Iphone 4 Battery life Terrible (34 hours standby?)

Have I got a defective Iphone? I have turned off all notification on the phone, i left wifi and 3g turned on with only 1 exchange account on phone set to push. I tested the phone out (as I thought it had terrible battery life) and after a full 100% charge, i put it on standby, unplugged it and went to sleep. When i woke up 9 hours later 74% battery life remaining. How is this acceptable? its nearly 10x less power efficient then the Apple website claims. That coupled with antenna problem etc im not sure if im keeping this product, it seems defective to me, which is a shame as I love Iphone... but this battery is FAR FAR worse then the 3G i sold it for.

P.S. where i live in with perfect signal, so the power drain is not caused by weak network signals.

HELP and ADVICE PLEASE!!!!

Iphone 4, iOS 4

Posted on Jun 27, 2010 2:18 AM

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63 replies

Jun 28, 2010 7:16 AM in response to Community User

Gerald Edgar wrote:
Foreverseeking wrote:

NO comment in the press yet

review in the local paper said battery life better than 3GS


I meant that there is no comment in the press yet about people having problems with battery's. I can see there are people saying they have great battery life! but there are many on many forums across the internet whose iphones drain while in standby but around 20-40% over night. It doesn't seem like a small amount, judging by the amount of posts it would seem a reasonable % of people suffer this problem, but no word in any papers about it, maybe it is just a small number of phones. My phone lost 8% in the last 2 hours of standby (i literally only pressed the home button to see % once just now.) that's a big problem.

Jun 28, 2010 11:09 PM in response to Foreverseeking

So after some testing, restoring the phone, resetting network settings etc., for me it is definetly push notifications which kill the battery. With push on, I loose 4%-5% of battery an hour. When I read a PDF in iBooks, I can literally watch the battery dying. Which means I also loose 40% per night - although I am on a WiFi network at home, which I find weird.
When I turn push off globally, the battery seems perfect. 0%-3% drain per night, no problems when I read PDFs or anything.
I don't really need push (I actually find it quite annoying receiving my mails all the time) and I never used it on my 2G, but on the other hand there seems to be an issue. I reckon that in my case Apple will just tell me that push funcionallity is a battery killer and refuse to exchange my phone...
Well, at least for me it seems to be not a general production fault with the battery.

Jun 28, 2010 11:12 PM in response to Blindside86

Tested my phone again last night, shocked at what i found.

Again, 3g and wifi turned on
No email, no push, no fetch, no apps, no notifications

A full charge, 100%, call times reset.

went to sleep for 7 hours. Battery, 80%

Stats: 7 hours standby 10 mins usage 10 mins calltime ???

where has this call time come from? is the iphone calling somewhere when im asleep? Its going back, calling apple as soon as they are open. Thankyou all for your input, its really been informative.

For you out there whose iphone drains while in standby, check to see if you have the same problem with your call metre going up despite not actually making a single call.

Also can anyone confirm (whose iphones battery seems normal) that this doesnt happen on there phone?

Cheers.

Jul 2, 2010 5:07 AM in response to 2Face

My battery has been running for 23 hours now on my iphone 4 which I backed up from my 3G. It is showing 6 hours 52 mins of usage, 23 hours standby, 47 mins of calling time, 1.7 MB data sent and 8.4 MB data received. I listened to music on it for about 2 hours and played battleship for about 30 mins last night with my kid (I gave her my old 3G to use as an iPod). My phone is reporting 31% battery remaining.

I'm not sure if this is good or bad. I remember that if I charged my 3G overnight it was good for the whole day. I am going to do a restore and set up as new when I get home today. I am going to New HAmpshire for the next 10 days so hopefully there will be an update when I get back.

Message was edited by: Pooleman0

Sep 5, 2010 12:33 PM in response to 2Face

This is interesting.

I was very happy with my iPhone 4 battery life, as it was a big improvement over that of my old 3G. At the end of a day, I'd still have plenty of life left, during typical use which included having wifi on all the time.

Then I dropped the phone and smashed the screen. I've just got a new one on insurance and its battery life is very poor. I charge it overnight and start using it about 8am. By 3pm the battery needs recharging, even after very little use.

All the settings etc for the new phone have been restored from the old one, so nothing has changed.

This suggests to me that there is a quality control issue. One phone is good, another is very bad. I'm going to be returning it to Apple.

Phil

Sep 6, 2010 8:14 AM in response to Philip Raby1

As an update, I popped into my local O2 store and mentioned the battery life. The assistant took the phone off me, turned off 3G and dimmed the screen so it was barely visible, explaining that would improve my battery life.

I have always had 3G turned on with my iPhones and had the screen at a reasonable brightness. And, of course, the latter is not going to affect the standby battery life!

Jan 4, 2011 9:07 PM in response to Foreverseeking

Can someone help me out
i got iPhone 4, with 4.2 my battery went from 100% this morning before school i took it off charge around 7, and sent two messages via the facebook app, got to school before 8 and left it in my locker till 9:30 i think it was and the battery was at 3%, i had almost everything on but it was on standby and no music was playing i keep the brightness at the lowest possible....

oh and is it a big issue if i try getting it replaced that my back glass piece is completely shattered

Jan 6, 2011 3:09 AM in response to Foreverseeking

So I've suddenly started getting this problem. I'm running IOS 4.2.1 on my 3G and solved the battery issue initially by resetting the stats and phone when I updated in December. Now as of Jan 2011 the battery life is draining at a dramatic speed. Is this another New Year's bug?!
I initially reverted back to 3.1.3 because of all the other bugs, but my internet didn't work and I eventually gave up and installed the update. It's driving me nuts - every time I update one thing is fixed and another breaks... grrrrr

Jan 6, 2011 4:19 AM in response to aewallis

Same here. My iphone's battery life has been 'ok' up to now (usually had to charge it after 48 hrs), but over the last four days it decreased terribly, it's down to 20% after 24 hrs now. How can this happen from one day to another? I didn't install any new apps, didn't change any settings, and don't use it any differently (e.g. longer calls) than I did last week. I have no idea what happened!

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Iphone 4 Battery life Terrible (34 hours standby?)

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