Why Is The Battery Life On My iPhone 4 So Bad?

Mine’s been pretty much as expected so far. I charged it up in the course of activation ~11 yesterday evening, and have been playing with it (unsurprisingly) more heavily than usual: I’m at 75-80% of full, about 10 or 11 hours later.

I’ve found that if you do bridge the gap in the steel on the lower left side of the case with your finger or hand, the reception does indeed seem to drop off. If you take your finger away from there, it comes back in 15-30 seconds.

No yellow blotches, but if you have these, I’m told those are unevaporated bonding agent (due to these being stamped out so quickly) and it will disappear in 2-3 days.

Some pretty hefty discussion on this here: http://thenextweb.com/apple/2010/06/25/why-would-three-respected-journalists-claim-incredible-iphone-battery-life-when-its-simply-not-the-truth/

My iPhone 4 battery is doing the same thing as yours. I have even turned off my WiFi so it doesn’t search for a WiFi hot spot all day long. I love the phone but wish I had a better battery. Have you taken it to Apple to look at?

@zee thanks for the link.

@stonemirror I’m so jealous.

You really need to get a life and stop worrying about a stupid phone.

“You really need to get a life…” and stop worrying about people worrying about a stupid phone.

The problem is Exchange. Test with it off. I had Exchange for my email and killed my battery, switched to a different account that fetches ever 15 – 30 mins and that solved it. I don’t get email pushed – which sucks, but it solved my battery problems.

Lots of others having this problem, see:

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Google+Mobile/thread?fid=1350d05dc9a18d470004899e57ec9c75&hl=en

I’m having the same issue. My first Gen iPhone has twice the battery life as my new iPhone 4.

I work in an area deep in a building without WiFi and with very poor reception. If I have my Network setting on Enable 3G, my battery life is reduced. I’m told it’s because my phone is spending energy trying to access 3G (like it would if I was on a plane and forgot to use Airplane Mode). Could you be having a similar issue?

Did you make your initial iPhone charge at least 6-8 hours before using it normally? (I know this isn’t always possible since AT&T retail reps may need to start up your phone to activate it in-store but as long as you didn’t use it intensely before charging it all out). Did you let it discharge completely and then recharge complete, and complete this cycle a few times?

Here’s a useful link on lithium ion battery maintenance:

http://www.everythingicafe.com/forum/iphone-3g/iphone-3g-battery-guide-and-charging-tips-34725.html

Keep up the nice articles Peter!

Also, turn off the following if you havent:

Location Services
Bluetooth
Keyclick sounds

Also do not keep the phone in your pants pocket if possible (body heat kills battery life), or use a fashionable silicone case as insulation ;) Do not charge in a hot location. Remove iPhone from any case when charging.

My phone might be a lemon too considering I need to charge it very frequently – about once a day, but I’m playing games on it frequently too and it seems to overheat alot. Once I get past the novel phase of the device maybe I can get a better depiction of standard battery life on mine too.

They should codename it like they do for Mac OS X.

“iOS 4.0 Vampire”
“iOS 4.1 Snow Vampire”

Same problem for me (in France).
By chance, I’m journalist for the oldest french magazine dedicated to Mac computers, and already had in the past some battery issues (iPhone 3G heating my pocket).
So, when I was invited yesterday at the opening of the new Apple Store near the Paris Opera, I showed my iPhone4 et submited my problem to the genius bar… The manager came after 10 minutes of discussion and they just replaced my iPhone4 with a new one that perfectly works with a battery always running after 16hours.
In conclusion, sothere are some bad iPhone4 and you have to prove it to have a replacement.

I am also facing similar problem. I charged my battery overnight it was 100%. I switched off bluetooth, wifi, push notifications. only 3G is on. Screen brightness is 20% and auto brightness is off. Still after surfing websites for 5 mins (most of it was text) and making calls for around 10 mins…by battery life is down to 85%. By end of day, though I do not use phone much… it gets below 20%.

