How To: Troubleshoot iPhone 3.0 Battery Life Problems
No doubt about it, issues with battery life remain a hot topic for iPhone 3.0 and iPhone 3GS users.
Now, if your battery drain is caused simply by use — you never put the iPhone (or iPod touch) down and are always playing games, pushing IMs, watching movies, etc. your only choice is to get a few more charging cables or battery extenders. If, however, you’re doing roughly the same things you’ve always done and getting substantially less battery life for your troubles, there’s a chance a few troubleshooting steps might just help get your power problems back under control.
Reboot iPhone
If, all of a sudden, your iPhone starts burning through battery and getting hot at the same time, there could be a “rogue process” just churning away in the background. The answer to that is a good old-fashioned power cycle.
Hold down the sleep button until the red “Slide to power off” arrow appears. If your iPhone is frozen or otherwise in dire straights, you can hold down the home button at the same time as the sleep button to force quit all applications and bring up the red arrow. Then just swipe, let the iPhone turn off, wait a few seconds, and hold down the sleep button again to turn your iPhone back on.
Redo Push
Since iPhone 2.0 we’ve seen Push gone wrong really cause a hit to battery life. With 3.0, Push Notification means not only could mail, calendar, and contacts start misbehaving in the background, but your IM, Twitter, games, and all sorts of other apps can as well.
Apple says Push can cause a 20% drop in battery life, but if you think yours is worse then it should be, the next step is to redo anything that involves Push, including MobileMe and Exchange accounts, and apps using Push Notification. Now, you might want to try doing one at a time, check your battery life, and if you don’t notice any improvement, try the next one. If you find the culprit quickly, that approach could save you some time. If you just want to get it over with, you might want to do them all at once.
For the accounts, go to Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars, choose your MobileMe and/or Exchange accounts, scroll down to the bottom and hit delete. For apps, go to Settings > Notifications and look at the list of any apps using Push Notification. Go back to the Home Screen, hold down the home button until the icons start to jiggle, and delete the Push Notification app.
Then, for accounts, go back to Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars, hit Add Account…, choose Mobile Me and/or Exchange, and re-enter your settings. For Push Notification apps, either sync them back from iTunes or go to the App Store app and re-download them.
Restore as New iPhone
We won’t lie to you — this is the nuclear option. It’s scorched earth. But to be frank, we at TiPb almost always default to this step because it almost always “just works”. We do this every time we get a new firmware and every time we notice something just isn’t right, and we have excellent battery life to prove it.
To restore your iPhone as new and get a fresh, clean start, attach it to your Windows or Mac via the USB cable and launch iTunes. A Restore button should be front and center on the screen. Hit it, then wait as iTunes goes through the laborious process of wiping your iPhone and installing the firmware again from scratch.
IMPORTANT: When iTunes asks if you want to restore your data from backup or set up as a new iPhone, choose NEW iPHONE.
Yes, you will lose your settings and any data saved in apps that don’t provide some sort of sync functionality, but it’s possible (even likely) some corruption in those settings or data is contributing to your poor battery life, and with an appliance like the iPhone, this is the only way to get rid of it.
This will also kill your Jailbreak, if you’re jailbroken. But if something in your Jailbreak was killing your battery life, like backgrounder gone awry, trying out your iPhone without the Jailbreak is a good way to establish that.
Once your iPhone is set up as new, you can sync your info and media back over using the iTunes tabs as normal, and/or setup accounts and download apps on the iPhone itself.
Conclusion
iPhone 3.0 and iPhone 3GS should have roughly the same battery life for you as iPhone 2.2.1 and the iPhone 3G. If you’re getting something substantially less than that, there could be something wrong with your iPhone 3.0 install or your iPhone 3GS’ system.
Rebooting the iPhone, redoing Push-enabled applications, and restoring your iPhone as new are three escalating steps you can try to fix your battery problems.
Let us know how they work for you.
