It looks like there’s seriously something really funky going on with the battery consumption of iPhone OS 4 (iOS 4) on older-generation iPhones. Ever since upgrading to iOS 4, the battery on my 3GS barely lasts a day even on light use. Last night I had around 50% left of the capacity when going to sleep. In the morning I found out the battery had drained overnight. Fortunately I had no work that day, I’d been rather late since the alarm clock (naturally) wasn’t working.
It’s not the first time either (or second, or third…), and we have to keep in mind none of this happened on previous versions of iPhone OS. It’s not just me and my phone either, others have this issue too (not just one crackpot with a dying battery). Here we seem to have a case of a cell phone battery draining 50% in 8 hours while on standby. Far from normal.
In addition to overnight drain I can see battery level on iOS 4 dropping around 1% a minute when actually using the phone. If the battery’s 100% in the morning, it’ll be around 60% on evening (or less, depending on usage), even when in standby-mode.
Solutions to the problem according to messages on Apple’s support forums:
1. Erasing the phone
2. Restoring the phone from a backup
3. Turning off location services
4. Turning off push email
5. Turning off Spotlight indexing
6. Draining the battery and then recharging
7. Waiting for a while, it gets better soon
8. Installing the updated Exchange profile
9. Turning off running background applications
10. Praying to Ni-Cad, ancient Chinese god of battery and dancing in the rain while holding the phone
Ok, so the last one is mine, I wanted to have a nice, round number like 10. Nevertheless the rest are proven solutions that are guaranteed to work except when they don’t. Please note that none of these solutions are suggested by Apple to fix the issue. As far as I know, Apple hasn’t even acknowledged that there’s an issue.
Let’s take a closer look:
1. Erasing the phone
2. Restoring the phone from a backup
Haven’t tried these yet. To me they seem like a last resort and a major pain, especially #1. Although, if all else fails they’re worth a try and I’m fast running out of solutions.
3. Turning off location services
4. Turning off push email
Now these are just silly. Of course they improve battery life. So does disabling 3G. And Wi-Fi. The actual problem still remains and turning off features to fix it is useless. You could have all of these enabled on OS versions prior to iOS 4 with no issues. Hey, let’s turn off the phone, that’ll save battery and certainly stops the drain.
5. Turning off Spotlight indexing
Kind of like the previous two suggestions, the difference being that Spotlight doesn’t use data connection. No major difference. Probably works better on 3G models than 3GS. Still, earlier OS version was able to run Spotlight without problems.
6. Draining the battery and then recharging
Now this I’ve tried. Multiple times. Not by choice though, kind of comes automatically when your battery drains overnight. Results were disappointing.
7. Waiting for a while, it gets better soon
Who knows, maybe this works on some occasions. For me it didn’t. I hope people don’t use this approach when dealing with illnesses or wounds.
8. Installing the updated Exchange profile
Applied this, but unfortunately it didn’t fix the issue for me. Seemed like a valid solution, though. Helps those using Exchange accounts.
9. Turning off running background applications
While this seems to have a certain effect on battery life, it does not fix the issue at least for me. Also, let’s remember that iPhone 3G users are suffering from the same issue and there’s no background multitasking on iPhone 3G.
10. Praying to Ni-Cad, ancient Chinese god of battery and dancing in the rain while holding the phone
This did not work.
The iPhone problem diagnosing and recommended solutions often feel like voodoo, with people advising to do this and that “because it definitely fixes the issue”. This makes it quite hard to find solid facts.
I’ve been searching for a way to fix this ever since iOS 4 was released and I’m not any closer than I was a month ago. Not cool.
Fortunately according to Wall Street Journal, Apple is currently investigating iOS4 issues on older devices – namely on iPhone 3G. Here’s hoping this leads to improvements on 3GS as well and improved battery life.
