2.1 Jailbroken Battery Life

[pj rage]

How is the 2.1 jailbroken firmware treating everyone's batteries?

It might be too early for me to worry, but my battery as of all of yesterday (typical work day) and so far today, is much much worse than usual.

I've only ran my battery down to the 20% mark one time since July 11, and that was when I didn't charge it the night before. But, yesterday, my battery was down to 12% when I put it on charge. Lower than ever, and I hadn't even really used it. After 12 hours of standby, 10 of which was in airplane mode (all radios off), 8 minutes of edge data use, and 30 mins ipod use, it was at 61%. Which is unheard of low for me. That's my typical work day and it's usually at 80% or better at that point. I couldn't check the usage stats yesterday because they just said "--" for both standby and usage.

Today, it's shaping up to be just as bad or worse than yesterday. Most of the time when I'm jailbroken, my usage and standby stats just say "--". Not sure why. But as of right now, they say 1hour47mins for usage and 1hour53mins for standby. And the phone has only been USED for about 5 minutes since full charge. How weird is that? What the heck is causing the phone to think it's being used almost 100% of the time?

Anyone else having similar issues?

 

[WillJS]

Wirelessly posted (iPhone: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.1 Mobile/5F136 Safari/525.20)

well since you have jailbroken the phone that will definetly affect the life of the battery. Try restoring and use your phone for a day or two unjailbroken and see if tour battery life improves.

 

[pj rage]

Wirelessly posted (iPhone: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.1 Mobile/5F136 Safari/525.20)

well since you have jailbroken the phone that will definetly affect the life of the battery. Try restoring and use your phone for a day or two unjailbroken and see if tour battery life improves.

I never had this issue on jailbroken 2.0.2 so I don't know where you get your data.

 

[AustinSTI]

I never had this issue on jailbroken 2.0.2 so I don't know where you get your data.

He's basing it on the fact that Jailbroken phones can run BG apps which would impact battery life. True enough but it sounds like the OP has something running in the BG that can't get out. Usage/Standby is critical to finding out if this is the case

Try the following:
1) Soft Reset; check usage/standby
2) Restore to 2.1 virgin.
3) Check Usage/Standby - if nothing shows up then take to apple.

 

[pj rage]

Usage and standby does work sometimes. It seems to work for a while then <something happens (respring? dunno)> and it goes to "--" until I full charge again.

Anyway, it's been working today (usage stats). This morning the battery was being trashed. Once I figured out that the usage and standby stats were nearly the same, I messed around a bit. I set and reset the "lock" after for whatever reason (I thought I had it on never then I installed something and it went back to 1 min, so I figured maybe a problem there?). I then entered airplane mode as normal. The battery seemed to be much better and standby began to climb higher while usage stayed the same. I then charged my phone at lunch to 100%, and it's now been just fine - many hours standby and only a few minutes usage. And my battery has been normal again. I'll have to see what happens when I exit airplane mode and turn the radios back on tonight. Gonna have to keep an eye on this problem and see if it's gone now or if it's gonna come back.

I understand that things can run in the background with a jailbroken phone, but to say something to the affect of "jailbreaking will affect your battery life" is kind of a blanket statement which is, in my experience, flat out wrong. It CAN affect your battery if you are having an unusual problem, or a purposeful configuration which uses background processes, but the jailbreak itself, to my knowledge, and in my experience, does not affect your battery one way or the other.

 

[Speedracer04]

My iPhone/iPhone 3G has been jailbroken since 1.X.X, now it is jailbroken on 2.1 and is getting the best battery life it has ever gotten.

I typically leave work with over 80% battery life, only if I am downloading many MB woth of packages or on safari for a long period of time do I run the battery down that bad

 

[pj rage]

Yeah it must be something in particular on my phone. Into the night tonight, it seems worse again. Unfortunately, after installing some apps on cydia I lost the standby and usage stats so I can't even check that until I get a full charge again, which is annoying. I just watch the battery percentage drop 1 by 1 way faster than it should (and has in the past). Something must be running but I don't really even know how to find out what it is. I'd love to avoid restoring, but I'm thinking that would probably fix it if I can't get to the bottom of it. The good thing is that I have plenty of time to figure it out because I don't use the phone much at all during the week, so even draining slow it doesn't get all the way down. I'll give it a bit and try to track it down. Any suggestions would be great in the mean time.

 

[pj rage]

Well I've still been having this problem (something running in the background which is causing the usage stats to read the same as my standby stats, and causing my battery life to suck).

