am.

Now, my replacement phone is still showing 31% battery life under the same conditions, it's 11:40am, and it's showing an actual usage of nearly 4 hours and standby usage of nearly 10 hours. My old phone showed an average of 4.5 hours of stanby use when they pulled the history data from my phone at the Genius Bar. Took the guy 1 minute to start the paper work for the new phone.

I would agree that some issues are user settings and usage issues, but when the battery completey dies in 2.5 hours it's a problem Can't even watch a full movie.