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Battery Issues
- Thread starter c84216
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I had pretty much the same experience.
In my Settings > Usage screen I had " - " for both Usage and Standby yesterday, meaning that it had never actually fully recharged. That was after using it daily since launch.
Last night I simply disabled WiFi and recharged it with WiFi off for the first time since buying it. Bingo, I finally got the fully charged Battery graphic and my Usage and Standby settings are now showing actual times. I'm also showing the small plug battery icon in the upper right corner of the screen.
It looks like leaving WiFi on drains just enough battery to keep it from fully charging.
Another thing I've learned is to turn off the WiFi when I'm not planning to use it. I get much much better battery time if I do that instead of running WiFi all the time like I had been doing.
Yes, but it's very very subtle. I never would have noticed it if people hadn't mentioned it or I hadn't seen pictures showing the difference.
I'm guessing all of this will easily be ironed out with a simple firmware update in the very near future.
So... Armed with the new knowledge of battery funkiness, I paid closer attention. Attempting to get the "glow", I charged via the usb with everything off, while at work. Got up to the endcap, but no glow. Plug showed. Plugged it into my car adapter/charger on the way home, everything off. Took it inside, docked it, and the green had dropped to show that small gap (like 1 and 2 in the wirelessinfo.com link). Plug showed. Plugged it in the wall charger, everything off but the cell (I'm on-call). A couple/few hours later, it was up to the endcap. Plug showed. Left it plugged in all night. This morning, the gap was there again, plug showed, and both Usage and Standby showed "2 Hourse, 56 Minutes". I was sound asleep at that time. Heh.
On the "glow" thing... There is a guy at work who got one for his wife. I remember he "raved" about the battery life. Said they used it for 2.5 - 3 days before having to charge it at all, with all kinds of usage. I asked if they get the "glow" when it's full, if it looked "radioactive". He said - "Oh. Yeah. Definitely." I'm so confused. Heh. I wish I could see it myself, but I don't know him well enough that I could ask him to snag his wife's phone for an entire day.
On the "glow" thing... There is a guy at work who got one for his wife. I remember he "raved" about the battery life. Said they used it for 2.5 - 3 days before having to charge it at all, with all kinds of usage. I asked if they get the "glow" when it's full, if it looked "radioactive". He said - "Oh. Yeah. Definitely." I'm so confused. Heh. I wish I could see it myself, but I don't know him well enough that I could ask him to snag his wife's phone for an entire day.
I'm personally very skeptical about trying to judge iPhone usage time based on someone else's experience. If they've never had WiFi on for instance, or use it only for minutes at a time then turn it off, you could go days without needing to recharge. If you're in an area that has bad EDGE coverage and you don't turn on WiFi, you could get even longer. My guess is this whole thing just has to do with how different people use their iPhones.
See that's my problem. The battery never reaches the end cap and never glows but it shows the fully charged plug icon at the top. Also I get the usage time under the settings but if i charge the phone when im sleeping at night when i wake up the usage is already at 6 or so hours usage "since full charge". Whats the deal anyone else having that same problem?
well I defenitly got the glow this morning when I woke up, and the battery shows full complete charge. I am going to check how long I can go without charging the phone, Ill get back to you guys.
Well here is my usage so far today.
No Bluetooth or wifi on
half brightness
maybe an hour of surfing on edge
45 Min of iPod time
3 calls / all lasted about 10 Min each
Few Min in maps
I unpluged it from the wall charger this morning at 9 am and it is now 1:25 pm and I have about half battery left. Sounds bad huh.
No Bluetooth or wifi on
half brightness
maybe an hour of surfing on edge
45 Min of iPod time
3 calls / all lasted about 10 Min each
Few Min in maps
I unpluged it from the wall charger this morning at 9 am and it is now 1:25 pm and I have about half battery left. Sounds bad huh.
My battery life has been about 7 hours w/ heavy wifi browsing & video playback.