Using insomnia/ssh/top I've narrowed it down to the mediaserverd process. It's constantly running using around 3% cpu time. I have no idea how to fix it. I'm still investigating, but it doesn't happen ALL the time, only most of the time. Sometimes I'll go a few hours of actual standby where the usage doesn't go up when it's locked, but then after I use the phone, the next few hours I don't use it the usage is still going up. It's random - I can't find a link to any particular app or anything. Sometimes after a restart it's fine for a bit, sometimes it does it right away. Even just unlocking the phone, switching pages on the spring board and then relocking will trigger the process to keep running. I really don't want to remove winterboard (I like themes!), but I suspect it may be the culprit. Oh yeah, I also found out that after a winterboard respring is when I lose the usage stats (they go to "--").

This has been happening ever since the 2.1 update but never happened before it. And it was doing it with exactly the same apps installed from cydia and the app store, nothing different (just 2.0.2 vs 2.1). I'm going to go another day or so to get a little more info then I'll lose winterboard for a few days and see what happens. I really don't want to have to do a full restore, but that might be my only option

I just can't believe I'm the only one having this issue. I jailbroke 2.1 using the same method as everyone else on windows (pre-winpwn and quickpwn for 2.1) and I don't think I have any apps or anything crazy that's any different that tons of other people. Anyone have any suggestions for other things to try that might fix this?

 

[pj rage]

Reading more around the web, it seems that there are more people having this problem after upgrading to 2.1, but even non-jailbroken. So maybe it has nothing to do with jailbreaking? Or maybe my problem is different? One guy says he solved his problem by turning off push, but I don't use push

 

[SandersHokie]

My iPhone/iPhone 3G has been jailbroken since 1.X.X, now it is jailbroken on 2.1 and is getting the best battery life it has ever gotten.

I typically leave work with over 80% battery life, only if I am downloading many MB woth of packages or on safari for a long period of time do I run the battery down that bad

hey is there anyway to have your themes saved each time you update the jailbroken phone?

 

[Enigmafan420]

I have been using jailbroken 2.1 for over a week now and did not notice any difference.

That being said, I have seen other posts regarding 2.1 battery life in general. Are you using push for anything?

Course if you are on airplane mode, push wouldn't work anyway-I think you may have a bogus battery.

 

[ntrigue]

hey is there anyway to have your themes saved each time you update the jailbroken phone?

aptBackup on Cydia

 

[ViViDboarder]

aptBackup on Cydia

Doesn't do your themes. You can SSH to your /Library/Themes/ folder and save them.

 

[jcde7ago]

No problems here....i still average 5+ hours of usage time on my jailbroken 3G, and this is running on 2.1 firmware while having 3G, Location Services and SSH always on (changed the login info and password on ssh of course ).

 

[SandersHokie]

Doesn't do your themes. You can SSH to your /Library/Themes/ folder and save them.

im just trying to think of what i need to save before i update to 2.1.

themes are the main thing i like jailbreaking for. just about all of my games come from the app store. what about some of the add-ons i've installed using cydia, will they be in affect when i update to 2.1? or how can i get those to copy over?

 

[pj rage]

I have been using jailbroken 2.1 for over a week now and did not notice any difference.

That being said, I have seen other posts regarding 2.1 battery life in general. Are you using push for anything?

Course if you are on airplane mode, push wouldn't work anyway-I think you may have a bogus battery.

No, I'm not using push at all. I've had 30 minute fetch on since I got the phone.

I seriously doubt that installing 2.1 instantly made my battery "bogus," as well as numerous other people's. It seems like for some people it made battery life much better, and for some people, it made it much worse. No idea why. Unless the firmware has now exploited some kind of hardware issue, but I doubt it.

 

[LSUtigers03]

Since 2.1 my battery life has been much better. My step brother and I thought that the update improving the battery that much was bogus but we both get at least 2 days out of our phones with 3g and everything else on. My phone is jailbroken his isn't but the battery life is the same. I use my phone a lot during the day and since 2.1 I don't have to worry about it going dead in a single day of use.

 

[GNice]

By any chance have you fully discharged your battery. After the 2.1 update my battery life was actually worse...until I fully discharged my battery. Honestly, it may be coincidence. But after I fully recharged the battery it's been steller. YMMV...

 

[lavrishevo]

Might want to try this: Turn push off, turn location services off, also set mail checking to manual and see how it us over the day. I am getting excellent battery life with the settings above.

Jailbroken 2.1

 

[kbt33]

Same here

I had some of the same problems everyone has been talking about. I went from a jailbroken 2.0.1 to 2.1. The first few days my battery seems to have improved. Then one day it drained at an alarming rate. Normally by the end of my work day I would have 75% left but on that day it was at 30% when I got home. I only used it for text message while at work. I did a full restore without back up and the battery seems fine. Now I jailbroken my phone again and it seems to drain faster than when it wasn’t. I only installed Bosspref, Snapture, Winterboard, Tunewiki, and MXtube. I’m not sure if any of these programs are the cause of it. Is there a way to test or to fix this?

