Guy Kawasaki shares his secrets of long iPhone life

Uh. My ex's iPhone 3G could easily last through a day with a third of the battery remaining.

That's with heavy GPS usage, EDGE data usage, and LOTS of phone calls.

Maybe that one's somehow better, but yeah.

I can't talk for other people, but I for one use the iPhone way more than I ever used any other handheld (smartphone, PDA, cell phone) before -- so I'm not really surprised that I have to recharge it every 24-36 hours...!

It's my primary phone, at home and on the road, I listen to music while on the bus or taking a walk, I have my MobileMe maily automatically pushed, uhm, synced, I watch video podcasts on it, I listen to audiobooks, I look up location information, I read RSS feeds...and on and on and on...

So of course I have to recharge it more often than my Palm PDAs, my Treo, my SonyEricsson smartphone and all those other devices I used in the past...! So what, it's not a big deal anyway...

I was curious what the battery life would be like on my first-gen phone so I started keeping a charging log when I bought it. I spend all of my time surrounded by computers (I'm always at home or one of my two jobs) so I leave WiFi off and I don't use it for email. I use my regular (60 GB) iPod in my car so pretty much all I do with my phone is talk (usually less than ~30 min/day) and text, and occasionally use maps and browse over EDGE when I'm out and about. Oh, and since the stupid thing doesn't have profiles (grr...) I turn it off at night. With all of that, I go a solid week between charges.

Pansy! I regularly get well over 2 days standby with ~5 hours of usage most of which is 3G talk time.
3G talk is by for the most expensive too.

How do I post a screen shot?

so, um, what's the point of having an iphone if you turn everything off?

36 hours is nothing to brag about. I get at least that with location services and wifi turned on. I got about a week of standby on the old iPhone, and my new 3G is constantly giving me about three days before I have to charge. This is including the charge it gets when it 20 minute syncs once every day.

The trick? Short calls. Talking on the phone for extended periods of time is stupid. Move your ass and talk to people live, that way you don't get fat and you save money on car chargers. Also buy a quality MP3-player, so you don't have to suffer the bad sound quality from the iPhone. And keep you phone in "Flight Mode" at night.

And I don't get why people need to have 3G enabled all the time. There's no point to it. The battery is severely drained when you're in areas with bad 3G coverage. Disable 3G and enable WIFI and you have what you need. If you really need 3G on the go, enable it when you need it.

I only turn on 3G when I need the internet and I'm out of Wifi range, usually when traveling. At work (where I don't need the phone, don't need to know where I am, and we have Wifi) I put it in Airplane mode with Wifi on. I can easily get 36 hours, but usually charge overnight anyway. I can go two days on the weekends. Much better than my 1st Gen iPhone, but then it's a year old. If I use one of the GPS tracking apps to map out a bike ride, I can suck the battery dry in a few hours! Even less time if I accidently put it back in my bag with the camera on.

sure, 36 hours is great...

if you plan on charging it mid-day , every day....

i'll stick with charging it before I goto bed..

instead of re-charging it on my way home..
during work..
during dinner..

and yes, why did I get this phone to have everything shut off?

you may as well shut the ringer off too, since no one will be calling this dude...

So all you have to do is use it as if it were a 1st gen. iPhone without wi-fi, and don't take it out of your pocket. Brilliant!

I got my iPhone no full well I was going to be killing the battery. No other phone comes close to the features of the iPhone, so of course they are going to last longer. You aren't using them as much.

I found out that the one feature that drains battery the most is the push functionality. My iPhone only lasted for one day when I had UMTS, GPS, Push and all the other goodies enabled. Turning of UMTS didn't help, dimming the screen didn't help, usinf the iPod less didn't help. I had to recharge every day when I got home from work. Until I turned Push e-mail off! Now my iPhone lasts for 2-3 days without charging!