Some iPhone 3GS buyers were experiencing that their new Apple device has lower battery life, the Los Angeles Times reports, saying it "has trouble making it through a workday without a rest stop at the electrical outlet."
Take Gary Ng, 27, one of them.
"If people are committing $1,000 a year for two years to use a 3GS, I would definitely expect my battery to last a lot longer," said Ng, a loyal Apple fan who runs an iPhone blog from his home in Vancouver, Canada.
According to IFixit.com, repairing company which specializes in Apple products, the 3GS's battery life was about 15% smaller than the original iPhone. But Apple spokeswoman Natalie Harrison emphasized, battery consumption is highly dependent on what applications and features are used.
Are you also having battery issues with the 3GS? Share your experience (or even solution) here.
[via Los Angeles Times]
I am absolutely having a battery issue.
I had a fully charged iPhone less than 30 minutes ago.
Since then I have searched the Internet with 3g. Wireless and bluetooth disabled, pushmail is enabled on one mail account, and display is at about 25% brightness.
The battery is down to 65%.
Accordingly, if I use the phone for less than 2 hours for searching the web, the battery should be dead.
That’s definately a difference.
They should totally just make it less cool and do less, so you use it less. And slower, so you can do less in the same amount of time. Then the 20% more powerful battery will last longer.
Here’s an ingenious idea. How about you make a removable battery so power users can carry a fully charged spare.
I’m surprised Apple has not thought of that yet for it’s 3rd iteration.
I torn down brightness to minimal but with auto adjust (light sensor?), but with same settings on iPhone 3G I had a but more battery life.
Since I make intensive use of google reader on 3G and wifi and games I have to admit that 3GS is getting really hot vs 3G!
Played only SWEETWATER DEFENSE and it’s really annoying to try hold him without slipping, cuz ur hands starts tomsearing from this heat.
I never had such issue on iPhone 3G!
I only hope that pesky pink or brown overburns will never appear…
This my first iPhone, and it uses 50% or more by noon just doing lightweight email and surfing on wi-fi, not even using the data network. Very disappointing.
I am having the same problem. The battery on my 3G was better than it is on the 3G S. I have been plugging it in in the car, at work, and when I am home leaving it plugged in. Any suggestions on extending the life of the battery?
I know how everyone feels, as this was my experience with the the 3G but thankfully my experience with the 3GS has been incredibly different. It makes me think it is not specific to the type of phone but maybe to battery lots, or some other factor.
With my 3G I never made it through a day despite turning off location services, turning down brightness, turning off push email, and spending less than 15 minutes per day talking! It was horrendous!
With the 3GS I leave all these functions on, regularly surf the net and my new job requires ~1 hour/day on the phone and it easily makes it through the day.
I had thought it was an upgrade to the battery pack that allowed this until I read this article…but apparently not! In fact, I have been telling people that the cost of upgrading to the 3GS is worth it just for the battery but I guess that isn’t the case for everyone.
Sounds like some of you have dud batteries. My 3GS lasts way longer than my 2g battery did, and this is with bluetooth, wifi, and 3g on. I also listen to the ipod or Pandora all day at work, and use the phone heavily, and usually have about 20% left when I go to charge it at night before bed.
I, too, think that it is a battery lot issue. I have had my 3G S since the day it came out and have yet to run battery dead over use. I do charge every night, regardless of level, and I have several e-mail accounts; wi-fi; bluetooth; and other apps constantly running.
I also stream Sirius Radio app several times throughout the day.
Good Luck with yours
CGS wrote: “Sounds like some of you have dud batteries.”
They don’t, CGS. They don’t even own iPhones. People who own iPhones don’t spend their life commenting at phony iPhone, blogs.
They are MacSux T-shirt wearing, PC gamers, and paid anti-Apple propagandists.
Bad batteries? Gee, I thought Apple had just animated their battery power indicator icon!