 

[jcde7ago]

I had some of the same problems everyone has been talking about. I went from a jailbroken 2.0.1 to 2.1. The first few days my battery seems to have improved. Then one day it drained at an alarming rate. Normally by the end of my work day I would have 75% left but on that day it was at 30% when I got home. I only used it for text message while at work. I did a full restore without back up and the battery seems fine. Now I jailbroken my phone again and it seems to drain faster than when it wasn’t. I only installed Bosspref, Snapture, Winterboard, Tunewiki, and MXtube. I’m not sure if any of these programs are the cause of it. Is there a way to test or to fix this?

Hmm...how weird. Iam running a jailbroken 2.1, 3G pwned through QuickPwn and I have BossPrefs, WinterBoard, MXTube, NES, quake4iphone and Terminal installed via Cydia as well as about 3 pages of AppStore apps (4 pages total worth of apps), AND i have 3G, Location Services, SSH on all the time and i have been having great battery life (which got better with 2.1). I don't, however, have Installer as i believe it is crap and chose to uncheck it during my QuickPqn process (all the jailbreak apps worth having make their way to Cydia anyways).

I have no idea what apps could be causing you guys' battery to drain, but i believe if you use google there is a program you can use to view currently running programs on your phone and how much processing power they are using (which is what drains the battery).

 

[kbt33]

Hmm...how weird. Iam running a jailbroken 2.1, 3G pwned through QuickPwn and I have BossPrefs, WinterBoard, MXTube, NES, quake4iphone and Terminal installed via Cydia as well as about 3 pages of AppStore apps (4 pages total worth of apps), AND i have 3G, Location Services, SSH on all the time and i have been having great battery life (which got better with 2.1). I don't, however, have Installer as i believe it is crap and chose to uncheck it during my QuickPqn process (all the jailbreak apps worth having make their way to Cydia anyways).

I have no idea what apps could be causing you guys' battery to drain, but i believe if you use google there is a program you can use to view currently running programs on your phone and how much processing power they are using (which is what drains the battery).

The time that it drained to 30% was when it wasn't jailbroken and I had 2.1 on it. Then I did a full restore and that seems to fix the problem. I would text all day and still have a good percentage of battery left. I'm not able to give the exact amount because bosspref was completely removed. Now that I have it jailbroken again, it is slightly worst. I'm not saying it drains it badly, but I have notice a difference. Another note, I had the battery indicator giving me the wrong information. A few times it would say 100% when it wasn't. Sometimes when I charge it, it would show the fully charge symbol when it is clearing still charging.

 

[jcde7ago]

The time that it drained to 30% was when it wasn't jailbroken and I had 2.1 on it. Then I did a full restore and that seems to fix the problem. I would text all day and still have a good percentage of battery left. I'm not able to give the exact amount because bosspref was completely removed. Now that I have it jailbroken again, it is slightly worst. I'm not saying it drains it badly, but I have notice a difference. Another note, I had the battery indicator giving me the wrong information. A few times it would say 100% when it wasn't. Sometimes when I charge it, it would show the fully charge symbol when it is clearing still charging.

Yeah, i would say that's pretty perplexing. Before i QuickPwned 2.1, i ran it for a few days and did notice improved battery life and overall stability. I was averaging around 5+ hours of usage time then, and still manage that same amount of time jailbroken running 3G, Location Services and SSH 24/7. If you haven't restored, you should and see if starting fresh does anything...but if no amount of restoring works, then maybe you should consider exchanging it, as it could always possibly be a hardware defect.

 

[ducati321]

This may have something to do with it

I just jailbroke to 2.1 yesterday, over night - my battery died (it was fully charged when I went to sleep).

I went into settings, and noticed that Fetch New Data was "Off". however - when I clicked on it - then went to Advanced, my gmail account was set to "Fetch". I changed it to Manual, I don't know if that will help...

I only have Open SSH/Cydia/Installer... I have some ipa's as well, but nothing else form the installer or cydia.

 

[SelfMadeCelo]

I jailbroke my phone yesterday, charged it all night and today my battery life has been horrible. Normally my battery lasts throughout the day but today it's only been off the charger for about 4 hours and usage time is about 40 minutes and theres maybe about 25% battery life left. I don't have SSH running or location services and my brightness is set pretty low.

Update: I charged my phone again overnight like I usually do and today the battery life is much better. It's been off the charger for about 5 hours with about an hour of usage time and it still shows a full battery. Maybe it was a fluke.