Got my battery all the way down to when I got the 15% warning. Plugged it up for about 4.5 hours and right now its showing that it's 100% charged (big battery pic battery is completely filled) but it the big battery meter isn't glowing.
Got my battery all the way down to when I got the 15% warning. Plugged it up for about 4.5 hours and right now its showing that it's 100% charged (big battery pic battery is completely filled) but it the big battery meter isn't glowing.
I totally get what you're saying St. Germain. It's a perfectly valid point. In my case, my only real interest was finding out if that guy honestly saw the "glow", since I've never seen it. If I could actually see it with my own eyes, all doubt would be removed and I'd be headed to the store. The Sasquatch effect, I guess. Heh.
That's why I wanted to do some controlled testing in my Ars thread. My test is in there, but no one really joined in. So, there's really nothing to compare to. People can explain their general usage ad infinitum, but there are just too many variables to take into account. Thing is, it's probably pretty realistic to assume light-to-medium usage shouldn't require you to recharge by the time you've left work. I'm not complaining at the company at all. I think they've done an amazing thing here. I'd carry my iphone in my underwear if it wasn't too uncomforatable. My point is that it appears there could be an emerging battery issue and such problems do tend to come to light when new tech hits the masses. If there are any Sidekick 1 Color owners here, they may remember the battery issue plaguing many, where leaving it plugged in was actually degrading battery life. Turns out they were overcharging, because there was no trickle charge. They finally heard the masses, saw the problem, and sent out an OTA update to turn on trickle. It fixed the problem.
In any case, today on my iphone, with Brightness under the "e" and acidentally left auto-brightness off:
- Opened wirelessinfo.com (on wireless) to have it for the AT&T store
- Opened fandango.com (on wireless) to do 1 search for a movie
- Turned off wireless and headed to work
- Sleeped it
- Plugged into car adapter/charger
- Drove 10 minutes to work
- Sent/recieved 6 SMS
- Sleeped it
- Opened myspace.com and couldn't scroll it for whatever reason
- Sleeped it
- Sent/recieved 4 SMS
- Sleeped it
- Opened a few apps to show a guy (~1 minute of "Snatch", a few seconds of a Suzanne Vega song, 1 email fetch, and tipping the screen a few times on the previously loaded myspace.com page)
I have about 3/4 battery left. Subtracting the phantom 2h 59m usage I woke up to this morning from the current usage of 5h 2m, all of that above clocks at 2h.
2h 59m from 10h 51m of standby is 7h 50m total.
Given Apple's numbers (or half), for example, at maximum usage in 1 full battery cycle with no standby, I/we should theoretically be able to:
- Talk 1 hour (.25 hour)
- Surf 2 hours (1 hour)
- Watch 2 hours (1 hour)
- Listen 5 hours (2.50 hour)
If I duplicated my usage today 3 more times, I'd have:
- Talk 0 hours
- Surf ~1.5 hours
- Watch ~4 minutes
- Listen ~2 minutes
- Standby ~31.25 hours
I'm not math savvy enough to figure what that would equate with the standby time factored out (I had to actually draw and marcate (?) a battery to figure the Apple example), but I'm guessing it's not great.
Apologies for my inundation, but thank you for your indulgence.
That's why I wanted to do some controlled testing in my Ars thread. My test is in there, but no one really joined in. So, there's really nothing to compare to. People can explain their general usage ad infinitum, but there are just too many variables to take into account. Thing is, it's probably pretty realistic to assume light-to-medium usage shouldn't require you to recharge by the time you've left work. I'm not complaining at the company at all. I think they've done an amazing thing here. I'd carry my iphone in my underwear if it wasn't too uncomforatable. My point is that it appears there could be an emerging battery issue and such problems do tend to come to light when new tech hits the masses. If there are any Sidekick 1 Color owners here, they may remember the battery issue plaguing many, where leaving it plugged in was actually degrading battery life. Turns out they were overcharging, because there was no trickle charge. They finally heard the masses, saw the problem, and sent out an OTA update to turn on trickle. It fixed the problem.
