iPhone 4 - battery life has taken a sudden dive - any ideas why?

[Dan Turner]

Hi - I've got an iPhone 4, which was new in September last year and up to now i've been getting 2+ days out of the battery, 3 if i'm lucky. In the last week the battery life has dived to about a day (unplug from charger at about 8am when i leave the house, and it is down to about 20% by 11pm when i have to plug it in to charge again).

I'm not aware of any updates taking place to the OS (although individual app updates have happened) and as far as i'm aware, i'm using it in exactly the same way as before. I've checked and bluetooth is off, as are automatic time-zone updates, both of which I know can cane the battery life.

Does anyone have any thoughts on what might be the cause of such a sudden dive in performance? Or any other suggestions for conserving battery, other than turning off wi-fi or 3g!

Thanks
Dan

 

[bigboss]

http://ipod.about.com/od/iphone3g/tp/iphone-battery-life.htm

 

[professorhat]

How often do you clear out the running apps (by double tapping the home button, holding down one of the apps and using the red minus button to close the app down)? Try closing everything down and see if this helps (my theory is some apps keep running in the background and do stuff even when the phone is in standby).

 

[Dan Turner]

Thanks both - have tried a lot of those tips, so we'll see if that helped over the next day or 2

cheers

 

[professorhat]

Otherwise, I got an app called Battery Doctor Pro on my 3GS a while back (recommended on this forum in fact) and this helped get longer battery life on this because it recommended trickle charging the phone longer than just plugging in till it was at 100% to ensure it's fully charged (this normally will take between 3 - 4 hours to do this, whilst the phone might reach 100% in under 2 hours). It also reminds you to do a full battery discharge and recharge once a month (though sounds like you're already doing this).

Might also be worth a look though reviews don't seem favourable - I have been using it on my new 4S, but perhaps it doesn't work as well for the 4 and 4S as it definitely made a difference on the 3GS.

EDIT - there's also a free version now it seems (clicky), though 69p was hardly bank breaking so I'm not too bothered!

 

[Dan Turner]

Thanks Prof

Actually yesterday's measures seem to have worked. Battery life seems more or less back to normal today

Thanks!

 

[Dave2860]

charge it up too 100%, run it completly flat till it says connect to power then charge it for about 9 hours.... works a treat

 

[mykspence]

IOS 5.1 seems to have given me about 50% extra battery life. Nice one Apple.