My 3GS is DEFINITELY more of a battery hog than my 3G or 2G were (both of which are still in operation in my household). Makes me think I’ll need one of those portable battery chargers, and makes me wish for a jailbreak and the SBSettings app so I could AT LEAST turn features and processes off with fewer taps (sigh)…
Haven’t had a single problem with my 3g s compared to my 3g battery is jut not a problem at all and I use it ALOT just sounds to me that there is some bad batterys
I agree w/ most of the messages here. I am a new convert to iPhone 3GS from the BlackBerry world. The 3GS battery just plain sucks. Can’t go anywhere w/out a charger. My 2 week trial has another 8 days and I have to make a decision…HELP
I too is facing battery issue. Mine iPhone 3GS now is less than week old and my battery don’t last more than a day. So, I think I should use iPhone just as phone and not as iPhone, if I want to use it as communication deice.
Possible for two phones with identical batteries to get different battery life.
Sadly I live and work 1.5 miles from the nearest AT&T cell tower. My phone has to spend much more energy to talk to the tower than a similar phone located a block away from it.
Its a GSM feature to lengthen battery life and phones close to the tower. I suspect when they do battery tests, its with a cell antenna in the laboratory with the phone.
Same thing happens when you drive down a freeway. To reduce handoffs to cells (complicating the network) the phone ‘hangs onto’ a receding cell until it can’t hear it, even if the phone’s radio has to ’shout louder’ using more energy.
If two people with same phone and similar geographic usage patterns have different battery performance, there probably is a problem.
Flack
I upgraded from the 2G iphone. Yeah, battery life was suckin’ on the first couple of days but now its under control. I turn off 3G whenever I’m at home or in my office where there’s a wifi network. I set email to check every hour instead of every 15 minutes. Dim brightness by just a hair, nothing too drastic that I’m losing production. A little makes a big difference on battery life. I’m still far from the need of getting a battery pack.
The reality too is that ALL newer generation smartphones have terrible battery life. However, in the new Consumer Report study that came out last week, notes that the iPhone has the best battery life out of all other contenders in it’s class. Imagine how crappy the battery life are in those.
“superior display, reinforced by top-notch multimedia, navigation, Web browsing, and battery life.”
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-10278119-37.html
First week battery performance was very poor. It has since notched-up for me. I don’t get a full two days out of an AC charge, but I have not run the risk of running out of charge in one day. I am a moderately heavy mobile device user, though no gaming.
It hasn’t been said yet here … there is a difference between a USB charge and a wall outlet charge.
I just had to get a replacement 3GS (32G) after 9 days as the battery ran down to dead and would not recharge. All week i had been getting only 6-8 hours charge out of the phone having to turn off 3G and other apps.
Sounds like a dud battery batch.
Hope the new one is better
I think apple compromised battery life for esthetics, sure the iPhone is sexy and every body love’s it’s current size but I don’t need a razor thin smartphone, at least one that is not pratical, what’s the point of having a device that performs 50,000 different functions…not to mention the ones that it came with…and don’t have enough battery life to use any one of them in a pratical way, I’m not saying that the iPhone and all it’s apps are just novelties, but if they are just there for the braging rights and we can’t use them, then, maybe they are, I also don’t need a device the size of a refrigerator, but some where in between, there has to be a happy medium, I wouldn’t mind having the iPhone 2mm thicker or even the same thickness of most of the popular smartphones, with it’s same form factor, and just think how much more battery apple could fit in that space, we may not have to charge our iPhone for a week (LOL) and most people probably wouldn’t notice the difference in size unless you told them.
I would definitely give up a little sexy for some battery life, we do when we purchase the external battery packs anyway.
My iPhone 3GS is much better on the battery than my old 3G was. On my old phone I had to turn everything off except the phone, even the blue tooth, to get through the day. I would routinely be left with 30% when I got into my vehicle to drive home. I would charge my phone on my way to work, then have a charger at work and charge on my way home just to make sure that my phone would be available.
With the 3GS, I leave the GPS on all the time and surf for email and the web occasionally. Now when I go home at night, I will have about 55% left of the battery, all without charging.
My experience with the 3GS is that the battery life is better. I think it sucks that we can’t change the battery out though.
