Major battery drain on iPhone 3G S

gerrymadden1

Yesterday my iPhone battery flattened out in a few hours with minimal use. I thought that I had forgotten to charge it so I put it on charge for a few hours.

The battery drained again in no time.

The phone is 3 months old & prior to yesterday the battery lasted 2.5 - 3 days.

Needless to say, its a jailbroken phone with a Zagg shield so I think I have a big problem???

Elessar

Sounds like a battery problem alright. IIRC most mobile phone batteries are covered for this sort of thing for the first 6 months under warranty. Maybe give Apple a ring and see what they have to say?

Jax Teller

What firmware is it ?

3DataModem

Do a hard reset, if that doesn't work do a restore, if that doesn't work contact Apple.

It can happen with memory leaks or App errors. One of the above usually does the trick.

Nonoperational

Happens sometimes on jailbroken phones. Hold down the power and home key until the apple logo comes up and it'll be fine.

PLIIM

I have the normal iPhone 3G (Latest firmware, not jailbroken) and i've been noticing the battery life is terrible.
Tried backup and restore a few times to see if it worked. Made no difference.

For an experiment a few nights last week i charged it up fully and unplugged it at midnight. Left it on standby only. By 7am i only had 60% charge left each morning.

So then i left everything the same but turned off push and did the same experiment for a few nights. This morning was the third morning and i had 100% charge left after 7 hours on standby. Others should try this to verify.

Its Push thats the problem. Turn it off and you are fine. But i need push. The wife was going to get an iPhone, but decided not to because of the battery life. I probably wont get another one either. ITs a big problem for me.

Jax Teller

I'd back it up then restore it through iTunes .

nulabert

Drain the battery fully and then do a full charge with messing with it.

Nonoperational

nulabert wrote: »

Drain the battery fully and then do a full charge with messing with it.

Why? Li-ion batteries do not need this treatment.

iKeith

apple actually recommend you do this at least once month. also try to download battery doctor and follow the instructions

CamperMan

I heard having bluetooth ON and location services ON can drain your battery very quick, I have both turned off and the battery seems to last longer

gerrymadden1

PLIIM wrote: »

So then i left everything the same but turned off push and did the same experiment for a few nights. This morning was the third morning and i had 100% charge left after 7 hours on standby. Others should try this to verify.

Its Push thats the problem. Turn it off and you are fine.

You got me there... what's Push???

Thanks for the help guys. I'll try your suggestions & let you know how it goes...

Type 17

Things that drain the battery:

3G (rather than GPRS/EDGE)
Wi-Fi
Bluetooth
Location Services
Push email (rather than Fetch)

Switching some or all of these off will help the battery life.

Hung processes or poorly written apps can also be an issue - a reset rather than a restore, should be enough to fix it.

Also, be aware that phone/laptop batteries take a charge up to about 90% very quickly, but the last 10% takes a lot longer. Think of shoving sponge balls into a bag - the bag will look full fairly quickly, but you will be able to shove a lot more of them in if you keep going, and if you stop when the bag looks full, you'll find that there aren't that many in there.
Likewise if you don't charge the battery for long enough, it will look quite full, but will actually empty a lot sooner than you think.

PLIIM

gerrymadden1 wrote: »

You got me there... what's Push???

Thanks for the help guys. I'll try your suggestions & let you know how it goes...

Go to settings and turn off notifications altogether. See if it helps.

byte

gpf101 wrote: »

Why? Li-ion batteries do not need this treatment.

Yes. I was under the impression that it was actually detrimental to the Li-Ion battery to do this!

gerrymadden1

I tried the reset as suggested by gdf101 and switching off all notifications as suggested by PLIIM.

I then fully charged the phone over night. I switched the phone on a 8.30 am and after 6 hours of normal usage my battery shows 79% remaining. Not bad, even back to normal.

Thinking back, I downloaded an App on Saturday called 12 Days of Christmas from Apple and it switched on automatic notifications. I have a funny feeling that this must have been "bleeding" the battery???

Thought I'd let ye know in case the same thing happens to any of you guys & gals!

BaZmO*

Type 17 wrote: »

Also, be aware that phone/laptop batteries take a charge up to about 90% very quickly, but the last 10% takes a lot longer. Think of shoving sponge balls into a bag - the bag will look full fairly quickly, but you will be able to shove a lot more of them in if you keep going, and if you stop when the bag looks full, you'll find that there aren't that many in there.
Likewise if you don't charge the battery for long enough, it will look quite full, but will actually empty a lot sooner than you think.

I don't know if that is absolutely true but it's a great explanation!

bigfeller

I had a problem with mine when I installed Fring, on an unlocked, jailbroken 2G. I was getting 6 hours out of the battery tops. Took a while to figure out that Fring was the problem but when it installed it automagically activated for push. Got rid of it and it's been fine ever since. I use push GMail and with a fair bit of usage I can get 24 hours out of the batter (but still put it on charge every night).

Type 17

BaZmO* wrote: »

I don't know if that is absolutely true but it's a great explanation!

Well, what I typed above was just based on my own experience, but I just looked it up online and found the text below here, so it does seem to be true (summary: when charging from a very low charge, and the battery indicator shows 70-80% full, you are still only less than halfway through the time needed to achieve a true 100% charge).

Increasing the charge current does not shorten the charge time by much. Although the voltage peak is reached quicker with higher charge current, the topping charge will take longer.

Some chargers claim to fast-charge a lithium-ion battery in one hour or less. Such a charger eliminates stage 2 and goes directly to 'ready' once the voltage threshold is reached at the end of stage 1. The charge level at this point is about 70%. The topping charge typically takes twice as long as the initial charge.

Leiva

I remember once i noticed my battery draining quickly , it was something as simplistic as the count down timer running (~its found in stopwatch )
This does run in the background , without any indication.

M.

Rujib1

Question for everybody! Why in blue blazes, does anybody need push email

If I want to be a slave, I can think of a better way to be one.

Just go pull your email say twice in the morning, twice in the afternon, save battery on your precious master, ... I mean iPhone, and in to the bargain GET A LIFE:D:D

The Big Gig

Cos some people in this world like to be able to respond to things quickly. Orders, requests etc.... dont think its anything to need to be getting a life about.

Sniipe

gerrymadden1 wrote: »

Needless to say, its a jailbroken phone with a Zagg shield so I think I have a big problem???

Thats like saying I've a problem with my car engine, needless to say its a jap import and is red!

regardless; I get 1 day of use with my bluetooth off and everything else on - push email every 15 min, no GPS use, about an hour of phone use and a fair bit of browsing.

iKeith

hmm... a bit odd but i usually get 2 days with push and wifi on. mail is set to fetch every hour. aways tweeting and checking facebook and always browsing the net