iPhone Battery Observations After 1 Week

By Daniel Miessler on July 5th, 2007: Tagged as Apple | Gadgets | iPhone | Technology

iphone

So I’ve had my iPhone since launch and like many others I’ve been somewhat worried about battery performance. The first day I only made it to around 5pm before my charge was gone (starting at 8am). The second day I made it to around 10pm.

But now — several charges later — my battery life just keeps improving. Two days ago I went a full 18 hours with moderate to heavy use of all features. It seems to be a matter of optimizing your settings and conditioning your battery.

[UPDATE]: My usage stats currently show 3 Hours, 36 Minutes of use and 1 Day, 1 Hour of standby. My Lifetime reads 6 Hours, 22 Minutes. That’s over 24 hours of moderate use, and I still have roughly 40% of my charge remaining.

Here’s what I suggest to get the most out of your battery:

  1. Reduce your brightness as much as you can tolerate. I personally find that about 30-40% of max is plenty for me, and that difference in output is significant.
  2. Consider keeping WiFi disabled by default. You can always enable it when you find a hotspot and want to use it.
  3. Use a bluetooth headset that turns off when not in use. The folding Motorola brands as well as the new Apple headset have this ability.
  4. Try and run your device until it completely dies before charging, and use the AC adapter rather than a computer to charge up.
  5. The battery charges faster when the radios are off. Rather than disable them manually, consider using the Airplane Mode feature, which will disable all three radios in one motion. If you need to receive calls while charging, just disable WiFi and Bluetooth.
  6. If you haven’t done a full drain-to-maximum charge cycle yet, power down the phone and reset the usage statistics before you put it on the AC adapter. This seems to be helping zero out stats and allow the OS to display the fully charged icon.

The bottom line is that the battery is seeming to live up to Apple’s promises, but you have to condition it and give it some time before you start seeing true performance.

Comments welcome.:

  • Patrick

    Could you please explain this a little more:

    6.If you haven’t done a full drain-to-maximum charge cycle yet, power down the phone and reset the usage statistics before you put it on the AC adapter. This seems to be helping zero out stats and allow the OS to display the fully charged icon.

    Do I power down in general even when it’s a full charge, or do I wait for the phone to drain completely before resetting the usage statistics?

  • Patrick

    Could you please explain this a little more:

    6.If you haven’t done a full drain-to-maximum charge cycle yet, power down the phone and reset the usage statistics before you put it on the AC adapter. This seems to be helping zero out stats and allow the OS to display the fully charged icon.

    Do I power down in general even when it’s a full charge, or do I wait for the phone to drain completely before resetting the usage statistics?

  • http://dmiessler.com/ Daniel Miessler

    I would say reset the stats right before you take it off the AC adapter with a full charge.

  • http://dmiessler.com Daniel Miessler

    I would say reset the stats right before you take it off the AC adapter with a full charge.

  • Gil

    This very helpful, thank you. I flew to Europe right after getting the iPhone and was able to see seven episodes of Jericho, listen to music, do emails and play a bit with the unit. I was absolutely stunt… However, I recharged it overnight and got only a few hours of basic usage. I have followed Daniel’s recommendations above, and they work out well. I have one question however: you talk about disabling the radios, but can you disable all radios except the WiFi? I did not find any option to turn off the phone radio. I also tried to turn on the airplane mode and then turn on the WiFi only and it turned on botth WiFi and phone radios. Thanks, Gil

  • Gil

    This very helpful, thank you. I flew to Europe right after getting the iPhone and was able to see seven episodes of Jericho, listen to music, do emails and play a bit with the unit. I was absolutely stunt… However, I recharged it overnight and got only a few hours of basic usage. I have followed Daniel’s recommendations above, and they work out well. I have one question however: you talk about disabling the radios, but can you disable all radios except the WiFi? I did not find any option to turn off the phone radio. I also tried to turn on the airplane mode and then turn on the WiFi only and it turned on botth WiFi and phone radios. Thanks, Gil

  • http://bccy.blogspot.com/ frelkins

    I’m clocking past 24 hrs. today on iphone’s first charge. I do use it mostly as an ipod. Therefore, I keep it in airplane mode, turn off the wi-fi, set the auto-brightness, and turned the brightness down to 50%. I sleep it alot too. My battery indicator says I have about 25% of charge left!! I could get maybe 30hrs out of this by careful power maintenance, I think. I turn on email, phone, etc. only when I specifically want to use them.

  • http://bccy.blogspot.com frelkins

    I’m clocking past 24 hrs. today on iphone’s first charge. I do use it mostly as an ipod. Therefore, I keep it in airplane mode, turn off the wi-fi, set the auto-brightness, and turned the brightness down to 50%. I sleep it alot too. My battery indicator says I have about 25% of charge left!! I could get maybe 30hrs out of this by careful power maintenance, I think. I turn on email, phone, etc. only when I specifically want to use them.


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