July 23rd, 2009 at 8:01 am
set up a new iphone…..god that sucks! I have Waaaaay to much info in my notes, idiary and other apps to reset as new phone.
what if you set up as new phone and then sync from backup? would that accomplish the same exact thing as syncing from back from the get go?
July 23rd, 2009 at 8:11 am
@james
If you use the back up, you’ll just restore the same problem you had.. you have to start from scratch.. sorry.
July 23rd, 2009 at 8:33 am
Good post. I know this should be almost common knowledge by now but I stilll see people in various forums complaining about battery life/heating and asking what to do.
July 23rd, 2009 at 8:37 am
I had a major problem with a hanging app that had not been uodated by the developers for 3.0. When I tried to use it, it just kept, unbeknownst to be, trying to work and draining my battery in the process My battery on my days old 3GS was at 14% after less than 3 hours of use. I had a diagnostic done at Apple which showed potential problem apps. Once I deleted the offender, I was back to the battery life pattern I had with my old 3G.
July 23rd, 2009 at 8:54 am
@james: I agree. This is part of the problem with the way the phone manages data + apps, though. If they gave you real access to a file system, you could selectively restore application data.
Syncing everything through one click of a button in itunes is awesome…but only when it works.
July 23rd, 2009 at 9:21 am
Rene, when you write that you have good battery life, can you put a number to that? I get about 12 – 15 hours of standby with about 2.5-3.5 hours of mixed (phone, email, web) use. Is that “good” in your books?
July 23rd, 2009 at 9:31 am
I re set up my 3g as a new phone and it sent it to AT&T saying I started a whole new contract ! And had to have them go back and fix my account . Has this happened to anyone else ?
July 23rd, 2009 at 9:46 am
i would have mentioned turning off the location services as i have seen a huge increase of battery life with it off. i only turn it on when i need it
July 23rd, 2009 at 9:59 am
i think 3.1 will fix these battery issues. i’m getting great battery life out of beta2. i can go a full day on 50% battery. that’s with mail set to fetch every 15 min, push textfree, facebook, twitter, etc
July 23rd, 2009 at 10:01 am
i get about 9 hrs standby and 3 hrs or so of usage such as phone/text/safari
July 23rd, 2009 at 10:05 am
@victor. Good question. I’ve been trying to guage how good/bad my battery life is on my 3GS after I jailbroke it. I’m averaging about a 10% drop per hour while letting the iPod run in the background and surfing on the 3G connection. Location services and wifi are off. This seems quite worse than my old iPhone 3G and my 3GS before it was jailbroken. Anyone else have this kind of battery life?
July 23rd, 2009 at 10:12 am
@YaletownYuppie: before blaming it on the jailbreak, remember to account for the apps you’ve installed, cause if it is like winterboard and other mobile substrate stuff of it is highly probable it’s gonna be worst. But just a jail-broken phone with no app that are harsh on the battery shouldn’t be that much of a difference
July 23rd, 2009 at 11:06 am
I do all the same things I’ve done since my first 2G iPhone plus minor 3G usage since the 3G came out and I’d have to say my battery life is at least 10% longer than it has ever been. Push is off, WiFi is always on.
July 23rd, 2009 at 11:24 am
buy a juice pack air and live with it. IF you wanted a phone that has awsome battery life it would be the size of a brick.
July 23rd, 2009 at 12:34 pm
How are you complaining about an installed app burning battery on your phone when they can’t run in the background?
Yaletown, my usage is similar to yours except I may do some more browsing and less music but I get around the same battery life as you. When I’m done with music I notice that the iPod app will still run in the background (I use Free Memory to monitor my system resources) so I force quit that when I’m finished (hold down sleep/wake button until Slide to Power Off pops up then hold home button until you see the home screen).
July 23rd, 2009 at 12:35 pm
I had problems with my iPhone battery and yesterday I got a brand new replacement at the Apple store!
July 23rd, 2009 at 1:06 pm
Bottom line is mobile devices need to look for better newer battery or power supply technologies. They continue to increase specs and ramp up performance but we still have **** batteries.
