iPhone 4 heat and battery issues

I have a two month old Verizon iPhone 4 that suddenly started getting hot while in standby. The battery loss was at least 10% per hour. I had not installed any new programs or made any changes to any of the settings.

After reading Brad's comment I remembered that I had downloaded about 8,000 messages in my "Sent Items" folder just before I starting having the battery issue. So my thought was that the iPhone was trying to do something with the 8,000 messages that was causing the battery usage. I removed the Exchange email account and setup a new one with the exact settings. The new account did not have the 8,000 email since I made sure not to download them. Now the phone is cool and the battery life is back to normal. This has been working as expected now for several days. My problem seems to be solved.

Thankyou :-) I was seeing the same issues as described in this thread, beginning late last week. Your comments made me realise my corporate Exchange certificate had expired. I sorted out the certificate and everything seems back to normal. I'm assuming IOS or the mail app was spinning trying to check in over 3G which was burning the battery down. Putting the phone into Airplane mode is a pretty good way to determine if you've got an app sucking the battery due to network retransmissions. Seems so obvious in hindsight haha.

I also experiencing the same problems on my I phone 4 and my partner is also having these problems on her 3GS, since updating to the latest ios. I have had the same settings on my phone for 11 months without any problems I don’t accept restoring to factory settings as a solution, my apps have hardly changed so I don't believe they are causing the issue either. I have had my phone on standby all morning and it has gone from 100% to 75% in less than 4 hours. It does make perfect sense that it is something to do with the latest update is causing the problems because everyone noticed the issue after the update was applied.

I agree with almost all the discussion on here. I think it has to do with iOs update. I barely use my phone during the day, maybe 2 or 3 text messages and by the time day is done, I'm 25% battery drain and that is full battery to start. There is definitely something going on and it would be nice to get it FIXED! I don't intend to restore or get it fixed as this was not an issue beforehand. It has to do with the latest iOs update. 4.3.4 would be nice???

I recently updated to 4.3.3. Generally I never update software ( if it ain't broke don't fix it). Anyway the battery life is just terrible since i updated, i have tried everything on this forum and nothing has worked. I decided to contact apple to see if they had a fix for this problem and i was absolutley gobsmacked when i was told that apple were not aware of this problem and it had to be a hardware problem cause it sure wasn't a software problem. It was only going to cost €70 to replace the battery. Ya right spend €70 only to have the same problem???

I am very frustrated, and confused. I JUST switched from a BlackBerry to an iPhone 4 (on Verizon), and since activation my battery life has been abysmal. I scoured the various blog and help pages and tried everything (including the "scorched earth" approach of wiping and starting fresh as a new iPhone), and even while having EVERYTHING reaching outward turned to "OFF" (i.e., no "push," no WiFi, no internet access otherwise, no Bluetooth, no ... oh, well, ANYTHING), my battery has not lasted even 10 hours. I made 4 calls and exchanged 3 or 4 simple text messages. After doing total reinstall, I am looking at Usage = 4 hours 35 minutes and Standby = 9 hours 31 minutes ... and my battery is at 32%.

I never bothered getting my contacts or calendar involved here, as I am a "newbie," and wanted to see if I liked the iPhone. At this point, I am about 68% (deliberate) of the way toward returning the 2-day old "upgrade" and getting another BlackBerry (or a Droid, but ...).

Help?

How may items do you have in your mailboxes? When I reduced the number of items in my "sent" mailbox down from thousands to a few hundred my battery usage dropped dramatically. Now my Verizon iPhone battery will last at least a day or more with push on.

WARNING! WARNING! WARNING!

If you have battery drain issues, it's highly possible that your iPhone is sucking up your bandwidth!

A few days ago I started having same problems as everyone else here. The battery drain was horrible and I would get maximum of 5 hours on a full charge, with pretty much everything turned off except data network. So, today I had enough of it, and decided to figure out what was causing the problem. For me, the trick was to disable Ping, log out of Apple store, turn off all mail accounts, reboot and turn the mail accounts back on. After this, my battery usage was back to normal.