I too am experiencing bad battery life, I have had all 3 types of iPhone and this 3GS model is by far the shortest battery life. I tried restoring it thinking that it would fix any bugs and it actually did improve it a bit but I still need to charge up twice a day. Apple advertised that the life is longer but really it isn’t. This issue needs to be fixed!
i did this now my battery goes like 3 days one one charge let it die fully chrage it again and then let it dies again and fully charge it works best good luck
Wow.. sounds like a lot of you are having issues that I am thankful I haven’t. On my 3g I left off the 3G all the time, left off bluetooth and location services I didn’t use the phone a lot during the day and had to still charge by that night….
On my 3GS i have 3g turned on, location services turned on, i have my push email going and even keep AIM up all day long. I use the phone a good bit of the day and still have 45 – 50% of my battery left before I get home and let my wife play bejeweled the rest of the night until bed. Sounds like there some dud batteries out there or you guys are exagerating a bit.
No exageration here! My battery just died after 3.45 hours of use. That’s hideous! Two days ago I upgraded from my first generation 2g to the s and I’m highly concerned. I’ll try turning everything off, but what’s the friggin point of having a $300 phone that can only operate half it’s own bells and whistles??? If this continues, I’m taking it back to Apple to try to get a replacement…or a refund.
Did someone really say that their are anti-Apple people who dont even own iPhones making battery life claims on this blog? Hmmmmm I AM an iPhone 3GS OWNER and I am having the exact same issues as most of the people on here. zato GET A LIFE! Apple- Fix my 3GS!!!!
Get a life – get a proper phone, Nokia N97. Get rid of a device that in order to keep a battery life of 3 hours has to be switched off.
My battery performance was pretty lousy (way worse than my original model iPhone). It dropped around 1% per minute of web browsing or email on 3G. I took it to the Apple shop. They did a diagnostic test that showed it was below spec and then replaced mine.
I wonder if this issue is related to several specific lots. I had a black 32 gig one. A friend bought the same model from the same store within about a day of me and he’s having the same issue. Hopefully apple learns how to prevent these bad ones from getting out the door.
i switched from the Nokia n95 and am starting to regret it. Still no MMS on the iphone 3gs. battery life sucks and i don’t have that many apps running.
I have recently purchased a 32GB black iPhone and mine also seems to be suffering from particularly poor battery life. If I use it then it won’t last a full work day. I’ve got push email switched on, but I expect it to last me until until bedtime!
Do you think it’s worth asking about a replacement?
This Is my third apple Phone as the first one was a 2G this one is Still only a 3G But apparently faster well it is that. It is a little faster also the speed does compansate for the battery life that gets used the apps load much faster very much so and it gets almost every thing done faster so i dont have to use it for as long. Well worth the expense.
If their is a problem with the white discolouring get a black one. white is not going to stay clean forever and yes the heat one of these babies lets out could be a problem in hot climates get a big cooling fan for the back. iFan. For the iPhone. Far out hey. Gadget ecentric geek.
I had a 3g battery would last all day. My new 3gs is dead by 2pm battery life terrible. would not recommend buying
I think the problem lies in the processor. It’s killing the battery life and in doing this..burns the hell out of my leg. I listen to Howard in the morning, charge it, then listen to Bubba in the afternoon. I’m having to charge my 3gs phone 2-3 times a day.
Just got my 3Gs last week after using a 1st Gen iPod Touch for music and a Palm Centro. Love the new iPhone, but battery life is poor. Played an hour of audio (with screen off, push email off, and bluetooth off) and went through 20% of a full charge. My iPod Touch lasted much longer doing the same. I think I’m going to hit the local Apple store this week and see if they can look at it or swap the battery out.
Here a reaction from The Netherlands.
Also my battery just died after 3.00 hours of use. That’s like NancyD! I did nothing special. We just had a trip to Den Hague. After 3 hours in the train I see that my battery life was under 20%. I maked a short movie but while making that movie the screen turned black an i see some black strange stripes on the display fading away slowly.
