Friday, Nov. 21, 2008 -- 5:50 p.m. -- out and about
After almost a whole day of testing, lots of reading and talking to folks, it looks as though the battery improvements I reported first earlier are real.
And they're spectacular.
Here's just a sampling of comments:
Paul writes: I'm pretty sure mine is significantly better. I've been using it heavily all day and still have over a half charge left. Before I would have had the 20% and 10% warning hours ago. That's great news!
Diego writes: I have an iPhone 3G. Every workday, by 4 PM (after getting off the charger when waking up at 9 AM), my iPhone would be at 50% already. And, I would have to hook up to charger so I have juice for the evening. I updated to 2.2 last night. I did the exact same things I always do every day with my phone today. As of right now, I still have almost a full charge.
Herman writes: I think battery life IS better. I've had a pretty normal day in the office and out to lunch downtown Chicago. Except that I was using the thing nonstop right after lunch while I waited for a meeting to start, almost 30 minutes. Email, texting, and Safari. I instinctively went to recharge just now and realized I have almost full power left.
Mikeinla writes: It does "seem" better to me as well. I have a first gen. I did notice that with some new apps I installed it did drain the battery. I kind of chalked this up to an old battery, but since this morning I have full power with regular use.
Kel writes: Yeah, I thought it might have been last night. I had the screen on for a good 20mins or so when I was using palringo to IM my friend, then twittered, caught up on rss feeds etc, and it looked like I had a full bar still? You might be onto something here.
It goes on and on. You'd think Apple would make it a point to mention something as important as this in release notes. You figure with downloadable podcasts that you've got to have decent battery life.
And I'll say this ... we didn't get push notification this time. But ... if whatever Apple did was able to improve the battery life like this, well, that only bodes well for when it does come.
Let me know if you are seeing the same things these iPTIB readers are. Or something else.
Thanks for calling.
23 Comments
Eleanor said:
Battery life does seems improved. Lately, even with minimal use it's almost dead by evening. 10pm now and even with about 40 minutes of Wurdle I have almost half full. Time will tell, but that's a blessing. So is the fact that I have been able to end EVERY call I've made today. That's amazing. (shouldn't be). Guess I'll be hanging in a little longer.
I am currently on iPhone #5 (1st gen) and am really surprised when they swapped it 2 weeks ago they didn't swap it for a 16 gb. I appreciate the care Apple gives, but when you're talking about that many defective items, the customer deserves something for all their trouble of having it not work and having to bring it in. I considered going to 3G, but if I have this experience with the first, why spend more money.
SCOTT'S REPLY: I know you've had a tough go of it, Eleanor, and while it should have never taken until 2.2 to make things better, let's hope it does stay that way. I'd hate to have to start a BlackBerry blog if you decide to switch allegiances :-D
Paul said:
I never noticed battery life improvements from 2.1 even though it was supposed to. Maybe with 2.2 they have finally become a reality! I've been surfing safari with music playing for a hour in the iPod app and not only has safari not crashed, my battery is still full. let's hope this keeps up...
SCOTT'S REPLY: Same here, Paul. Was supposed to see this great improvement in 2.1 and I saw nothing. And that's when they talked about how great it was. Now, they don't mention it and it's better.
MfS said:
Actually, I haven't noticed a single change at all in battery life; have left the same things on as I normally do, and the battery is draining as usual.
SCOTT'S REPLY: You using EDGE or 3G or Wi-Fi for the most part?
Judie said:
Scott, after unplugging my iPhone from the sync cable yesterday afternoon and neglecting to recharge last night, I still have probably 3/4 charge left as of 5:00pm tonight! And that's WITH 3G and WIFI enabled! I'd have been down to probably 1/4 charge this morning on 2.1...maybe even in the red zone.--Judie
SCOTT'S REPLY: Yep. That matches my experience and the experience of I'd say about 95 percent of the people I've talked to since the update.
Brad said:
Should have mentioned I'm sure they're out their working just as feverishly to make more power efficient chips as well. Patience I guess- it's still early on in the wireless revolution.
SCOTT'S REPLY: Yep. Soon we'll power our cell phones with recycled trash like in Back to the Future II. Well, that was cars.
