iPhone 3GS with fw 3.1 – battery life gets even worse

they do get tested.

John, excellent post, very detailed. I, too, have experienced dismal battery life since the upgrade from 3.0.1 to 3.1. Before the update, I experienced fairly good battery life (charging once every two days), but now have to recharge twice a day. Totally unacceptable.

I really hope Apple comes out with a fix (3.1.1?) soon. If it's going to be more than a week or so before a fix is available, Apple should publish a way to roll back to FW version 3.0.1 so our phones would be useable.

Rob

I'm in the same boat now, my battery life on 3GS was really good under 3.0, it dropped from 100% to 50% after a full days use. When i upgraded to 3.1 battery severely dropped. Now i get 100% down to about 20% after a full days use. There has been no general change of my usage, or any new apps installed.

Not every unit. My wife's and my battery life have actually improved. NO complaints coming from me nor my wife with battery issues as I have mentioned already.

I have the same problem. After updating to 3.1 my battery life just disappeared. With a full charge my phone wont last through the evening before its in the red. I have never had any problem with my 3gs until now.

I'm also having issues with battery life. My 3gs has been off charge for about 2 hours today, and used for nothing other than a 2 minute conversation and itunes remote for a few minutes but it's already down to 75% of it's charge. It wasn't like this when I first got it a month ago before I'd upgraded it to 3.1. I'm having to charge it 2-3 times a day at present, and even then, I'm often running low on battery when I come back home in the evening...

Bought 2 iphones (3Gs 32 Gig black) about 2 months ago. One for my wife and one for me.Two days ago, wifes' iphone started having unusual drainage from the battery.She'll check email and the battery will go down 20%! Even when the iphone is in sleep mode overnight with wifi, push, location service and bluetooth off, battery will drain about 30%. She barely gets 2 hours with minimal use.

We tried rebooting, letting the phone complete discharge and charge to full before use, did a restore from itunes. Nothing helps ! ! !

I'm not experiencing any issues on my iphone yet.

Both iphones running 3.1 software. Both phones bought at the same time from Apple store.

Apple, if you are reading this, please find the issue and fix it.

Message was edited by: Robert Stone 123

Hi,

I'm completly recgnizing the same consequences about battery life like other participants. I disconnected bluetooth, wifi, push, push mail, ... And unfortunatly, every hour, my phone is loosing around 7 % batterie life.
So, Apple developpers, please help us...
thanks
JC

You may be in a high-signal area. The phone connects with the mother ship every so often, in part to know where it is with respect to neighboring cells. If the signal is good, it takes only one attempt. If not, it tries again at a higher level. It keeps bumping up the power until the signal to noise ratio is adequate. If this doesn't work, then it scans for another channel and repeats. The Apple testers probably live right under a cell tower and have never encountered this. Many of us (especially AT&T customers) live in weak-signal areas, or on the border between cells, where this gets really bad. So my theory: part of the problem is AT&T's dilute network, and part of it is Apple's bad choice of firmware strategies.

I have not tried this, but I will: pick a day when you don't need the phone at all (?), charge it to 100%, and put it in airplane mode. Then see how the battery life looks.

Nope. I'm also having the same problem.

It's not because of AT&T. I live in Canada and am on Rogers. I have a cell tower across the street and only had the high battery droppage after 3.1. Before 3.1 I actually had spectacular battery. In airplane mode there seems to be normal battery loss. But when off airplane mode with everything else off battery drops about 10% every 2 hours or so without any useage

I too have had much-reduced battery life since the 3.1 "upgrade" to my 32GB iPhone 3GS. I am in the UK with O2.

I always leave it charging overnight so typically start at 100%. I primarily use my iPhone for checking email, browsing the web and gaming and at the end of a typical day my iPhone would be at about 60%. Not great but given the functionality of the device, acceptable.

However, post 3.1 the power just drains away at a shocking rate. It even loses power on standby. It also seems warmer than usual when in my pocket. I've not changed the way I use the device, it seems soley related to 3.1.

I hope Apple can identify and resolve this issue and issue a fix soon. If not, please let us go back to the previous firmware.

Why did Apple not spot this issue before releasing 3.1?

I have white 16gig 3GS. It's funny as I clicked on the reply link on the website battery dropped by 2% in a matter of 2 mins

Seems that way...but I have a 32GB Black 3GS and have better life under 3.1 than 3.0.1

Agreed that Apple really should rethink that testing phase of battery life with real life consumer set up and apps to truly get a battery "test" to be valid...

Either that or they have a REAL big issue with the actual battery manufacturer and need to just nix who they used for 3GS and get a new supplier