Why is my iPhone 4 battery life degrading so fast?
10 replies, posted
I've noticed, these past few weeks especially, that my battery life is significantly degrading and I'm not sure what for. Today, I had my phone charging all night (woke up with 100%) and woke up around 7:30AM, I've used it very scarcely and it is now 5:30PM. Battery life is sitting at 38% and I've only sent about 35 texts (roughly) today and loaded one internet page. I've been connected to WiFi both at home and at school and have not loaded any applications other than Opera / Photos / Messages and Opera was opened only on a WiFi connection. I haven't used 3G for anything actively today and all of my apps are closed in the background.
The only thing I've heard is that when charging through my 12V car adapter is that it "supercharges" the battery, faster than it should, and thus results in a shorter battery life. The phone is a refurb since I broke my other one a few months ago. I got this one earl in November. I leave it charging all night, past 100%, though I didn't think that mattered with the battery the iPhone 4 uses, I also never let it get to 0%, I plug it in no later than 3% (though that's been coming faster and faster recently).
Also, just another issue not related to the battery, my iPhone plays every alert tone about 1.5 times. I've quit all of the background apps, changed tones, restarted - everything - it won't stop doing the 1.5-2 alert tones. Any fix known?
Thanks
You should let it go to 0% or the battery "remembers" having less charge resulting in poor battery life over time
There's a glitch in iOS 5 that causes the battery to drain a lot faster than it should. Right now the only solution is to do a restore without recovering data from a backup, at least until Apple fixes the glitch.
[QUOTE=DamagePoint;34067493]There's a glitch in iOS 5 that causes the battery to drain a lot faster than it should. Right now the only solution is to do a restore without recovering data from a backup, at least until Apple fixes the glitch.[/QUOTE]
By not recovering data from a backup, do you mean I can or cannot use iCloud to restore my contacts? Really I can do without everything on the phone besides my list of contacts.
[QUOTE=DamagePoint;34067493]There's a glitch in iOS 5 that causes the battery to drain a lot faster than it should. Right now the only solution is to do a restore without recovering data from a backup, at least until Apple fixes the glitch.[/QUOTE]
This was an issue with 5.0, not 5.0.1 (Unless you're using an iPhone 4S in which case it should be fixed with the next release).
[QUOTE=Juice_Layer;34071822]By not recovering data from a backup, do you mean I can or cannot use iCloud to restore my contacts? Really I can do without everything on the phone besides my list of contacts.[/QUOTE]
You wouldn't restore from an iCloud backup, but you'd still sign into iCloud which would retrieve your contacts off iCloud.com
You could have a lot of apps running in the background as well.
If you are on your home page double tap the home button and apps should pop up at the bottom.
These are the apps running in the background on your phone. Just click and hold and the X's should pop up and you can terminate any apps you are not using at the time.
No, I close my apps throughout the day in the method you described, I also have my brightness set at about 2/3 of the way up. I can't read it well anything after that
You don't need to close apps like that. The way iOS works is that every app stop processing at most 10 minutes after you exited the app. The only exceptions are apps which are streaming/playing audio, location stuff (both of which are indicated by icons in the status bar) and apps waiting for VOIP calls (like Skype and Viber). Closing apps via the menu thing is a placebo
Apparently push notifications drain battery quite a bit. You might want to turn unnecessary ones.
[QUOTE=AMBULANCE;34177632]You could have a lot of apps running in the background as well.
If you are on your home page double tap the home button and apps should pop up at the bottom.
These are the apps running in the background on your phone. Just click and hold and the X's should pop up and you can terminate any apps you are not using at the time.[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=Dr Egg;34178528]You don't need to close apps like that. The way iOS works is that every app stop processing at most 10 minutes after you exited the app. The only exceptions are apps which are streaming/playing audio, location stuff (both of which are indicated by icons in the status bar) and apps waiting for VOIP calls (like Skype and Viber). Closing apps via the menu thing is a placebo[/QUOTE]
What Dr Egg is saying, is correct advice. You could have a very hefty game like Infinity Blade running in the background when you hit the sleep button on your device and what happens, is that the memory is kept, but the CPU usage for the app is /totally/ suspended. When you resume it, it opens quickly. If another app needs it, it will attempt to clear a little bit of the games (or any apps) running memory before totally closing it off.
If you want to know more information, [url=http://speirs.org/blog/2012/1/2/misconceptions-about-ios-multitasking.html]read it here[/url].
In short, there's almost no reason why you'd need to kill a background process as it doesn't have gains on battery life unless it's a poorly made application.
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