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Is this normal? (short battery life)

Maclver

Maclver

macrumors 68030
Original poster
Nov 23, 2008
2,860
2,618
New Mexico
I have noticed over the past couple of weeks that my battery life sucks.... At the end of the day Im down to 15% and only had 15 hours of standby and 3 hours of usage... I use 3g for email and facebook. And don't use any push apps so is that battery life normal for a iPhone 3GS I'm getting the same usgae everyday? Like right Now I'm at 66% with 3 hours standby and 1.30 hour usage
 
Maclver said:
I have noticed over the past couple of weeks that my battery life sucks.... At the end of the day Im down to 15% and only had 15 hours of standby and 3 hours of usage... I use 3g for email and facebook. And don't use any push apps so is that battery life normal for a iPhone 3GS I'm getting the same usgae everyday? Like right Now I'm at 66% with 3 hours standby and 1.30 hour usage
Click to expand...

How many bars?

What kind of usage re: email and facebook (what are you doing)

Doesn't sound normal - but we'd also have to know what brightness setttings, wifi, etc

Did you ever calibrate the battery?
 
Maclver said:
I have noticed over the past couple of weeks that my battery life sucks.... At the end of the day Im down to 15% and only had 15 hours of standby and 3 hours of usage... I use 3g for email and facebook. And don't use any push apps so is that battery life normal for a iPhone 3GS I'm getting the same usgae everyday? Like right Now I'm at 66% with 3 hours standby and 1.30 hour usage
Click to expand...

You don't use push, but is push turned to OFF?
 
that was going to be my question.. i didnt USE push but I had it turned on just incase and my batter life decreased HUGELY.. I was out of battery by 8pm with about the same usage you are suggesting.

go into your settings and turn push notifications off
 
Doesn't sound normal to me... and the end of the day, I'm normally at 60%+ with about the same amount of usage.
 
Maclver said:
At the end of the day Im down to 15% and only had 15 hours of standby and 3 hours of usage... I use 3g for email and facebook.
Click to expand...

That sounds exactly like my phone...maybe slightly better, even.

I have a 3G, not an S, but I really don't know how much better the S is supposed to be at battery life.
 
Reclaim3r said:
Doesn't sound normal to me... and the end of the day, I'm normally at 60%+ with about the same amount of usage.
Click to expand...

No wifi, brightness 75% and I installed the one push app so i don't have the option in te settings to turn it off... As far as my facebook and email just messages no pics or anythig like that...
 
Maclver said:
No wifi, brightness 75% and I installed the one push app so i don't have the option in te settings to turn it off... As far as my facebook and email just messages no pics or anythig like that...
Click to expand...

Well 75 percent right there is going to eat your battery... Mine is set to about 40 percent...

I get about 4-5 hours of decent usage with wifi on (3GS off) - calls, emails, web surfing, watching videos and no push apps running (fetch every 15 min on one account) and by night time I'm usually anywhere between 45-60 percent.
 
Maclver said:
No wifi, brightness 75% and I installed the one push app so i don't have the option in te settings to turn it off... As far as my facebook and email just messages no pics or anythig like that...
Click to expand...

woah, that's pretty bright. I've realized that I really don't need all that brightness and have turned mine down to about 25%. Battery life has improved.

You have intstalled a push app so you don't have the option to turn it off? :confused: that doesn't make sense
 
How much does push affect battery life?

I have everything on except BT, brightness is about 45%, and at the end of the day I'm about 20-30 percent unless I give it a spot charge.

3GS and I make about 1-1.5 hours of call time, less than 15 mins of surfing, occasional emails, ~4 hours of ipod and gaming (bejeweled, blocked, target tap, paper toss) while on the train.

Will my battery life drastically improve with push notifications off?
 
Mad Mac Maniac said:
You should be able to notice a difference. I'd say it makes about a 10-15% difference. So if you don't use push then definitely turn it off. if you use it fairly frequently and are able to live with the current battery life then I'd say just keep it.
Click to expand...

It depends! If you get 5 e-mails a day, push would be better than fetch.

(Talking e-mail here. He didn't say. Yeah, if it's a push app he meant, you're probably right.)
 
Small White Car said:
It depends! If you get 5 e-mails a day, push would be better than fetch.

(Talking e-mail here. He didn't say. Yeah, if it's a push app he meant, you're probably right.)
Click to expand...

In terms of battery life, is it better to turn off fetch and leave push on or vice versa?

It's a personal account so it's not crucial that I get them right away...
 
miggitymac said:
With push on, is my phone constantly checking the server to get new mail?
Click to expand...

Manual: It only checks when you open mail.
Fetch: It checks at 15, 30, or 60 minutes despending on your settings.
Push: It gets a message when it arrives at your mail server.

So mansual is clearly best.
In your case, Push would end up communicating about 15 times a day.

If you have Fetch set to 1 hour it checks 24 times a day. If it's set to 15 minutes it checks 96 times a days. So for you, push is probably BETTER for your battery.

If you get 100 e-mails a day, then clearly fetch would be better.
 
Small White Car said:
Manual: It only checks when you open mail.
Fetch: It checks at 15, 30, or 60 minutes despending on your settings.
Push: It gets a message when it arrives at your mail server.

So mansual is clearly best.
In your case, Push would end up communicating about 15 times a day.

If you have Fetch set to 1 hour it checks 24 times a day. If it's set to 15 minutes it checks 96 times a days. So for you, push is probably BETTER for your battery.

If you get 100 e-mails a day, then clearly fetch would be better.
Click to expand...

Ok, I'll try leaving push on and turning fetch to manual and see how much of a difference it makes.

Thanks!
 
samcraig said:
Did you ever calibrate the battery?
Click to expand...

Yea, do this.

I've also noticed that those last 30% or so percent last forever. Don't be worried until you hit that 10% percent warning. And even then, you still have a bunch of juice left.

That's my experience, anyway ...
 
Sorry I have no push apps so I So I don't that option to turn it off.. I have fetch turned off but this started with 3.0.1 I think
 
hmm.. well then I would just suggest lowering the brightness. Have you always had it on 75%?

The battery life isn't terrible just a little on the low side. Like I said mine is on about 25% but I bet even if you lower it to 40% you would see a noticable difference. It won't hurt your eyes an much when you look at the screen at night either :D That's actually why I lowered mine
 
With Push Notification Off you can safely save 50% of your battery life (yeah, it sucks that much). I still don't get how somebody at Apple get it a "green light"...
 
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