In the process of pinpoiting the problem, I also checked my bandwitdh usage with my provider, and to my surprise I found out that in 5 days I've sucked up over 1 GB of data! Normally, I spend around 700 mb PER MONTH, so this was way over the top, especially since my iPhone is on cellular data network maybe 8 hours a day (when I'm at work). The rest of the day it's hooked to my home WiFi. Luckily I have unlimited data plan so it's not going to cost me anything, but I assume that some people might have serious problems at the end of the month when the bill arrives.

So, to everyone out there - check your network data usage with your provider!

My IPhone 4 just starting heating up yesterday but it contradicts this whole thing about the updates being the problem

This is my story

I put my phone on charge

I picked it up at 40% charge. It was hot say about 42 deg C. Left it to charge further but it seemed to take longer than normal.

Took it off charge at 42% and then in less than 5 minutes it used 10% battery!!! I put it on charge and it took 2 hours to charge and less than 3 hours to drain the battery on standby

Today I spoke to apple support and they ran me through the whole back up files through iTunes, I discovered that I hadn't updated my iPhone since I purchased it in February. So I did a complete erase and restored to brand new device. I have not returned anything other than contacts. However I have not let it go flat and charge for 4 hours that was mentioned previously in earlier posts.

The heat starts at the bottom on the back and then through the metal where the sim card goes right up to the camera. It gets as hot as I have my cups of coffee about 45degC. I'm passed the 90 day period so I have to pay a deposit of $800 to apple so they can send out a replacement. I don't have that kind of money just laying round to fix something I already am paying for. I got my phone through optus so I hope they can help with a replacement tomorrow. I will just go straight to the ombudsman, if they don't help me. I love my iPhone but this is annoying having to leave home with my charger. And burning my face when I make a call! I'm a customer not a lab rat!

I had to change my iPhone 4 the other day because the sleep/wake button stopped responding. I synced the new one with the computer and the battery got hot, it was only connected for about 5 minutes.

Lawrence Finch's post in this thead (the fifth from the top) helped me improve my battery life again. Like quite a few people here, I updated my ios and immediately found a dramatic drop in battery life, to the extent that it would not last a normal working day. Previously I was getting almost two full days. I had changed nothing at all except update the OS.

As Lawrence suggests, however, it might not be the new version that is causing the problem but the update that went wrong, ie going from one version to another. At the end of March, I had stopped using an Exchange account but had left it on my iPhone. On reading Lawrence's post, I deleted it completely (I had wanted to keep it to have a trace of my old mails). The issue seems to be resolved.

Until now and for the last three months, my usage time has been almost identical to my standby time, ie. even in standby, the phone was apparently being used. I don't have Ping, don't use the Game Center and switched off all notications and background running apps and still lost battery life.

I also think this is being handled barely by Apple and I am surprised that nobody from Apple reads these forums. I have been slagging off the iPhone to quite a few of my friends and colleagues because of this battery issue. (I had also have the antenna problem plus I have often have problems sliding the phone on particularly when I receive a call). The fact that Apple does nothing or very little to help its users via the web site is really pretty poor. I had pretty much decided NOT to upgrade to iPhone 5 and get a Windows phone of some sorts. Thanks to Lawrence, I'll see if this battery issue really does get resolved before I decide to bail out.

hey guys...im so sorry to hear this battery issue with iphone 4....i personally loved this thing and had regrettd buyn htc desire hd coz it gave me only 8 hours tops...but this seems to hv evn worsend in the case of iphone ....3- 4 hours and overheating...anyways...hope u guys get a bettr update soon...wishin u the best....

I had exactly the same problem, I deleted an old Exchange email account and it is now fixed.

Thanks, resetting settings and mail fixed my problems, now my iPhone has better battery life than ever I think! :-)

I have a 3GS and have had the same issue since upgrading to 4.3.3. I use Battery Doctor to charge my battery. I also have had literally everything turned off for notifications, etc. almost since the day I got the phone (about 18 months ago). Never have wireless running. Never had 3G running. I use this only for a phone. I don't even check email. I've read the threads with potential fixes and will try those. But I am not happy that an OS upgrade will do something like this.