VERY VERY Poor Battery Life

After reading this thread, I ran my less than one week old iPhone 3GS all the way down to where it shut itself off. I then connected it to my iMac where it idled there until there was enough juice to reboot. When it rebooted, I was prompted to update my iPhone OS and carrier files and I said okay. I let the phone recharge complete overnight.

This AM, at about 5:40 EDT, I un-cradled it. As I write this email, my battery indicator still reads 100% and it says I have had 9 minutes of usage and 29 minutes of standby.

And presently, I have WIFI, auto-brightness, and push on, but no bluetooth. I also have an Exchange email, a Yahoo email, and a Gmail email being checked.

If this fix is durable, and I will know since I have a phone intensive day ahead of me, I will likely subscribe to the theory that the problem is in software that calibrates the battery. Unfortunately, I cannot tease apart whether it was the software update or cycling the battery that has produced this so far, knock on wood, promising result.

Minor update. With 1h40m of standby and 14m of usage, my battery reads 97%. WIFI, Push, Auto-brightness still on.

Mine started going bad today, it fell from 50% to 20% in the space of 30 minutes while idle! It then stayed at 17% all evening, before going down to 12%, at which point I switched it off completely. The next morning it had no power, so either a major software bug or my phone lost 12% of battery life while switched off.

Will see how it goes for a few more days, and try and new update before I think about returning it.

May have been too hasty in proclaiming success. Now I have 41 minutes of usage and 3h6m of standby. I am down to 88%

Assuming your 41 minutes was using the phone or 3G that's about right. The spec is "up to" 6 hours of voice and/or Internet; 41 minutes is 11% of that 6 hours, which means you should be at 89%. The 6 hours assumes a strong signal; it will be less than that if you are below 5 bars.

Interesting. I actually have dreadful signal at home. When my phone is on the network, I rarely have more than 1 or 2 bars and it's often Edge.

I've have a similar problem as you have, my battery life has been fine, and i got the MMS update, but a few days ago the battery life has gone bad. I can't get more than a day out of the phone, and less than 3 hours of use and 24 hours of standby from a full charge to completely dead.

Overnight it drops around 20% in an 8 hour time frame. Usually that would be about 3% at most.

I am on 85% on 26 minutes, and that was mostly internet (using Wi-Fi) and a 30 second call using 3G. That doesn't seem that good to me.

Having same battery issues, but seem worse than yours. I do have blue tooth on, so it works on my hands free in the truck. Doesn't seem to matter what I do, the battery life just isn't great.

If anyone cares, I have 3h30m of usage and 6h50m of Standby. I am at 57% of battery life.

Message was edited by: David M. Fresco