July 23rd, 2009 at 2:05 pm
Well in 2.2.1 I had a problem with an app not wanting to delete itself so I restored FROM BACKUP. And it worked. It seems to delete everything you had and put it back good as new so maybe restoring could help depending on the situation.
July 23rd, 2009 at 5:47 pm
I have a jailbroken 3gs and I use a Mophie Jiuce Pack. I use 3g, mail, text, and phone heavy all day. Wifi always on. Some ATT Navigator. I have SB Settings and Intelliscreen running. I am a contractor, so my phone get used heavy all day. Many days in a basement while the phone searches for a signal….
The Mophie is usually wiped out by 3:00 – 3:30, and I get through the rest of the day on OEM power. Maybe a quick sync/top off when I get home.
I ALWAYS am concerned about battery levels.
I want to restore with a new phone, but I dont want to deal with ATT anymore than I have to. Hopefully the post above is a fluke.
July 23rd, 2009 at 10:27 pm
Fred, why don’t you wait until the phone is low on power before you turn on the juice pack? You’ll be able to get more usage.
Well, that’s what the Mophie juice pack’s instructions said might work best.
July 23rd, 2009 at 10:43 pm
These solutions may or may not work with iPhone, it seems to me that iPhones are different from each other. Some works with the solutions while others simply will not work.
Andy iPhone Poll: http://aclevertwist.com/p/poll-which-spot-matters-most-to-you
July 24th, 2009 at 6:51 am
Hello hello… People please help with my 3.0 3gs my maps seem’s not 2 work it keeps bouncing around hope I’m not the only one which I no I’m not GPS on 3.0 not working..
July 24th, 2009 at 10:29 am
Mine has the battery drain problem. i did a hard reset by pressing home and sleep/wake till the apple logo shows and after that all is fixed. now i use my phone like normal and still get a good day and a half once nearly having 2 days with about 8 hours of usage.
July 26th, 2009 at 4:03 pm
I have a battery drain problem. Did the reset but it seems like every few min my percentage drops from my 3gs.
July 28th, 2009 at 3:44 pm
I just got my iPhone 3Gs, but so far I didn’t see battery draining symptoms…
August 2nd, 2009 at 9:48 am
OK I am new to iphones (coming from the world of BB’s where charging once every 2 or 3 days is enough) so I didn’t know what to expect and when I was getting 4 to 6 hours before I was fully drained I thought that was normal. Unacceptable but normal. I compared my set-up to a friend’s who had the same services enabled but who got tremendously better battery life and realized what was sucking down my power…I have AT&T Nav and had location services set to on. Wow that baby was constantly pinging for gps signals and caused my phone to run hot and battery life to be next to useless. Shut down location services and problem solved.
August 17th, 2009 at 10:21 am
I just jail broke my phone and was getting horrible life. After I installed sbsettings I could easily turn services on and off and kill processes as well as “free memory”. Unless I’m leaving wifi and need data I turned locatio. Services, edge, 3g, and push off. Since sbsettings let’s you just swipe the top of thephone And then quickly toggle things it makes it fast. Now I’m getting really good life – better than prejailbreak. This is purely because now I can see what’s going on. I also have it disay the amount of avail le memory next to the time at the top. This allows me to see if I need to close a process or hit the “free memory” button in “processes” within sbsettings. I was previously nervous about jailbreaking but now I couldn’t be happier. I have better battery life due to having more power to control settings, I have categories so I can tidy up my springboard, I have cycorder so I can take video on my 3g and backgrounder so if I am expecting a skype call I can hear it ring now when it’s “closed”. Obviously leaving skype on in the background will not help battery life
September 15th, 2009 at 8:36 pm
Can you just turn off Notifications in Settings to save battery life?
September 16th, 2009 at 1:11 am
Worked for me: turned off all push (mail + apps), now iPhone runs forever (comparing to previous)! I can do without being pushed around!!!