In any case, today on my iphone, with Brightness under the "e" and acidentally left auto-brightness off:
- Opened wirelessinfo.com (on wireless) to have it for the AT&T store
- Opened fandango.com (on wireless) to do 1 search for a movie
- Turned off wireless and headed to work
- Sleeped it
- Plugged into car adapter/charger
- Drove 10 minutes to work
- Sent/recieved 6 SMS
- Sleeped it
- Opened myspace.com and couldn't scroll it for whatever reason
- Sleeped it
- Sent/recieved 4 SMS
- Sleeped it
- Opened a few apps to show a guy (~1 minute of "Snatch", a few seconds of a Suzanne Vega song, 1 email fetch, and tipping the screen a few times on the previously loaded myspace.com page)
I have about 3/4 battery left. Subtracting the phantom 2h 59m usage I woke up to this morning from the current usage of 5h 2m, all of that above clocks at 2h.
2h 59m from 10h 51m of standby is 7h 50m total.
Given Apple's numbers (or half), for example, at maximum usage in 1 full battery cycle with no standby, I/we should theoretically be able to:
- Talk 1 hour (.25 hour)
- Surf 2 hours (1 hour)
- Watch 2 hours (1 hour)
- Listen 5 hours (2.50 hour)
If I duplicated my usage today 3 more times, I'd have:
- Talk 0 hours
- Surf ~1.5 hours
- Watch ~4 minutes
- Listen ~2 minutes
- Standby ~31.25 hours
I'm not math savvy enough to figure what that would equate with the standby time factored out (I had to actually draw and marcate (?) a battery to figure the Apple example), but I'm guessing it's not great.
Apologies for my inundation, but thank you for your indulgence.
We're gonna mark this as a bug in our tracker thread.
Just to clear up one point... You can only charge the iPhone when it is in Standby or ON mode. If you plug in the iPhone and then totally Power Off the iPhone, it will stop charging.
Most of the complaints seem to be about not being able to get a full charge, but I did see a couple of posts with people seeming to try to charge their iPhones while the power was completely off, which just won't work.
Just to clear up one point... You can only charge the iPhone when it is in Standby or ON mode. If you plug in the iPhone and then totally Power Off the iPhone, it will stop charging.
Most of the complaints seem to be about not being able to get a full charge, but I did see a couple of posts with people seeming to try to charge their iPhones while the power was completely off, which just won't work.
I was really worried that my battery was borked because I only got about a 95% charge on my second "full" charge. But today, I left it plugged in for a few hours and finally got that beautiful green glow.
Sorry for everyone still having problems.
Sorry for everyone still having problems.
Shut phone completely off, but screen lights back up when I put in dock.
------------------------------------------------
I pressed and held my sleep button to turn off the iPhone completely. The screen went black. But when I put it into the charging dock (attached to wall adaptor) the screen lit up with all of the home icons. Is this normal? After a few minutes the screen faded slowly back to black.
------------------------------------------------
I pressed and held my sleep button to turn off the iPhone completely. The screen went black. But when I put it into the charging dock (attached to wall adaptor) the screen lit up with all of the home icons. Is this normal? After a few minutes the screen faded slowly back to black.
is it all tied to auto-brightness?
I just found this thread last night...i hadn't paid any attention to the battery until i started thinking about how long i'd be able to play videos on my 6 hour plane ride next week - played some videos yesterday and after about 3 hours my battery was down around 5%
found this thread so now i''m testing with the wifi off and auto brightness off.
this morning, after charging all night, i still didn't have the 'glow'... but i realized i had left wifi running during charging and so i turned that off and watched some video and plugged back in to charge - after turning wifi off and auto bright off, the iphone charged fully and i got the 'glow'
so... i'm wondering if it all has to do with having either both turned off or at least the auto-bright... more testing but at least i got the 'glow'
right now, i'm more than 1 hour into watching video with wifi and auto brightness off and the battery indicator hasn't even budged off of full!
