Very poor battery life since 3.0.1

I had the same promblem with 3.0.1 but after I did a restore and set up as a new phone it was all good. I get 2 days stanby with 8 hours usage. Mostly Music.
I dont know if that will help anyone else but it worked for me.

Unfortunately I have also noticed this issue. Since I have updated to version 3.0.1 my battery drains after being sat in my office drawer doing absolutely nothing. So doing nothing it drains by the time i finish (8 hours later) so i dread to think what it will be like when i actually use my phone. I may arrange a visit to the apple store

It probably isn't 3.0.1 directly. There are a number of subtle battery drains that you should check out.

1. If you put the phone to sleep while an app is running that app has the option of continuing to run. So if you open, say, NY Times, WSJ, AP News Sirus/XM, Wunderadio, YahooMessenger, AIM, or any app that accesses data that app will continue to run. This is intentional; you don't want your internet radio to stop when you turn off the screen. For apps that don't play music you may not be aware that they are still running. Even apps that don't have to run may continue doing so if they are not well written. Thus, try closing apps with the Home key before putting the phone to sleep with the Sleep button.

2. Notifications. This feature allows programs to wake up on a signal. It's useful, as it can alert you to news, or that you have an IM. But it also consumes power. To see if this is what is draining your battery turn Notifications off for a day (in Settings) and see if battery life improves.

3. Push email. If you have Push enabled the mail app will run for a couple of minutes after each message is received. This time can add up.

All of these are normal features, not bugs. It is the way the phone is intended to work. If none of them apply to you then you have some other battery problem that needs further investigation.

Are you sure notifications allow a program to wake up? I don't know the ins and out of the API, but I thought they could only pop up a notification, modify a badge or play a sound - the app itself never starts.

Any iPhone developers who know the SDK care to comment?


Also putting your phone in a draw will make the signal strength weaker, that could cause battery problems.

Hello everyone.

I´ve got the same problem with my original german T-Mobile iPhone 3GS, 32 GB.

Everything was fine. Even with the update to 3.0.1.

Then, last tuesday, I checked my iPhone for new messages before going to bed. The battery had 56%. In the morning it was shut off.
It took almost 20 minutes on the car charger before I was able to start the iPhone.

Since then the battery life, or better; the battery status; is quite strange. For example I charged it up to 100% in the afternoon. At 19:30 it had 85%. The following morning, at 6:00, it had 73%. At 13:40 it had 81%. Ten minutes later it had only 45%.
Yesterday I charged it up to 100% at 18:00. I went to bed at 22:45. It had 90%. This morning at 9:30 it had 77%. At 12:00 it had 90%. At 13:00 it had 88%. At 14:00 it had 68%. I didn´t do anything in that time. Only Standby, and battery check at the times I wrote.

Wifi is activated, also location. Push is deactivated.



I just set the iPhone up as a new iPhone. And I deleted the Facebook-App. Because the Update of the App was the only thing I´ve changed to the phone before this all started.

I will watch this thing. If the problem is still there, I will contact the Apple support.

Okay I did the restore and I have noticed a big improvement, restores are a p.i.t.a. (pain in the ...) But that does seem to have made a difference (but I am not leaving home without a cord)

Ok. Yesterday evening it had 100% at 19:30. Overnight Standby and it is now down to 89% at 9:50. It´s not what I would call a good battery, but if it will go on this way, it´s ok. But jumps of 20% down and/or up are not ok in my mind.

Message was edited by: Dennis Stenger

10% over night is pretty normal. If you were to charge it fully, turn of phone off (hold down the power button and slide to switch off) and then found it was down 10% then you might have a problem. However the 10% that's gone will be because the phone was doing 'stuff' all night, checking for email, maintaining push connections, and keeping in contact with the cell network.

I often leave mine in flight mode at night. Because I don't want to be alerted about new emails (I miss not being able to configure the times of day it checks, like I could on my N95) texts or phone calls, but I still want the alarm to go off in the morning. Any if anyone needs to get hold of me urgently then they'll call the house phone.

Yes, 10% is ok. But as I wrote, the only thing activated is WiFi, Location and 3G. Mails are checked manually (Push off). But anyway; this 10% loss is ok for me.

The idea with a full charge and a complete shut off over night is very good. I will try this next.


My "problem" isn´t the battery life in general. It´s more the strange way it goes down. And it wan´t this was from the beginning. That´s why I´m a bit confused.

Don't know if this will help anyone, but 2 days ago, I noticed that my 3GS battery was draining about 10% per hour. The phone was much warmer than normal all the time, and I had changed absolutely nothing; no additional apps, no configuration changes, etc.

For the past 48 hours, I tried all of the usual stuff;
- soft-boot,
- hard-boot,
- restore to backup,
- restore to new phone
- turn off push
- turn off Location Services
- turn off WiFi
- switch from 3G to Edge
- turn on Airplane mode for 15s and then off again (to re-affiliate with a new cell-tower)

I also downloaded the great "System Activity Monitor" app from the AppStore (Recession Apps) and killed all application processes -- to confirm that it wasn't a rogue app, stuck in a persistent send-recieve loop.

In short, nothing helped. Then, on a lark, I popped out the SIM, and charged it to 100%. After a couple of hours, I was down to 99%. Then I recharged to 100% and turned everything back on (WiFi, Location Services, Push, etc.) -- still with SIM out of the phone. After 2 hours, I was at 98%, and the phone back-panel wasn't getting 'warm'.