September 16th, 2009 at 2:27 pm
I find that by turning off location,wifi and Gps systems it gives me about 60% increase of batterry life per week under the same conditions pre turning off those systems. It is also best to service the battery by completly draining the battery at least once per month and giving it a full charge. This will also add extra life to your battery in any mobile phone.
September 20th, 2009 at 9:28 am
Push has to be on for “Find my iPhone” to work. Even though I had always left it off before because I’d heard it drained battery life, I figure that’s a good reason to leave it on.
September 21st, 2009 at 3:01 am
hi guys, i’m having same problem. after following this link http://theappleblog.com/2009/06/25/iphone-3-0-battery-draining-heres-a-possible-fix/#comment-59017 i can see my battery is charging and seems getting back on track. cheers, dayve
September 21st, 2009 at 9:56 am
for all ya newbee’s out there:
THIS BATTERY “PROBLEM” EXISTS SINCE THE RELEASE OF FIRMWARE 3.0 !!! BEFORE THIS, AT FW 2.2.1, THE BATTERY POWER/LIFE HOLDS ON A 2G OR 3G IPHONE 2-3 DAYS INCL. USAGE. BUT NOW ???
NOBODY KNOWS WHAT APPLE DID, BUT THEY DID A REALY BAD JOB. *** IT’S TIME NOW THAT THIS GET FIXED !!! ***
I DON’T NEED A MOBILE PHONE WHERE THE BATTERY JUST EVEN LAST NOT ABOUT 24h. THAT’S A SHAME. AND I DON’T SURF MUCH OR USE PUSH OR SIMILIAR.
IN THE FUTURE I WILL NOT BUY ANYMORE A APPLE PHONE. FOR SHURE!
CHEERS (AN UNHAPPY APPLE IPHONE USER)
September 23rd, 2009 at 8:50 am
I agree on main points with Strange. Under OS 2.2.x I was REALLY happy with performance of my iphone 3G battery (and gadget itself, no hickups at all). I had to charge it (OK, moderate use, for me it is primarily a phone) every 3-5 days.
After upgrading to OS 3.0 the maximum I got was 2 days + 3 hours, and that was when I left it at home in stand-by mode on a fixed place with strong 3G signal (all settings were the same as always, meaning push, wifi, notifications all off; location services and 3G on). And before that I made a hard reboot.
The conclusion is that OS 3.0 even in a stand-by mode juices about 2% of the battery (under OS 2.2.x it was obviously less then 1%). And that’s is simply it. I have tried every trick I found on web (including restoring as a new iphone).
For you guys who are heavy users who drain the phone in less then one day it is not important (maybe even invisible), but for people like me (or Strange) it has halved the performance of the battery (and with it, I must say, my satisfaction with iphone).
September 23rd, 2009 at 8:53 am
Sorry, in previous post i wanted to say “about 2% PER HOUR”.
September 24th, 2009 at 5:05 pm
Eu estou tendo problema na bateria do meu iphone versão 3.0.1, que esta com pouca duraçao da bateria. Como resolver.
I am having problem in the battery of mine iphone version 3.0.1, that this with little duration of the battery. As to decide.
September 25th, 2009 at 1:11 am
I may have foud the solution after going thru the Tips above. I reboot my iPhone 3G(S) and synced with iTunes 9.0.1. After charging the iPhone, I left it and the battery drainage is gone. I still have 97% after 8 hours on sleep mode. Unlike before, after 8 hours on sleep mode, battery drained to 20%. Its ridiculous.
Pls try it out.