Colin said:
I've actually noticed a substantial decrease in battery life since installing 2.2. At home when I'm connected to Wi-Fi and I'm in standby I usually get hours of battery life. Now within a couple hours I'm down to a half charge or less.
SCOTT'S REPLY: Very odd ratio -- you are only the 3rd person to tell me of a decrease in battery life.
Neil said:
Scott,
the battery seems better for me too. Since adding google voice, fring and some other apps my battery life has been really bad, most of the time having to recharge when at the office and winding up w/ low battery message before I get home. Now, I was away for the weekend and was using lots of location services etc and was able to still have plenty of battery life when I got back to the hotel. I will let you know my take while at work this week.
N
SCOTT"S REPLY: Do let me know, Neil.
M said:
It's funny; I updated the phone last night, kept it plugged in until the battery was full, left it idling in airplane mode overnight (as I usually leave it), and it had red battery life by next morning. Before 2.2 the same idling period would have barely decreased battery by a forth. I'm doing a full discharge and recharge right now, but I'm certainly seeing no battery life improvement as of this moment.
SCOTT's REPLY: So strange. It's always so random how these things work.
Josh R said:
I am experiencing a decreased battery life with the 2.2 update as well. With the 2.1 update by now my battery would be about 75% available. Currently, its showing less than 25%... soon to enter the red zone. I am using my phone exactly like how i did before. I don't understand why its hit or miss?
SCOTT's REPLY: I can't understand why it's hit or miss either. I'm checking today to see if the gains are still with me, but it's certainly not worse.
PCB said:
I agree, battery life for me was good before the update and seems to be better after. I have read on other sites though that some are having the opposite experience... battery life is much worse.
SCOTT'S REPLY: For some it's great and others are complaining more about it now.
George said:
Battery life is Extremly bad since I upgraded to 2.2! My phone now only lasts 5 hours in standby. Before the upgrade I could go days without recharging. I sure hope I can go back to 2.1
SCOTT'S REPLY: And you haven't changed any other settings, George?
Garry said:
Battery Bad!
Since the 2.2 update I've had significantly worse battery life. I would normally top up my iphone charge before I go to bed and it would be fine for the next day. This morning, dead, missed my alarm and now I have to recharge before I go to work. :(
SCOTT's REPLY: Wow. Now the comments are skewing negative. This is where being an iPhone blogger -- or an iPhone customer for that matter -- is so confusing!!
Will said:
I don't think battery life has really improved, in fact it may be worse.
What seems to be going on here, at least for me, is that the battery meter is just _wrong_. It says you have almost a full charge when in reality you do not. Don't be surprised to find your battery is dead without receiving a warning!
SCOTT'S REPLY: If that's indeed true, well, that's a serious problem.
This is how it happened to me: Last night I did not plug it in because it appeared to have about a full charge. Same thing when I woke up in the morning. At lunch, I browsed the web for a couple of minutes and the battery was still green (maybe even "full").
20 minutes later in a class I take it out to add something to the calendar... but the battery was dead! Completely dead. No 20% warning!
This has happened to people on a forum I frequent.
The battery life isn't better. It's just lying!
SCOTT'S REPLY: This is definitely something to look into, Will, and I will.
Chris said:
Substantial decrease. I had about 36 hours between charges (1 day 12 hours) before 2.2. I'm now down to 9 hours between charges.
SCOTT'S REPLY: Well, that's a huge decrease. I"m currently looking into whether or not the icon is just incorrect and folks really aren't seeing any gains, although I could swear that I am!
chris said:
I'm also seeing a significant decrease in battery life. I used to get through the day with plenty of charge left and now I can't get through the work day without topping it off. Weird that some are seeing an improvement and some, like me, just the opposite. I really need to get this fixed so I will try to visit an apple genius tomorrow. Please post if anyone finds a fix to the decrease in battery life issue.
SCOTT"S REPLY: If you talk to a genius, please let us know what they say about this particular instance. Sometimes, if you get a talkative one, you'll get a juicy tidbit.