So, I charged to 100% once again, and popped the SIM back in and allowed the phone to affiliate with a 3G tower. After an hour or so, the battery was already down to 80% and the phone was really warm.

This is decidedly unscientific to be sure, but it would seem that -- given the lack of changes to the phone (configuration, sync, new apps, etc.) and the 'spontaneous' battery drain when connected to AT&T's network, we might very well be barking up the wrong tree. All of my testing has been from the same geo-location where I'm (presumably) continuing to be affiliated off the same AT&T tower. So, I'm taking a road trip, 30 miles or so, to see if there is any change associated with cell-tower footprint.

My thought is that, as AT&T is mucking up the network, sending new software to towers for the MMS 'upgrade', something is not quite right, and the phone's radio is continually conversing with the tower -- more so than usual (or normal). As a result, I don't know where the blame might be, but if anyone else can confirm that popping the SIM out results in significantly less battery drain, that might be an interesting data point.

GP-Dalls; interesting facts for you US-guys. But I don´t think it can be the reason for Users in Europe.

I´ve just checked my phone. It´s not warm at all.

Some guys over here in germany had problems with old SIM-cards. They said, older cards would drain more power only by use. And that the older ones could be the reason if you don´t have a good connectivity.
So I went to an T-Mobile store on thursday and got a new card, as my old one was four years old.



Ok. So far I´m happy with my battery life for today. It´s now almost 24 hours since the last complete charge. I´ve used the phone for 27 Minutes. I´ve sent three SMS and received two. Location is one, Wifi is on, 3G is on. Push is off.
Since yesterday the battery status is constantly going down. No jumps of up to 20% at once, or stuff like that. And no going down and going up again.
Only change; restore to new phone, and I didn´t installed the Facebook-App again.



One thing off topic; I really hope all the stuff I write here is ok, and my english isn´t too bad. It´s a long time since I was in school, and I don´t have to use my english that much. So; Sorry if some things may be not perfect.

I had the very same problem and it seems to me there are quite a few people having this issue. The iPhone was never known for outstanding battery life and understandably so considering how much technology can be going at once but my battery since the 3.0.1 update has been horrible.

I saw skeptics on here defend the update. I agree and don't. While it's far more likely that there's a problem with the individual phone and not the update, there might also be something about their particular configuration that isn't meshing well with the update. If that is the case, then it is indeed Apple's job to figure it out. In business, the goal is not to pacify most of your customers, it's to SATISFY ALL of your customers. If Apple truly believed that someone's complaint wasn't worth looking into, I guarantee you they would not be in business long. Me personally, I've had many problems with Apple products and what keeps me coming back for more is that whether or not the problem was common, they've always gone out of their way to fix it.

It is a daunting task however to make applications and updates that are fully compatible with every possible configuration. Indeed, it's a near impossible task. I will say this, however, these forums do provide Apple with valuable feedback about the operation of it's hardware and software. Regardless of their response, or lack there of, I assure you that Apple is paying attention and that the updates that released for any software very well could include a fix for a minority issue. In fact, it is far more likely for them to release it in a coming update versus taking on the problem individually.

Now, to move on.....I resolved my issue by using a different USB cable and restoring the phone as new. I know many of you believe the USB may not be a problem but it can cause irregular issues. For instance, music I had purchased on my phone recently would not transfer in iTunes or even appear in Senuti. Music I had purchased or uploaded to my phone further back would be there, just not the new stuff. This was also the issue on my Windows 7 desktop with iTunes. As soon as I replaced the USB cable, all music was available and I was able to transfer (I had never tried Senuti until this issue came along, now I don't have to).

Now I have tried to restore my phone before in an effort to resolve the battery issue but it really didn't do much. Someone mentioned doing a clean restore without a backup. I made a backup regardless but then I restored the phone as a new phone. So far after charging and having the phone in standby, it has retained a full charge over 3 hours. Before it would've dropped to at least two thirds. I hope this will help some of you out. I believe the USB cable may have caused some issues with the both the backups and restorations. The new cable along with a fresh restoration (not from backup) did it for me. Take care!

All,

One final post -- and a solution that seems to have resolved my particular issue. In several other threads, there was a common assertion that deleting and re-creating mail accounts (specifically an Exchange account) would help. Since I was able to send/receive mail on all accounts, I didn't bother to give it a try -- until late this evening.

As it turns out, there was a calendar appointment that was 'stuck' somewhere in the ether between the Exchange server and my iPhone in a perpetual ack/nak loop; confirmed by viewing the Exchange logs, and seeing the attempted communication with my phone. In any case, I deleted the account (on the iPhone), recreated it, the offending calendar appointment came through to my phone, and my battery drain is now at the typical (for my device) 1% per hour.

While I can't speak to why the iPhone ActiveSync stack insisted on using the GPRS path rather than WiFi, I will certainly start paying more attention to the "Cellular Network" bytes transferred metric on the Usage tab -- which was my initial tip-off.

Hope this helps someone although, again, it's been mentioned several times on other threads.

I am getting a really good battery life now.
since I am staying home for the whole weekend, so I fully charged my phone 4 hours to 100% on Thursday afternoon around 3PM or so. with
1. Wi-Fi off
2. location service off
3. no push
4. turn off 3G service.

Result:
Usage, 5 hours, 23 mins, ( today I had 1 hour and half on the phone with HP customer service, and I was ****** off by HP service )
Standby: 3 days, 5 hours.

I always charge my phone with the battery has 2%-5% left.

since 3.1 update! i got battery problems! simple as that!