iPhone 2.2: Is your battery life better?

The thing with battery life is, how the heck are you supposed to tell if it's better or worse. There seem to be so many factors involved. One thing that really drains my battery is when I'm in an area with weak signal coverage.

SCOTT's REPLY: It's true. There's no exact science. Yep. In areas with weak coverage there's more connection to the Internet needed and thus depleted battery life.

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.

SCOTT'S REPLY: I hope so!! For all our sakes.

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.

SCOTT'S REPLY: Really hoping this sticks because I could certainly get used to it.

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.

SCOTT'S REPLY: SAME FOR ME!! I was thinking it was time to charge and when I looked, it wasn't.

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.

SCOTT'S REPLY: Yep! It's looking like there's something to this ... I'm going to add your stuff and some others to the post.

We all are SUCH geeks. . . .I mean, really. Getting all excited about battery life? It is to laugh at, when you think about the bigger issues going on. Don't get me wrong, my phone is backing up now and I'll be evaluating it too, but I just had to say it. . . . Jim C

SCOTT'S REPLY: Yep. I know. But I'm proud to admit it. I'm totally geeked about this!!

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! I was worried with the holidays coming and not being able to charge much. Maybe I'll get more out of it than I figured.

SCOTT'S REPLY: This is just awesome. Awesome all around.

Mine doesn't seem any better so far...boohoo

SCOTT'S REPLY: What kind of settings do you have? Push? Fetch? I'm curious because you are only the 2nd person to tell me that things aren't better.

I have push on, auto brightness on and wifi always on. I have never been one to really complain about the battery either as there is usually time to give it a boost. That said, it would be nice if it lasted longer but I'm not going to turn off all the features to make that happen either.

Sent from my iPhone 3G

SCOTT'S REPLY: one feature that might really help out, Jacob, is turning that auto brightness off. It really eats the battery.

Precisely the opposite.

My iPhone (1st gen-non 3G) didn't even make it through the night. I patched it at about 2pm, set it down to do some housework and went to bed afterwards. Woke up this morning to a dead phone. Looked just like your picture at the top of this column. I usually charge when it hits halfway, which is at least a day and a half. :/

For the moment, I'm going to watch it and hope it was an isolated event.

SCOTT's REPLY: I hope it is too ... and if you haven't done a hard reboot since you installed your software, you should. And check your fetch and autobrightness settings.

I had the same experience as Gabe...2.1 really gave me a boost in battery life (I no longer needed a mid-day power drink) and I could usually go about 1.5 days before dipping below 50%.

After the update, it looks like I am back to needing a charge halfway through the day. My son played some games on it (fully charged at the start) for about an hour on Sunday morning and it was almost dead afterwards. Maybe the games suck more juice?

SCOTT'S REPLY: Well the games definitely do use up more power. That I can tell you for sure. But if you played the same game before the update, you shouldn't be seeing worse performance now.

Standby battery usage seems better for me (3G). I've been doing a 100% charge before going to sleep and check the level in the morning when I wake. 2.1 seemed to consistently use a few 'ticks' on the battery indicator overnight. 2.2 seems to go all night with no indicated loss of charge or just a single tick.

SCOTT'S REPLY: So far, that's how it is for me as well, Paul.

Well, it's been a few days and while my battery life still isn't back to what it was on 2.1, it's lasting at least one day. I guess that can work, but it's a bummer that it's down from before. That one night must've been a one off. Hopefully 2.3 will bring it back up. Maybe it's a 1st gen issue.

SCOTT'S REPLY: It's affect first-gen and 3G iPhones the same. I do hope it's addressed before 2.3. I'm hoping Apple sees the need for an update quickly.