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Jailbroken 3G phone: progressive app slowdowns and worsening battery life

Argelius

Argelius

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jun 16, 2005
292
6
I have a jailbroken (via Pwnage.app) iPhone 3G. I jail broke it shortly after I got it (several months ago).

I am currently experiencing the following problems which seem to be getting worse:
[1] Battery life: with moderate 3G Internet/email usage within 30 minutes charge will be down 2/3 to 1/2.

[2] Sluggish apps: Safari, Mail, etc are taking a couple of seconds to launch after icon touched. Also frequently when typing there will be a 1-2 second delay between key presses and when the letter finally registers.

I have a handful of Cydia and AppStore apps on the phone.

Can anyone comment if this problem might be due to the jailbroken OS and/or jailbroken apps not utilizing memory/power management correctly, or is it more likely a hardware issue (particularity in the case of the battery life)?

Obviously, one way to find out is to do a restore to the native OS and see if things improve. But I thought I'd ask here to get some thoughts before going down that road...

Thanks
 
same thing here

While I can't offer you a solution, I am having the same problem, mainly with battery life. I jailbroke my 2.1 firmware the day quickpwn came out in support of it, and everything was great.

In the past week or two, though, I've noticed a much more severe drain on battery life. I've got a bunch of apps downloaded via cydia, and more recently I put appshare and installous on there. But even after these applications, everything seemed fine. Maybe it was an update to either of them recently? I've removed all themes, since I noticed some performance problems, but that was a while ago.

I also noticed my "Usage" has been way higher. End of the day, I usually was using 3-4 hours of "usage". Now, I'm seeing 6-7 hours.

I ran the unix "top" command (both from the mobile terminal and via SSH from my laptop) and I noticed that the "SpringBoard" was taking up a lot of time, with frequent bursts of CPU, even though I was not doing anything to the device (not even scrolling screens, which I noticed does crank up the cpu a little higher). top needs to be installed separately, but it's available in Cydia. I didn't see any other processes that could indicate high usage, but I'm not exactly sure what I'm looking for, either.

Is it possible that just the sheer number of applications i've installed is causing the lag? I have about 7 screens (56 apps) including the native apps that came on the phone.

At this point, I'm just biding my time until firmware 2.2 comes out, so I can re-jailbreak again, and hopefully clean things up.

Its good to know someone else is seeing an issue that relates almost exactly to my own. Let me know if have any other thoughts.
 
jfox00 said:
While I can't offer you a solution, I am having the same problem, mainly with battery life.
...
Its good to know someone else is seeing an issue that relates almost exactly to my own. Let me know if have any other thoughts.
Click to expand...

Thanks. I sort of know what I need to do - do a restore and see if things get better without the Jailbreak. Ultimately, as I scan my iPhone for Jailbroken apps, the only ones I have installed and use to any extent are WiFi toggle, Intelliscreen, Websearch, and 5-apps on the Dock. The only one I would really miss would be the five apps on the dock...

But if I have a hardware (battery problem) that will necessitate a return to Apple, I'll have to do a restore anyway, so might as well give that a shot and wait for the 2.2 Jailbreak.
 
let me know

Definitely follow back and and let me know how your restore works out. Doesn't sound like you had that many jailbroke apps, so I guess that might not be the issue.

Thanks....
 
I've noticed an increese with my battery.

I mean, I can use it for 3 days without having to charge..
 
jfox00 said:
Definitely follow back and and let me know how your restore works out.
Thanks....
Click to expand...

While, admittedly a totally subjective assessment, I have noticed a very significant improvement in both the battery life and overall responsiveness with my now unjailbroken 3G iPhone. The rapid battery drain I would experience every day is no longer occurring and I can easily get through the day with one charge. Also, apps are launching much more quickly now and I'm not experiencing the annoying lag while typing.

I don't know if the issue for me was with the jailbreak itself or some Installer/Cydia app that was messing with memory/power management.

I'll probably wait until the 2.2 OS comes out and is jailbroken before re-jailbreaking...
 
Agreed, I did the jailbreak thing a few weeks ago and last night I restored it to the stock system to test something. Before doing the stock restore, opening the SMS, mail, camera and Settings apps were all downright painful. Since restoring back to the stock 2.1 the load times are obviously shorter and typing is faster. Having no real reason to jailbreak again, I'm not going to bother.
 
interesting

Thanks for posting back (and for your comments markgamber). It does not surprise me to see a more responsive phone after a rebuild/reflash of the firmware. Somewhat akin to rebuilding a PC, you remove all the apps, clear out caches, etc..

Not to defend the jailbreak, but there is also a huge amount of variability regarding what people do after they jailbreak, that can cause performance problems, battery life issues, etc.. I think the problem is that no one really knows for sure what the "safe" jailbreak items are, and what the "other" ones are. I had my phone "themed" for a while, until I noticed that everything was just slow, as an example.

What I was really hoping is we could identify something "common" that caused the recent, and noticeable battery performance impact.

One thing I did notice - after an application crashes, there is some type of crash process that runs on the phone, which seems to take battery life and processing power. Also, after I use installous and appshare, battery life seems worse, until I reboot the device. I'll stick with the jailbreak, but rebooting occasionally seems to help with some of the issues.

Good luck...
 
i have 8 pages of apps and the only thing that is slow is when i start up my iphone probably just because there's a lot of apps
 
Battery life deprecation was Intelliscreen. Delayed Springboard responsiveness and general slowing was Winterboard.

Never install Kate or Customize
 
ntrigue said:
Battery life deprecation was Intelliscreen. Delayed Springboard responsiveness and general slowing was Winterboard.
Click to expand...

These statements are too general to be of any value.

What settings were you using with Intelliscreen? How often were you checking mail? Updating news and RSS feeds?

What kind of themes were you using?
 
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