With same usage, my old iPhone 3g(not 3gs) use to last longer……

I had same problem. iPhone 4 battery would not make it through the day on very little use. Went into apple store because I thought I had a lemon. However, they told me that users who backed up phone on iTunes from a 3G (which I did) have been experiencing this problem. They told me to restore phone and then set up as new phone in iTunes(do not back up). I was skeptical that this would work; however, it did indeed fix the problem. I did this and my battery life is great now…much better than my old 3G.

I hope this helps.

hey I don’t know if this site can’t help, but it talks about battery life of iPhones.

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=10853100#post10853100

I’ve used my phone for about an hour and I’m down to 70%. just from web browsing. Bad

mine has been normal.

(iphone 4) Well my battery was loosing power faster all the time. I saw the comment about restoring the phone and selecting set up new phone in iTunes. It’s hard to believe it but it worked for me. Now my battery is holding power much, much better.

reference this message:
However, they told me that users who backed up phone on iTunes from a 3G (which I did) have been experiencing this problem. They told me to restore phone and then set up as new phone in iTunes(do not back up). I was skeptical that this would work; however, it did indeed fix the problem. I did this and my battery life is great now…much better than my old 3G.

Read more: http://techland.com/2010/06/25/why-is-the-battery-life-on-my-iphone-4-so-bad/#ixzz10I4moPE8

hi! im a forst time iphone user.. and i have a problem with my phone. the battery only lasts about 6 hrs of use. (wifi,games,music) is that enough? im expecting about 10-12hrs of usage though.

@medic.
how did you did the procedure? is it really effective? what if i have no back up of phone in the itunes. is it still applicable? i hope you could help me. i really need an iphone4 who works around 10-12hrs max per day.

Switch off the push-mail and do hourly updates instead. That will more than double your battery life.

please advice step by step to restore phone and then set up as new phone in iTunes (do not back up)

reference this message:
However, they told me that users who backed up phone on iTunes from a 3G (which I did) have been experiencing this problem. They told me to restore phone and then set up as new phone in iTunes(do not back up). I was skeptical that this would work; however, it did indeed fix the problem. I did this and my battery life is great now…much better than my old 3G.

Read more: http://techland.time.com/2010/06/25/why-is-the-battery-life-on-my-iphone-4-so-bad/#ixzz19rzZZ3VF

ever since i did the last update in December my iphone battery has not been great but the last two days have been unacceptable. It was at 100% 4 hours ago and now I see it’s down to 61%. Before I updated it seemed to last forever and I never once had an issue.

I was just wondering how you set your phone up as a new phone on iTunes or how you just do a back up?

I finally decided to get an iPhone about two weeks ago and was soooo disappointed with the battery life!! As a new iPhone user, I was almost just as disappointed with how informative the “instruction manual” proved to be. I actually ended up learning this from someone at an AT&T store when I went back to pick up a case for my new phone. The difference this did for my battery life was huge.

After asking her if it was normal for an iPhone to have such a short battery life, she told me that this is the first iPhone that lets you close out specific applications. Think of it as a task manager for your iPhone. The “ctrl+alt+delete” function on a pc lets a user see what programs are running; from there you can “end” the ones you want to stop running. It just makes sense that the more you have running, the more power the phone will use.

So every time you select an application on your iPhone, it will continue to run even when you’ve exited out (or hit the “home” button). So lets say every morning you check your facebook, access your email, listen to some music, send a few texts, make a few calls and use your navigation…. that means ALL of these programs will continue to run in the background.

So here’s how you shut down all or some of your programs:

-Step 1: Bring up the “Fast App Switcher”. (Starting from your home screen, quickly click your “home” button TWICE. This will make all the your icons fade except for ones on the very bottom row).

-Step 2: Once the Fast App Switcher is up (these visible icons show you everything that’s running), choose any of the icons and hold it down until they start to jiggle. Just like if you were trying to drag icons or remove apps, but instead of an ” x ” on the upper left corner, you will see a ” – “.

Once the icons begin to jiggle and you see the ” – ” symbol, all you have to do is tap on it. This will close the application out completely. Once there aren’t any icons left, click once on your “home” button and it will exit out of the Fast App Switcher to your home screen.

Instead of trying to figure out which apps to close and which to leave open, I find it easier to close all of them. I’ll do this a few times through the day. That’s probably the best way to maximize your battery life as well.

Hope this helps!