Extending your iPhone's battery
IntoMobile has a few good tips on how to extend your iPhone's battery life, and most of them involve the most obvious thing you can do to keep your iPhone running: cut down on any and all extra functions. They actually recommend to turn off 3G, but you don't have to go that far -- just by holding down the Home button, you can close any background applications sucking up juice. And by resetting your phone, you can do the same thing -- clear out anything running that you're not using.Actually, while I was in Los Angeles last week, I heard the great Leo Laporte mention a great tip on his radio show: turn off the "Ask to join networks" feature in the WiFi settings. If you're like me, you almost always know when there's a WiFi network around that you can use on your iPhone, and so it's pointless (and a waste of battery life) for the iPhone to be constantly searching for one. You can always flip it back on if you do want to do a little poking around, but leaving it off will significantly help battery life.
In fact, when in extreme trouble, you can go even farther and just switch the whole thing into Airplane Mode. It'll make your phone useless, but when you really need it -- out on a trip, or waiting to make an important call -- the extra battery time might make all the difference.
[via Apple Enthusiast]
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IntoMobile has a few good tips on how to extend your iPhone's battery life, and most of them involve the most obvious thing you can do to...
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The battery life on my new 3G is a joke. My Treo 700wx would last two days and I had GPS services and push Exchange and Gmail email. Slingbox TV, etc.
I'm working like crazy to get the iPhone to maintain a charge past 4:00 in the afternoon. Turning off this and that. Guess what, if you have to disable all the features to get battery life to an acceptable level then it really isn't a very "cool" phone anymore, now is it?
It's typical Apple hype, make an OK product but sell it as "Sex in a Bottle". Everytime I buy another of their products I find that it has just as many problems, if not more, than their competitors. I wish I still had my Treo.
I find it better to turn down the brightness however... why do you want to conserve your battery... if you do your iphone will die a month after your apple care is over
i say use it to its full extent and then get a fresh one from apple before apple care runs out?
Here is was REALLY helped my iPhone 3G battery... A LOT! AND I even KEEP 3G ENABLED!
1) Turn push mail off. Set mail to fetch at 1 hour intervals.
2) Turn WiFi off when not needed.
3) Turn Bluetooth off when not needed.
4) AND... This one is VITALLY IMPORTANT: when you find yourself using GPS, you MUST go into settings and turn Location Services OFF AGAIN! This is a major bug and hopefully Apple fixes it soon. This 4th step is the one that saved me. It meant the different between having my battery drained before lunch - to having it at at about 90% capacity at bedtime!
Purely anecdotally - the one thing that made more difference for me than anything else was turning the brightness way down.
July 28 2008 at 5:39 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplySince I updated the firmware I have much better battery life and better G3 and wireless performance:
A must-do if you have the 5A345 firmware (probably true for all early adapter who already have a G3...)
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1617981&tstart=45
My setup, 3G on, Wifi off (except at home), Location Services On, BRIGHTNESS at about 25%, auto brightness off, and I'm still at about 50-70% battery at the end of the day. I use it a bit, and have had a couple of days where it was at maybe 20% at end of day, but I am seeing no problems with battery life. I used to have a TMob Dash, and am using my iPhone way more, and the Dash would be dead by 5pm.
July 24 2008 at 1:37 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyIt would be nice if Apple added simple, customizable energy-saving settings like on their laptops. A button for "Better Performance" or "Better Energy Savings" as a toggle right at the root of settings. Right now, saving power is a bit of a pain because all these energy-sucking features are all over the place in Settings.
How about a customizable setting, where I could turn a few things off or on then save that setting, making it easy to access in one tap?
BossPrefs in Cydia (jailbroken 2.0 software) is a great way to change some of these settings quickly.
July 24 2008 at 8:52 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyIt appears in the attached link that Apple chose an optimum amperage to allow for high-capacity as well as greater cycles.
July 24 2008 at 12:35 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyI turned off this feature, and while visiting a friends house I got a pop up that said
"Incorrect Wi-Fi Password"
Enter the password for
"NETGEAR"
I have never logged in to a wireless network at his house, nor have I ever logged in to a NetGear router. I seriously doubt turning off notification saves battery life, it is apparently still scanning for networks.
This happened because you already had a saved network in your phone called "NETGEAR", which is a common name, since it is the default for Netgear routers.
July 24 2008 at 8:54 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyHot Apps on TUAW
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