iPhone 4 battery drain issues?

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Hey guys, I don't know if anybody's having the same problem, but I've been having some battery life issues with my new iPhone. Because my old phone was able to go about 4 days without charging and since it's my first iPhone (and my first smartphone, in fact) my friends told me smartphone batteries tend to drain quicker so I shrugged it off. Ever since 2 nights ago, however, the battery seems to be draining quicker than usual. Last night, I went to sleep with the battery percentage indicating 74%. When I woke up at 9:00am, it was down to 21%. I started to do some research and turned off all push notifications and adjusting the brightness, the whole nine yards but didnt have any luck with that either. I just wanted some of your input before I go to the apple store since it's about half an hour away. If it's decided that it's a dud, then I'll run over to the store and get a replacement.

I've been babbling. Inputs please!
 
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I think you're lucky if you don't have to charge your phone every night with the iPhone...probably similar to most smart phones with heavy internet connectivity.

From what you're describing, it doesn't sound too out of the ordinary. Now if your battery dies in less than a day with average use, then you might have a problem.
 
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I understand.. but I never expected to drain this quickly, I thought standby time was supposed to be about 300 hours? I have the app Battery Doctor downloaded and my standby time hour says about 200 hours right now.

By the way, I just pulled it out of the charger about an hour ago, 3 phone calls which lasted about 15 minutes in total, and the battery's down to 90%. Is this normal?

Yea I might be a bit paranoid... But it's my first iPhone and I just can't help it :p
 
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I understand.. but I never expected to drain this quickly, I thought standby time was supposed to be about 300 hours? I have the app Battery Doctor downloaded and my standby time hour says about 200 hours right now.

By the way, I just pulled it out of the charger about an hour ago, 3 phone calls which lasted about 15 minutes in total, and the battery's down to 90%. Is this normal?

Yea I might be a bit paranoid... But it's my first iPhone and I just can't help it :p

I think you're being a bit paranoid :)

300 hours of standby assumes no use of the phone, no internet or 3G use, and a perfect cellular network signal so it doesn't use extra power to hold on to the signal.

You're dealing with a device that is constantly connected and doing things. It's not going to have the same battery life as a "dumb" phone.
 
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Hehe thanks a bunch I'll now try to get over my paranoid-ism along with my fear of dropping the phone (which always happens and I mope about it for a long long time). I do have a tiring personality :\ All of my previous phones were "dumb" phones and sometimes lasted a whole week if not used too much so I guess I'll have to adjust.

Thanks for the answer, now I won't have to waste my time going to the apple store.
 
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Hehe thanks a bunch I'll now try to get over my paranoid-ism along with my fear of dropping the phone (which always happens and I mope about it for a long long time). I do have a tiring personality :\ All of my previous phones were "dumb" phones and sometimes lasted a whole week if not used too much so I guess I'll have to adjust.

Thanks for the answer, now I won't have to waste my time going to the apple store.

Ha no problem. It can be a big change when you switch from a regular phone to an iPhone, so your questions are quite understandable.

BTW, welcome to Mac-Forums, hope you stick around!
 
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Iphone 4 battery drain

I actually DO NOT believe you are paranoid. If the drain you are experiencing is the baseline, that is one thing, but my drain has increased with no change in usage after about one week.

It started over the holiday weekend, where I would put the phone into standby and it would drain as fast as if was being used regularly. I lost 35% of my battery in four hours time. Yes, the 3G is on, and the phone checks for emails once every 15 minutes, but come on! It didn't have that same problem a week ago! Also, it has started becoming much warmer to the touch when charging. this was not happening before.

I love the phone, but I want it to perform as it should and was the first week. Another strange issue is that the standby and usage times were lockstep for the first 28 minutes, even though I had the screen off. I don't understand how the phone can report simultaneous standby AND usage for the first 28 minutes. Anyone looking at the menu would think that it had been 56 minutes since the last charge, which it hadn't.
 
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I actually DO NOT believe you are paranoid. If the drain you are experiencing is the baseline, that is one thing, but my drain has increased with no change in usage after about one week.

It started over the holiday weekend, where I would put the phone into standby and it would drain as fast as if was being used regularly. I lost 35% of my battery in four hours time. Yes, the 3G is on, and the phone checks for emails once every 15 minutes, but come on! It didn't have that same problem a week ago! Also, it has started becoming much warmer to the touch when charging. this was not happening before.

I love the phone, but I want it to perform as it should and was the first week. Another strange issue is that the standby and usage times were lockstep for the first 28 minutes, even though I had the screen off. I don't understand how the phone can report simultaneous standby AND usage for the first 28 minutes. Anyone looking at the menu would think that it had been 56 minutes since the last charge, which it hadn't.

Try letting your phone drain all the way down and let it recharge overnight.
 
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actually, ever since i turned off the push feature on my google account and have it fetch manually, the battery's been ALOT better.

Searched around a little bit more and turns out exchange and google mail push feature drains the battery as it tries to connect with its sever 24/7.

2 days of using the phone without charging and it's still around 30%. Other than that, no problems at all :)
 
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I'd also disable 3G if you want to further maximize your battery. When I am home I disable it, runs on EDGE, and I put WiFi on to surf. I only turn 3G on when I am leaving my house.
 