September 30th, 2009 at 7:50 am
Hi… My iPhone has battery has suddenly started draining rapidly and I don’t understand why. I have had no problems up until the last few days. My push notifications are off. I access email manually, rarely use itunes, rarely surf the net. In fact I use it mostly for calls and texts. This morning after a 3 minute call my iphone (which was fully charged) dropped from 100% to 75% battery which seems a bit much to me. Does anyone have any advice? I’ve been through the settings etc and done everything but a full restore. Thanks
September 30th, 2009 at 7:49 pm
Leanne – same thing for me! Friday mine started using 20% of the battery without any use at all. It was dead Friday morning after I unplugged from a full charge before I went to bed. I charged to 20% and it was dead less an an hour later. I fully charged and did not use it but to check the battery status each hour – 20.5%. If I barely use it ie, check time a few times, check mail, log on to facebook, it will die in about 3 hours. I already had everything off that everyone states is a problem. So tried deleting my email accounts, took off every account that has push and 15.5%. I am going to do a restore tonight. If it does not work I am going to go in to Apple, I wanted to try everything first so they do not send me home with the same problem. Before this I could go at least a day without charging and normal use and I listen to a lot of audiobooks. Anyone else started experiencing this problem in the last few days?
October 3rd, 2009 at 10:14 am
Mine started this problem within the last three days. Prior to that I was amazed at my battery life only needing to charge every couple of days unless I sat and played with the phone a lot which is to be expected. It would only drop about 2 or 3% an hour on standby. Suddenly it started dropping 20-25% an hour on standby. Tried rebooting and deleted most of my apps, but it didn’t help. Yesterday I restored to new phone, installed only my email (exchange). Went to bed last night fully charged. Dead this morning. I’m going to shut off push and see how it does, but I had push on before with no problem. Trying to think what changed three days ago I’m not sure but this may have started for me with the release of MMS services. If turning off push doesn’t do anything I will restore to new again and not accept the upgrade to service change. See what happens.
October 3rd, 2009 at 2:20 pm
I’m having the exact same problem! Seems to have started 3 or so days ago where my battery now drains at a rate of 10% per hour. Before it would only drain 2-3% per hour. Basically now it won’t stay charged for a fully day whereas before I could go 2 days without charging. I wonder if it has anything to do with the Carrier MMS updated we got early this week????
October 4th, 2009 at 10:43 am
Also having the same exact problem since updating with the Carrier MMS update. Battery wasn’t so hot to start with. Now I’m on the way to see my “Genius”!
October 5th, 2009 at 9:54 pm
UPDATE: So u turned off push messaging (for e-mail) altogether and that has fixed my problem altogether—battery life is back to normal.
I will keep PUSH off until Apple fixes this–pretty ridiculous!
October 6th, 2009 at 3:03 pm
I didn’t use my iPHONE but once today, and it wasn’t for long. My phone at 52% by 11:45, still no use by 1:07 it was at 32% then dead by 2:45 when i next checked. What is wrong? I have the new 3GS and its been working fine the past two months except an occasional freeze up
October 7th, 2009 at 9:05 am
Well i had the same problem… i restored my OS via itunes… it worked. Battery life is back to normal.
Pls do not update to OS 3.1 it sucks!!
October 9th, 2009 at 8:14 am
If i turn on Push notifications, my iphone it’s very hot!! in 20 min my battery it’s empty and no chance to recharge with push notifications ON. What can i do?
October 9th, 2009 at 10:54 am
Is there a way to get notes off the device (I sync with Windows). I have my calendars syncing with Google, it’s just Notes really I’d like to keep.
October 11th, 2009 at 10:32 pm
TEXTFREE EATS BATTERIES…
I love TextFree, but discovered it was the cause of 80% of my battery loss.
Try it for yourself..
October 28th, 2009 at 6:17 pm
I’ve had my 3GS for just a couple months. I recently updated to 3.1.2 and now my battery randomly drops in about 20% chunks and the battery life is just generally unreliable. I had less than 2 hours of usage with 47% battery life. Then I held in the sleep/wake button and then held down the home button until the phone turned off. It didn’t show the revolving circle when it turned off and then took a while to turn on but when it did, I gained 10% of battery life. Battery life just seems unpredictable on this new update. Uh oh I just used up 6% more of my battery just complaining about it.
