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Weird battery issue (I KNOW, I know, please look though)

Bacong

Bacong

macrumors 68030
Original poster
Mar 7, 2009
2,622
1,143
Westland, Michigan
I know that a whole bunch of people have purported to have battery issues on this site, but what happened to me two days ago and today is baffling, to say the least.

Saturday night, at dinner, I checked my phone a few times and saw my battery life at 77%. I had it off the charger for hours, so this was fine. But an hour later, My battery life was somehow at 34% with maybe checking it once. And an hour of usage added on.

Let me ask you...how do I have an hour of usage added on when I'm on standby? Something must be operating in the background. I have the app sportacular with push activated (I should say HAD) and that is when these problems first arose. I had been using the ESPN mobile text alerts, and I got a ton of them daily, probably at least 20. I switch to sportacular, get less notifications, and my battery life gets destroyed.

Am I safe to blame that particular app + push for this issue? This morning I woke up for work at 7, did nothing on my phone whatsoever besides check facebook (2 minutes) and then at about 9:30 I checked it. An hour of usage, 75% battery. WTF?

Has this happened to anyone else? As I mentioned, I've deactivated push and removed the sportacular app from my phone, and have switched back to the previous ESPN alerts. What else could have been causing this? Any and all thoughts appreciated.

If it matters it's a 3G.
 
Well, i have a 3GS and although i dont have the ESPN or the sportacular app, i have seen my battery drrain itself quicker and quicker without doing anything in particular... I used to have the phone without the percentage indicator on, but when i started seing the battery meter slowly coming empty, i switched back on to see what was the deal...
 
Ive never had any sort of major battery problems like this, i have bluetooth on constantly because of hands free kit in the car, 3G is never disabled and i have push notifications on for email and eBay. The only time i ever really have my battery life drastically reduced is when im using co-pilot. I dont quite understand why yours would drop that quick :confused:

Nick
 
battery draining (3Gs)

I experienced a very fast battery draining only once, when I set up push for email.
I turned it off (do not want to be bothered with email notifications anyhow; a productivity killer..) and have been fine ever since.
 
That happens to me too sometimes. Last time it happened I had 25% of battery before going to bed. When I woke up the iPhone had turned itself off.
 
You think thats mad?

My battery on my 3G S went from 87% to 0% in 2 hours last night.

Usually my battery is very good.

I'll be calling apple if it keeps playing up, had it on charge all day now.
 
I would calibrate my battery before I did anything else. If it continues after you've drained the battery to shut-off and recharged to 100% + 2 hours, then you can try something like uninstalling applications in reverse order of installation until the problem disappears. Basic trouble-shooting procedures.
 
t0mm said:
You think thats mad?

My battery on my 3G S went from 87% to 0% in 2 hours last night.

Usually my battery is very good.

I'll be calling apple if it keeps playing up, had it on charge all day now.
Click to expand...

Hi. I posted similar problemsto this a few days ago. My 3gs suddenly only lasted 3 hours (usage) and about 12 hours of standby. My meter also went up and down without being plugged in. So it would say 50% remaining a few minutes later, 65%!

I took screenshots and made a few notes of what the photos were showing, went in to the Bluewater Apple store yesterday, and they gave me a new (not reconditioned) 3gs.

I'm not convinced the phone aS at fault though as my partners iPhone 2G was displaying similar problems for a few days last week...
 
Just going to give my 2 cents,

I had push emails activated with Mobile Me and and my battery would not even last a day. I have since canceled my subscription and gone back to good old fetch on a half hour cycle and it last at least two days now. I thought push was meant to conserve battery life?
 
I believe there is an issue that is related to push notifications.

I initially restored my 3GS from a first-gen backup and observed inexplicable battery life. To confirm my suspicions, I ran the iPod continuously until the phone died - it lasted 9.5 hours on a full charge. That's 3x as fast as the battery should drain.

I restored as a new phone and my battery problems vanished. I ran the same iPod test and got just over 29 hours - that's the same phone, same settings, same playlist. Everything was working normally until I installed the only app with push notifications (Etrade Mobile Pro) that I have.

Although I haven't enabled push notifications, every time I install Mobile Pro my battery life goes to hell. For a few weeks I kept it off my phone, but recently I installed it on the phone again hoping it was a fluke. It seemed like it was doing OK - until I ran the application. I started to notice odd battery behavior once again. I got fed up tonight after I fully charged my phone and watched the battery drop 15% in an hour and a half of iPod usage while doing household chores (the same rate observed originally when it was restored from my original iPhone). I restored once again, which is becoming a real pain in the ass for me.

In case you are curious, battery drainage with normal usage without push notifications should roughly follow these rates:

Standby: 0.33% per hour
Audio: 3.5% per hour
WiFi browsing: 12% per hour
3G calling/browsing: 20% per hour
 
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