Mitch
I just found this thread last night...i hadn't paid any attention to the battery until i started thinking about how long i'd be able to play videos on my 6 hour plane ride next week - played some videos yesterday and after about 3 hours my battery was down around 5%
found this thread so now i''m testing with the wifi off and auto brightness off.
this morning, after charging all night, i still didn't have the 'glow'... but i realized i had left wifi running during charging and so i turned that off and watched some video and plugged back in to charge - after turning wifi off and auto bright off, the iphone charged fully and i got the 'glow'
so... i'm wondering if it all has to do with having either both turned off or at least the auto-bright... more testing but at least i got the 'glow'
right now, i'm more than 1 hour into watching video with wifi and auto brightness off and the battery indicator hasn't even budged off of full!
Mitch
Well heres my situation as of last night/this morning. Yesterday I drained the battery (for the first time) all the way to the must connect to power screen. Plugged it into the dock, connected to the wall charger and let it be for a few hours. Came back and checked it, still not completely full (had the little sliver remaining). Checked again and it still didn't have the big battery bar completely filled with a glow, but the little battery icon showed the plug. Then I checked the usage and it was still - - saying it hadn't been fully charged yet. So I waited again and came back and finally had the full big battery bar with the glow! It took about 4 hours in all and showed the usage as 0 min / 0 min. I was happy.
Keep in mind that while the phone was charging I had it on airplane mode, with blue tooth off and email on manual. I thought, this is great, kept the phone plugged in and went to sleep. I woke up and checked to see if it was the same way as before and to my surprise, it went back to the little sliver left in the big battery bar, and no glow. The usage stayed the same (0 min/ 0 min). So today I will check and see how long I get usage for.
Keep in mind that while the phone was charging I had it on airplane mode, with blue tooth off and email on manual. I thought, this is great, kept the phone plugged in and went to sleep. I woke up and checked to see if it was the same way as before and to my surprise, it went back to the little sliver left in the big battery bar, and no glow. The usage stayed the same (0 min/ 0 min). So today I will check and see how long I get usage for.
Why is auto brightness the key factor in battery life? You'd think it would save brightness. Silly Apple this time.
The Genius at the iPod Bar did replace my iPhone no questions asked. The replacement seems to be working fine so far. I drained my battery completely when I first got it and then charged it in Airplane mode via USB. It took me 5-6 hours to completely charge it and I did get the green glow which isn't as noticeable as I expected. I got the impression as well that the phone seems to charge faster via USB, I could be wrong though.
Also, I think Apple could stem a lot of these problems if they changed the way the battery animation works. Once my battery got to ~90% it took another hour to go through several tiny graphical increments to reach 100%. I think it would be better if they just went in %10 increments. I really don't care to know if the battery is 98% charged. I just want to know when it's at 100%.
Also, I think Apple could stem a lot of these problems if they changed the way the battery animation works. Once my battery got to ~90% it took another hour to go through several tiny graphical increments to reach 100%. I think it would be better if they just went in %10 increments. I really don't care to know if the battery is 98% charged. I just want to know when it's at 100%.
Well for me at least, it now doesn't seem to be the ability to obtain a full "glowing" charge but to keep it. I get the glow, but if I keep it on the charger for much longer than that it goes back down to the "almost charged, sliver left" big battery, and the usage clock starts ticking. This is a problem for me because I normally charge my phone all night and I can't have my phone being fully charged at 3 in the morning but then drain all the way until I wake up.
Apple responds!
see this TUAW report:
http://www.tuaw.com/2007/07/12/apple-says-iphone-battery-charging-problem-is-a-fixable-firmware/
see this TUAW report:
http://www.tuaw.com/2007/07/12/apple-says-iphone-battery-charging-problem-is-a-fixable-firmware/