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Other things that you can do to conserve battery life -

Once a month do a full cycle charge. Let the battery run down to less than 20% (I let it hit 10% or less). Plug it into an outlet and let it sit (charging) overnight.

In Settings for iPod turn off EQ.
In Settings turn off 3G and WiFi when not in use.
In Settings for Mail set it to manually fetch updates and turn off Push.
Also to add to that In Settings for Mail cut down on your email accounts (the less the better).
In Settings set the brightness to 65% or less (I am around 50-60%).
In Settings and General turn off Location services when not in use.
In Settings turn off Notifications.

I have consistently gotten two to three days out of my iPhone 4 following these steps. It comes to about one and a half (or more) days of standby and about eight hours of heavy use.
 
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Battery life claims on cell phones and laptops are like gas mileage claims for vehicles. They bear little resemblance to real world performance. I wouldn't sweat it. Have you tried holding it differently? :)
 
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get an app called battery Doctor... tells you exact time of battery life... as for draining i have always had to charge my iphone every night... 4 days no charge nag not unless you had phone sitting around... battery life really depends on what apps u use... example if i sit there in my doctors office playing a game on iphone it will definetly drain much faster than text for example
 
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read a lot of posts and this helped considerably for me:
- bought BatteryDoctor to (trickle) charge battery cycles
- bought system activity memory, which frees memory (!)
- switch off most settings, especially 3G
- close all running applications at night
 
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read a lot of posts and this helped considerably for me:
- bought BatteryDoctor to (trickle) charge battery cycles
- bought system activity memory, which frees memory (!)
- switch off most settings, especially 3G
- close all running applications at night

Good suggestions, especially the "close all app's", and especially if one of those apps uses the GPS. This thread mentioned all the other radios but don't forget about GPS too.
 
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I was suffering major batter drain. About 12% per hour.

I found some ideas on this forum. Once I worked out how to fix my problem I thought I'd share it so that others with similar issues may be able to benefit.

I tried to fix it by disabling background apps and resetting the phone. I also tried restoring the factory settings. None worked.

However, what did work was deleting the Exchange mail account and recreating it.
 
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It should not drain from 74% to 21% over night. The Iphone 4 has really good battery life but that's for a smart phone. You won't be going 4 days without charging anymore unless you are barely using it. If you're using it heavily you might need to charge it multiple times a day.

If it is draining that fast at night then you have something running and it is not push notifications. That's a great feature and if you like push then don't turn it off. It is a tip to turn it off to save battery life but unless you're getting a thousand emails a night it's not saving that much battery life. I never turn mine off and I get really good battery life. I also keep my wifi on. I can leave it sitting all night and it won't drain none. Maybe 1% at the most.

On your home screen if you click the button at the bottom of the phone twice in a row it will bring up all apps running at the bottom of your screen. Hold an app down until you see the red x icon on the left side of them. Them you can touch the red x and it will close them out. Don't worry this does not delete icons or delete apps. This is purely what's running right then. You have something running that's taking battery.

When I leave mine sitting at night I don't have anything running. I close everything. If you close messages and phone and all of that you will still receive your text messages and calls and when you click the app to look at it it will just start back up.

While turning off wifi and push and all of that can be a tip to save some battery life in a situation where you need to keep it as long as possible it's not going to save it to a drastic measure.

You should be fine whenever you close out whatever app this is that is using all of your battery life. What's a list of apps you see running on it right now?
 
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actually, ever since i turned off the push feature on my google account and have it fetch manually, the battery's been ALOT better.

Searched around a little bit more and turns out exchange and google mail push feature drains the battery as it tries to connect with its sever 24/7.

2 days of using the phone without charging and it's still around 30%. Other than that, no problems at all :)

This might be true but I know with mine I never turn push email off and my battery seems to stay very good. I'm sure it helps to turn it off I just don't see how it could be that major of a difference. It's not really trying to connect 24/7. It's pushed to it. That's kinda like saying it's always checking for text messages all the time to see if you have one and it isn't checking for text messages. When you get one it's pushed to you.
 
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hi people. i'm worried about this issue. as i am new user of the iphone, i felt the battery drain quickly. i tried not to surf net with the iphone, but i used to text.

i tried the camera, for less than 2 minute, the battery level drop 5%. i'm afraid it is not normal.

i did off all the wi-fi and 3g, as well as setting the brightness (around the level 50-60).

i appreciate any advice!
 
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I also have a problem with the battery life. But, as I was reading this topic, I realized that I was comparing the battery life of an iPhone 2G vs an iPhone 4G. Although, the battery of an iPhone 2G lasts longer than the battery of an iPhone 4G, there are so many different things that you can do with an iPhone 4G.

Because, I am also an iPhone developer, I thought that the applications that stay in memory do not consume energy. I mean, I have developed an application that uses the GPS device, and when I close this application, the icon for the GPS device disappears. This indicates that the GPS device is not running, correct? If this is the case, does this application consume any energy?
If I have an application that implements the push notification then that application would consume some energy when it is idle (because it is not actually idle). But, if an application does not use the push notification, will it consume any energy when it is idle?
 

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