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

I've made the so long attended upgrade to iPhone OS 3.1 and strangely battery life has got even worse than before. The phone is using 10-12% of the battery every hour of standby; usage counter grows by 35-40 minutes for every hour of standby. This happens with a clean install and just email setup (mobileme with push), with restore or partial restore. Turning push off only makes it slightly better.

I was wondring if I were the only one experiencing this...

iPhone 3Gs 32Gb (W), Other OS, iPhone OS 3.1

Posted on Sep 10, 2009 5:43 AM

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1,907 replies

Mar 11, 2018 12:18 PM in response to gumsie

Glad to stumble across this thread. My 3GS battery life since the 3.1 upgrade has been abysmal - with push notification, Bluetooth, and WiFi all off, no more than 20 minutes of phone conversations, and operating in an area with 3-5 bars of 3G my phone is dead in four hours on most days and five-six on the rest. It's not like I'm using the thing for music or anything else, either - it's just sitting there losing power.

In the infrequent times I use Google Maps I can actually watch the percentage meter go down in real time.

Mar 11, 2018 12:18 PM in response to mckvakk

At 9:15 AM ET, I unplugged my phone from its charger - it had been charging all night. WiFi, Bluetooth, and 3G are all turned off. I received one 30 second phone call and have made no phone calls.

3 hours and 15 minutes later, I have 56% battery life. This is just silly.

Sep 10, 2009 5:56 AM in response to akarelin

Having exactly the same problem.
Battery life was poor but reasonable before last night.

I went to sleep ater upgrading with the battery at 100% and woke up six hours later to find it at 55%. Screen off, didn't receive any phone calls during the night, wi-fi and bluetooth off, and 3G on (usually it would be above 90% in that same scenario).

...not happy.

Sep 10, 2009 6:44 AM in response to Dave Hutch

I can't do that until later today, since I'm at work and my main iTunes is at home.

Not something I'm looking forward, since it would mean that all the information that's "unsynchable" (data applications save on their own) wouldn't be restored after "restore as new", right? And restoring from a back-up would defeat the purpose of "restore as new", right?

Mostly I'm interested in knowing if this is a widespread problem, so see if I can have hopes of Apple acknowledging it...

Regards,

Sep 10, 2009 7:03 AM in response to akarelin

Hi

I did update so my stuff was still there and the battery was terrible. I have since done a restore wile anoying! it did help the battery life alot but I see no difference really from 3.0.1 still 3g data chops the battery at 1% every 1-2 mins!

Was the improved battery just to shut us up? and the fact is the 3gs has just got a crap battery!

One thing I am happy about is the audio flaws have all been fixed no more tinnitus recording video lol!

Cheers guys

Message was edited by: Aibo82

Message was edited by: Aibo82

Sep 10, 2009 8:42 AM in response to Jason L

This is not even funny Jason... Really.

I now have a completely clean phone, installed anew through DFU. Now backups restored. Just setup my mobileme email on it and installed 2 (two) applications. iSip and DevInfo. Having push notifications and push email enabled, I'm loosing power at a rate of *8%/hour while in standby*.

Restoring my backup (which, by the way, is not an "option" but a rather important continuity pre-requisite) lets me have the same horrible battery performance. Turning push notifications and mail push off and booting the phone after that makes battery drain disappear (~1% every 1.5 hours).

Apple declares that using "Push" drains the battery 20% more. Even if this is an approximation, we're not even close to approximately 20% or 30% or even 40% increase. We're talking about battery drain growing 12-fold!

So pray try to help us – poor users – instead of repeating the link we've all seen thousands of times and that, frankly, has very little to do with how our iPhones perform in real life.

Thank you.

Sep 10, 2009 9:08 AM in response to akarelin

I thought the battery life was already poor with 3GS, but guess it was bearable (learned to use it to get me through a day and charge at night). However after updating to 3.1 last night, it seems like my battery is draining faster than normal... 3% drop in less than an hour, then 4% drop for talking for 15 minutes. Strange... This has not happened before updating to 3.1. LMAO, we were all expecting (at least I was) a battery improvement with 3.1, and instead we get this BS!?!?! As an Apple lover, I have to admit this is a truly discouraging experience... If they could make the battery life worse, I'm sure they could make it better too. Let's cross our fingers and hope that 3.2 or 3.1.1 would fix this problem. sigh...

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

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