Brian said:
Another user with terrible battery performance after the upgrade. I upgraded last night, charged overnight, and unplugged at 6:00am with a full charge. By 9:00am I was down to 75% (3G & WiFi was enabled), by 12:30 I was down to 50% (I disabled WiFi, Location Services, and 3G at this point, as well as Fetch and Push) by 2:00pm I was down to around 15-20% (just a sliver of green). At 5:00pm I was still at the same sliver as 2:00, and I plugged in to recharge at this point.
Hopefully some information turns up, because this certainly seems to be the trend in these comments, as well as at http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1801056&tstart=0
SCOTT"S REPLY: Sad how we could go from so happy to this in a matter of hours.
Steven said:
2.2 has broken the battery meter!
At first I thought it had miraculously improved battery life as it was displaying a full green battery symbol on the second day of one charge, only for it to die on me without any warning! Should have known something was up...
It was never the best previously, but at least it was accurate!
SCOTT'S REPLY: Seems to be what's up ... in many cases.
Alejandro said:
I have experienced quite the opposite. I upgraded to 2.2 two days ago. Yesterday, upon waking up I took my iPhone off its charger at around 8 am and by around 6 pm it just died on my without even giving me the low battery warning. I charged it again last night and unplugged it when it was done. This morning I have 3/4 of the charge left. Before the upgrade I was running on 2.1 and was charging the full every other day.
SCOTT'S REPLY: Yeah, Alejandro -- now that we've all had time to deplete the battery, that seems to be common -- that it looks like there's a full charge but there really isn't and the indicator is playing tricks on us.
Don said:
Also experiencing significantly worse battery life since upgrade to 2.2. Also experienced the 'broken battery meter'. Showed a full battery in the meter, but was draining behind the scenes and died suddenly. When I went to turn it back on, it was out of juice. Battery life bad after 2.2.
For me, anyhow. :(
SCOTT'S REPLY: Hang in there, Don. I have to believe that a fix is coming.
Phil said:
Since 2.2 i've also noticed a dramatic increase in battery power. When I was on 2.1 after 7 hours off the charger it would be ready for another charge, even with 3G and Wifi disabled i'd only yeild an extra couple of hours on top of that.
With the same sort of usage I'm on my 3rd day without being plugged in for a charge, easily got over 1/4 left as well. Now I feel like on an occasion where by I forget to stick it on charge before I leave the house it wouldn't be a disaster with the phone being dead only hours later, that was the thing that annoyed me the most, you simply couldn't leave the house without it being on full charge, no matter how little you used it.
SCOTT'S REPLY: I can't figure out how people using the same settings are having such different experiences. It's a huge mystery.
Thomas said:
The 2.2 has decreased my battery life! It does not last as long as it did before the update. Now, I find myself charging my phone several times throughout the day. After viewing some web pages and watching some YouTube clips that battery is dead! This sucks! A phone with this many features needs to have a better performing battery. Is apple testing these updates before they are released, or are we the testers??? Now we have to wait for yet another update. I am slowly growing tired of the iPhone!!!
SCOTT's REPLY: It looked as though we were making significant progress in 2.1 and now this. It's frustrating beyond words, Thomas.
adam said:
It seems to me like they have actually played with the indicator rather than tweaked battery life. It's totally erratic on mine, like the software indicator and the actual battery are operating from different information. One minute it' reading mostly full, then it won't operate as it says it needs a charge. After a second on the charger, it's back to half charge. Battery life decreased in 2.1, but it didn't do this.
In any case, I've turned off location services and also did a reboot and found battery life much improved. Some 3rd party apps appear to sit there in the background and eat the battery. A reboot for me shut them down and things are much improved.
SCOTT's REPLY: That's excellent advice. A reboot every so often is recommended. I hate turning off location services unless I have to, but sometimes it's definitely needed.
Michael said:
I've noticed with 2.2 my battery life at home has significantly decreased. I need to leave my iphone on the charger over night otherwise it's dead in the morning and I get no wakeup alarm. However, at work during the day it seems to actually have better battery life, as I can go all day without being on the charger and the battery hardly decreases. The only difference I can tell is that at home I'm connected to Wifi but at work I have no Wifi connection, so maybe Wifi is chewing up the battery.
SCOTT'S REPLY: It could be, however, Apple says that Wi-Fi is a better power manager and should therefore actually provide better battery life.
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