By coincidence we walked along a Apple store and I asked for a charge of the battery while walking further into the city. Two hours later I came back and the battery was 55%. In Scheveningen I tryed to make a movie. The battery was on that moment 32%. The iphone was a little warm, I don’t know why. I had no 3G on, Wifi was off, very strange. I tried for second time to make a movie, but while filming the screen goes black and i get again those strange stripes on the screen fading away. The iphone was dead for a vew minutes. Then it started up with the apple logo but after 10 seconds that screen was black again.
In the evening at 21.00 hours, I have put the usb cable into the iphone and I get the red charge battery icon. After 5 minutes the iphone was running by itself and the charge was 32 or 33%. Very very very strange. I hope to see more people with those problems.
the charge in the afternoon was 2 hours and the load was 50%. Very bad.
Brand new iphone 3 gs: battery discharging within 5 hours with EVERYTHING turned off (no wifi, no 3 g (!) no localisation, no push no nothing! The iphone is so a useless device…
That’s no crap, but my reality. I’ll try to change it, because i’m a long time Apple customer and i’m used to their lies. They never admit the problems on the machines. So everyone is supposed to fight for his own.Fortunately i’m living in France where annoucing 300 hours stand-by battery lifetime for a real 5 hours life is a felony. So they will give me a new one. hope this one is gonna work.
Just got a 3gs and the battery life is terrible. It was fully charged in the morning, then by about 6pm it was on 20%. I hadnt made one call all day, and all i had done was take 2 videos, and text a few times. At first i thought i was mistaken, but then i’ve noticed how bad it is.
I play a game for 5 minutes and the battery goes down 10%.
Apple told me to turn off 3g, location, push, wi-fi, and bluetooth. What am I paying a huge bill for every month Apple? Why did I pay that high price Apple? Apple seems to be lagging in the last year. Apple needs some new management upstairs, so maybe we could get ground breaking technology again. I sold my 32g 3gs and went back to my 2g for now. cheaper on T Moble.
Hi, i have jus orderd the new 16gb black iphone 3gs from the apple online store. And after i heard about the battey problems i’m thinking about cancelling my order. what do you recommend: buy it and wait for os 3.1 or cancel it and get something else???
i live in oxford, uk.
Yep…4 days of action with Nokia N86 8MP…
i am a lover of all apple products and yesterday i finally made the switch to an iphone after having a razor flip phone for about 3 years. the phone was charged for a short amount of time while activating my service. i then played around with it a couple times (maybe for a total of 45min to an hour but no more) and then fully charged it about three hours later that night. the next day i turned off 3G and wifi and set the lighting power to lower than 50%. i had push mail turned on and used the phone a moderate amount mainly to check facebook and emails. by 8pm that night my phone was at 20%. whats the deal? i checked the usage stats and it only showed 4hrs of usage and 14hrs of stand by. these stats dont come anywhere close to the ones that apple advertises. this is very dissapointing for someone who considers apple to be a luxury brand of electronics. there has to be some way to get a replacement battery or phone due to the fact that the advertised battery life is not anywhere near what a customer gets when paying $200+ just for the phone itself. Apple, please take care of your loyal customers who want nothing more than to support the company and have new innovative technology.
I have had all three iphones as well.. and pay a two hundred dollar iphone bill every month to have two iphones one for me and another for my sister. My iphone 3gs has been the worste iphone i have have yet. With the exception of having the video and opening and closing screens faster and having more memory which I barely used the memory on my 3g 16 gig … I always buy the most expensive one they have… this one has been a huge dissapointment I would say with just checkin my myspace and facebook sending a few texts and maybe one or two calls within two hours my phone will go from 100 percent to 60. HORRIBLE battery life… my reception is the worste of any phone i have ever had… it drops calls always it bounces from 3g five bars to E one bar to 3g 1 bar in my living room in the same spot and will do the same while driving. the camera will lock up a lot… but when it works the video is nice. I will be honest about it all my 3g was pretty rockin before the 3.0 operating system update. I had it jail broken and could tether the net and do about anything i wanted along with video and everything anyone has ever wanted on an iphone.. payin for this shitty iphone that is supposed to be soo much better has been the biggest dissapointment I have ever encounter with apple. And I had never been an apple customer until the iphone was realized..
