Before I make a Genius Bar appointment... (3GS battery life issues)

[SimpsonsFan007]

Hey guys - my wife's 3Gs has been getting some less-than-stellar battery life. She took it off the charger today at around 8:00 AM and when she called me at 12:30 she mentioned that she was already at 30% battery life, and I was the first call she'd made all day. The rest of the time was just standby! Now I know that the iPhone doesn't have the world's longest battery life, but that's pretty bad. It's been consistent enough for us to believe it's a hardware issue.

We are going to make a genius bar appointment sometime soon, but before we do that I wanted to ask here to see if there are certain things we should try first. Or if the Genius is going to just have us do things that we could have done at home, I'd like to save us the trip.

So I guess the question is two-fold... 1) Are there any known "fixes" for battery life? and 2) Will the Genius want us to have done something prior to coming in and potentially getting a replacement?

Thanks in advance for all replies!

 

[-aggie-]

You can see this thread for help on battery issues:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/525741/

You didn't say if you'd calibrated your battery or how long you've had the iPhone. Calibration is letting the phone totally die and then charging to 100%. Also, it may take some time before the iPhone battery behaves as normal (a few charge/discharge cycles).

The Genius will probably ask if you've restored the iPhone. This may also fix problems with the battery. So, do a DFU mode restore:

http://www.iclarified.com/entry/index.php?enid=1034

Restore as new to remove problems from backups and problems from previous OS's if you came from a 3G or earlier. Restoring from new is not too much of a headache if you've properly synced what CAN be synced. Make sure you sync properly before doing the restore (e.g., sync Notes to Outlook (windows) or Mail (mac), contacts to Outlook (windows) or Address Book (mac), etc.). You'll lose SMS and game saves/app settings. Also, you'll have to redo wifi passwords.

 

[Warbrain]

Have you tried restoring to make sure the OS didn't get bonked?

 

[eawmp1]

Restore has, thus far, fixed my issues with the 3GS battery on 3.1.

 

[rjsmith18]

I once did a full restore and got better battery life. I also turned off a lot of features that I don't use all the time (i.e.: location services, 3G when I'm not surfing the internet, bluetooth when not using it.) It seems, though, that your issue is more serious. Unless she has used it nonstop for the entire 4 hours.

 

[Night Spring]

I once took in an iPod touch for poor battery life, and the Genius just run a diagnostic program, which showed that the battery had been lasting only one hour, and swapped it without asking me any further questions. Your wife's battery seems to last longer than that, so I don't know what they would do, but if they determine that the battery life is substandard, they should swap it. If not, you can ask them for tips on making it last longer -- after all, that's what Geniuses are for!

 

[SimpsonsFan007]

Thanks for all the replies, guys! For reference, we got our phones on 3Gs launch day in June. I think my wife is still running 3.0 or 3.01, but definitely not 3.1 yet. The battery issue happened maybe a month into ownership, but just for one day and then it was much better, but then as time has gone on, it's been more frequent that the battery life has been much shorter.

I'll make the appointment for Friday, and we'll do a full restore tonight to see if it's better on Thursday.

Thanks again!