November 2nd, 2009 at 10:45 am
Same problem here….couple of days ago, battery was hot. You could see the drain on the battery indicator (from 100% to nothing in about an hour). rebooted, same issue…..Let it charge for awhile, same issue. this morning, the issue seems to have itself resolved, as the iphone is behaving normally. I already have an appointment with the geniuses at the genius bar…..wondering what they will tell me
November 29th, 2009 at 1:11 pm
I have a jailbroken 3g and I wAs wondering about my battery life. At first when i had barley restored my iPhone(as a new iPhone because the battery got extremely hot), synced it with iTunes to put in music, apps, info and all that. Then I jailbroke. Once jailbroken i didn’t do much wit the cydia app cuz I didn’t have much time on my hands to add more things to my phone. So I went about a week or two with my phone like this. I still noticed the phone getting extremely hot and I know it’s not my apps cuz before all this I tried to keep my iPhone “app-less” and battery still extremely hot. It got so hot that I got a blister on my finger and a part of my palm. I’m sure I’m no doing anything to cause the blisters, so I’m pretty sure it’s the overheating phone. Anyways, the battery life was decent. I turned off everything through settings and got about from 6:45am(time I left my home) to about 1:50pm on standby and the battery was at about 45% once I got home I might text (at least about 30 incoming/outgoing) , maybe send 1 at most 2 emails. My battery would be dead by 3:30 pm.
TheN after I put the winterboard app I didn’t notice a significant drop. It stayed about the same because now I also used SBsettings and used that to turn off everyting (and kill unwanted processes). And battery is same. But I still get the hot iPhone. I have a cheap silicon case my sister gave to me and use that to prevent from getting injured by the phone. The screen may get warm but the back of the phone is what is the main source of heat. Also noticed that ever since the iPhone got hot my camera stopped working. The camera app opens but then it gets stuck on the part where the lens are supposed to open. They stay closed (on the screen) so I can’t get any visual input on my iPhone and I enjoy taking pictures. It’s something I miss.
Any help or advice would be excellent. Please help.
I’m thinking about buying the mili power pack, but I don’t want to have a battery drainage problem on my phone.
December 1st, 2009 at 8:47 pm
My new 3GS suddenly started getting hot and draining the battery very quickly (2-4 hours). It had been working fine for 6-7 weeks. I did a complete erase and restore, to no avail. The second time, I didn’t restore and -no more hot iPhone, so that proved it wasn’t hardware. When I reset and restored again, all was well! I reset my (old) 3G before I sold it, and that took well over an hour, but the 3GS completes this in a minute or two. Is this normal? Any feed back would be appreciated. So, my experience is, do a backup and you won’t lose anything.
December 3rd, 2009 at 12:43 am
Bill, do u have any idea I would go about backing up jailbreak apps? Because if I restore. I will lose my jailbreak apps. (I think)
December 20th, 2009 at 12:19 pm
Recently heard that a PhD student manages to increase iPhone battery life by 12x. More: http://www.ranjith7.com/a-student-increases-iphone-battery-life/
January 13th, 2010 at 1:59 am
Since a week or so battery drained within 3 to 4 hours. After having read this article disabled all push settings for various apps. Immediately experienced a big improvement on battery time. Now will try to enable some off the push settings again.
January 14th, 2010 at 9:52 am
Enabled push for Exchange mail again, immediate deterioration of battery life time. Seems that this happens since the latest firmware update of IPhone: 3.1.2
January 20th, 2010 at 5:25 pm
very relieved to discover this discussion. i thought it was just me. taken your push-off advice, and now I’ll wait and see. are there particular apps that drain more than others?
January 29th, 2010 at 4:44 am
My i-phone version is 3.0.1 and suddenly my batt has started to drain down. It works only for 6hrs in a day, without using any application. It will full charged in the morning, and drained down at 1:00pm, and i have not even received one phone call or even used any apps. It’s just been over 5 months that I have bought this phone, which means it’s still under warrently. I have got this phone from New Zealand, and now im based in India. Do you suggest me to send this phone back to NZ to replace or does restoration really help?