I had battery problems since I bought my 3G S on the 3rd day after they went on sale. Even if I charged the phone overnight, sometimes, it would only charge up to 89%, and with light use of about 5 minutes, the battery also dwindled down to 93% from 100%. I went to the Apple store twice, and they told me to turn all non-essential services off. I agree with one the guys who wrote that it makes no sense to have to keep all of these, including 3G, turned off, when we pay for the services to AT&T. When my phone started to turn itself off, and I had to do a reset to start the phone back, I finally went to the Apple store, complained to no avail. However, when I called the support number, they finally agreed to send me a new phone. The new phone is considerably better in terms of battery life, and with the same apps and same services turned on/off, my battery stays fuller for a longer time. I think I had a bad battery. You can try comparing it to other iphone 3Gs with similar apps loaded and compare. If yours consumes considerably more battery than others, go to the Apple store to get them exchanged. Persistence (although very irritating) solved my issue.
I Have iPhone 3GS and I guess I need to check with apple store for exchanges as the battery life is horrbile even with minimum apps and services on/off.
I too have bad battery life on my 3GS. I go into work with phone in my pocket fully charged, don’t use it at all, and when I come outside for break after 3 hours of work my battery is way down. I plug it in to recharge. Don’t use usb and it doesn’t help.
I have problems with the same black 32 gig 3Gs phone only days out of the box. Very strange behavior as other posters have mentioned. Performing more tests now, but I would not be surprised if there I have to replace it because of a defective battery. Also for all people freaking out, relax.. These engineers aren’t idiots, and there are a lot of things that can go wrong that are difficult to predict or control.
There is definetely something dodgy about the 3GS batteries. I had a 3G and that had such a better battery life. And I’m not a faker. I’m writing this on my 3GS, which, after a day of maybe an hour and a half of internet and half an hour calling and 2 hours of gaming is now at 13% of battery, I don’t get it. I will probably call the apple helpline and tell them. I was really looking forward to the better battery life from my 3G but now it’s worse. And it tool me for ever to save up for the 3GS as I’m only 13 and my contact hadn’t finished so I had to get it on pay and go!
YESTERDAY I BOUGHT MY 16 GB 3GS. I DID ALL THE THINGS THEY SAID FOR SAVING BATTERY BUT IT STILL DRAINS. I AM A MAC LOVER BUT IPHONE IS NOT A MAC. SO THIS IS GOING TO BE MY LAST ONE. ON THE OTHER HAND I AM FROM TURKEY AND IN EUROPE WE BUY THE IPHONES DOUBLED PRICE WHICH MAKES YOU FEEL DOUBLE RIPPED OFF.
I do have a problem with the batterry my 3Gs is only few weeks old and I noticed that ihave to charge my battery veery night i just do few web search not evevn listening to music but it seem s the battery doesn’t last longer i have my charger with me all the time.
This 3Gs sucks! False advertising!.
Why advertise all the cool app’s, when using them chokes your battery!
What they should say is “this phone is So fcuking cool it will use up your Battery in an hour!” yea!
APPLE WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO, A GIANT RECALL?, REPLACE?, I am on hold w/, waiting to speak to, at&t apple support now, and I have a feeling I am about to get Strewed!, “Sorry customer, thats your fault for for choosing at&t and the new 3GS!”
-
ok spoke with apple support, they made and appt for me at an apple store, they will run a diagnostic, and if they see a problem with the phone they will replace it on the spot,
So if they do that, their not Soo bad!!
:)
I have had my new 16g iphone 3GS for only 4 days and the battery does not even make it through a whole day even if I do nothing but make two or three short phone calls and text messaging. The first time the battery died and i fully charged the battery, within five minutes the battery life was at 95%, my iphone 3G lasted three times as long as this phone, I would have it on 24/7 and constantly web surf and use applications and it would last for at least two or three days. I am absolutely appauled by the new changes considering I pay nearly $1500 a year on this phone.