iPhone 3G takes excessively long period to boot from drained battery

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I have an iPhone 3G which is approximately 18 months old. It has happened a few times now where, when the battery is completely drained and is plugged in at the wall socket, it takes excessively long to restart.

This time it is the longest yet. It took over an hour before it decided to boot back up and spring to life. I urgently needed to get in there to call someone back who was stranded and it was extremely frustrating waiting over an hour for it to boot up.

I think this is a poor design by Apple. If a user has their phone plugged into the wall, it shouldn't take more than a couple of minutes to come back to life. Especially for reasons such as mine, an emergency.

When it did eventually spring back to life, more than an hour later, it was almost completely fully charged.
 
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If you read the iPhone instructions, you'll see that when recharging from a flat battery it takes up to 10 minutes before the iPhone can be used.

If you're worried about this delay, the answer is not to let the battery completely run down!
 
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If you read the iPhone instructions, you'll see that when recharging from a flat battery it takes up to 10 minutes before the iPhone can be used.

If you read my original post, you'll see that I said it takes my phone over one hour, not up to 10 minutes! I think I could handle 10 minutes, but not over an hour!

Best regards,
 
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You also said that after more than an hour later, the 'phone was almost completely recharged. This appears to be quite normal.

After approximately 10 minutes, the 'phone won't switch itself on - you have to do that!
 
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Just to add something here, running Lithium batteries completely flat is highly damaging if done regularly and this could be the problem here.

The way the science works with Lithium is that you will get more charge cycles from your battery if you recharge from a higher capacity state than a lower one.

May I suggest downloading the Battery Doctor app or similar and running this during a recharge from the suggested 20% capacity to condition the battery (this will take several hours) and at all other times do frequent charges from higher capacities.

The red zone on the battery indicator literally does mean the red zone.
 
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After approximately 10 minutes, the 'phone won't switch itself on - you have to do that!

Hi John T,

That isn't strictly true. If you have the phone switched on from battery charging mode, it will boot up itself once there is enough charge. At least mine has done so from this state for the last 18 months.

To pendlewitch: Perhaps that's why the iPhone powers itself down before the battery is completely discharged. I agree there could be a serious problem with my battery... Although it can still retain good operation use for a few days without the need to plug it in.
 
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Hi John T,

That isn't strictly true. If you have the phone switched on from battery charging mode, it will boot up itself once there is enough charge. At least mine has done so from this state for the last 18 months.

To pendlewitch: Perhaps that's why the iPhone powers itself down before the battery is completely discharged. I agree there could be a serious problem with my battery... Although it can still retain good operation use for a few days without the need to plug it in.

Yes, it's likely the case, amongst other things..SOS calls being another.
Probably the best thing is to give a free app a try and see if you can tell the difference, most work on a three stage charging process.

Chances are that your battery just needs some TLC if your are getting some decent use out of it once charged, but try not to let it run down so far :)
 
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Just to add something here, running Lithium batteries completely flat is highly damaging if done regularly and this could be the problem here.

That's strange! To quote Apple, "For proper maintenance of a lithium-based battery, it’s important to keep the electrons in it moving occasionally. Be sure to go through at least one charge cycle per month (charging the battery to 100% and then completely running it down)."
 
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That's strange! To quote Apple, "For proper maintenance of a lithium-based battery, it’s important to keep the electrons in it moving occasionally. Be sure to go through at least one charge cycle per month (charging the battery to 100% and then completely running it down)."

Yes John T, that's what it says but it flies against all the technical advice from the manufacturers. Completely running your battery down and recharging it back to full isn't a charge cycle, it's a throw back to Nickel based batteries.

You can actually do a charge cycle over several days by partially discharging and recharging. Full discharge/recharge is known to damage Lithium batteries

See this thread

http://www.mac-forums.com/forums/ip...hree-stage-iphone-battery-charging-cycle.html

and also this from Apple which contradicts that document :eek:


http://www.apple.com/batteries/

I hope all this makes sense.

Cheers,
Liam
 
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I think we'll have to agree to disagree on this!

However, for your information, Apple recommends that the procedure of, once a month, allowing the iPhone battery to completely run down and then recharge is primarily for battery calibration purposes.

It's obviously your prerogative to refute such information and rely on results referring primarily to batteries used in laptops where calibration is not so important.

The Apple "battery" link you finally refer to as being contradictory, is in fact, the same one from which I obtained my original quote! :Confused:
 
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Ok, in the How to Maximize Power Use 'iPhone' link right at the bottom...I see now. There is another Apple document out there which is more simplistic and carries the same statement.

The point I was trying to make was that koster's phone could be suffering the ill effects and/or premature ageing of 100% DoD. If you want to fully discharge once a month as Apple say then go for it :)

I'm not relying on results appertaining to laptop batteries with regards to calibration I'm relying on empirical data published by these people.

How to Prolong Lithium-based Batteries - Battery University

Note Table 2 and the relationship between Depth of Discharge and Discharge Cycles.
 
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Back to the OP's problem. Try doing a complete software restore and see if that solves the problem. Perhaps there is simply a software glitch of some kind and restoring will fix the problem.
 

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