Thoughts on the iPhone 3G battery life

Like everyone else I now have a few full days of iPhone 3G usage under my belt and over the weekend there seemed to be no shortage of grumblings on the intrawebs about the "bad" iPhone 3G battery life.  Now that I've got a bit of time on the iPhone 3G battery I need to point out what I think people are seeing.  First of all it's important to understand that I have used at least a half dozen different phones with 3G capability, even more than that with Edge only (like the original iPhone).  This means my take on the iPhone 3G battery life I am seeing is based on what other devices have offered me and not my expected run times.

I can state with absolute certainty that the battery life I am getting on the iPhone 3G is as good as any other 3G-capable phone I have used.  This flies in the face of what you might be seeing others say on the web the past few days but I have no beef with the battery life I am getting.  What I think is happening to make others feel otherwise is based on two different factors.  Those who have upgraded from the original, non-3G iPhone are seeing less battery life on the new one.  That is only logical as the 3G radio does in fact use more juice than the Edge one.  So in fact the iPhone 3G is probably providing them less battery life than their old one did.

The main factor is that when you have broadband speeds on your phone like the iPhone 3G, you spend more time on the web than on other phones without 3G.  I can attest to this based on my own experience.  With non-3G phones when I go to the web it is to do something specific which I do and then get off the web because it's too slow and painful.  Not so with the iPhone 3G, the web experience is so fluid that I find myself jumping online to do something specific and then doing something else.  And something else again.  It's such a good online experience that I can easily find myself staying online for an hour or more.  Believe me, that can eat the battery for sure and I'll bet that those who are not happy with the battery life on their iPhone 3G are spending far more time online than they realize.  What I am seeing is battery life at least as good as if not better than other 3G handsets I have used.  I haven't run the battery dry in a given day yet but then I have long conditioned myself to always plug in when in my office working.  That's even more critical on the iPhone with its unswappable battery.  So always plug in and get a car charger and you'll probably be fine.  Also pay attention to notice how much time you're spending on the web and you'll see what I mean.  Your battery life is probably better than you think.

UPDATE: wow, just found this PC World benchmark which confirms what I have said here.

Comments

[Chris]

When I read this article, my first initial reaction was to say: "Is this the merely obvious or the blatantly obvious".

Looking back I understand that from the 1 million new iphone users, a large portion of do not understand 3g battery life or are used to 2g iphone battery.

Another tip for those who want more battery life, which I haven't seen written about anywhere is turning off 3g. Especially when its idle in your pocket, having 3g on can still drain the battery. I would like to see someone test the 3g iphone is 2g mode and look at call quality. My iphone has been ordered since I work and I cant wait in lines during the week.

[Andrew Shuttleworth]

I see you point and it's a likely a valid one, but it's still a huge design flaw.

Basically I live and die by a mobile device and battery life is more important that speed. (Actually I couldn't turn off 3G and still use it as a phone in Japan).

Today was my first work day with an iPhone. I was travelling around meetings all day which is typical so even though I was carrying the charger I had no chance to charge and the battery was dead by mid afternoon. I have to look for some portable power solution or consider selling the device and going back to my Willcom PHS.

Although I don't know the industry at all, I can't see why that given the fact we can get man on the moon and do all sorts of other miraculous scientific things, we can't get batteries with longer battery life.

I would say there is certainly desire in the market but obviously not enough need to drive change. I'm sure the battery manufacturers are also quite happy with the status quo and don't want to destroy their own industry.

We need a Google for the battery industry.

[Cary]

One thing to remember is that the battery will start holding a charge longer after a few charge cycles. My previous phone was an AT&T Tilt. When I first got it, it would barely last a day. Recently, now that I've had it for quite a long time, it lasted 4 days without a charge. It was receiving "push" email from my Exchange account the whole time.

I picked up my iPhone on Friday. I went on an overnight camping trip on Saturday. The phone came off the car charger at around 10am on Saturday and by Sunday morning was in need of a charge. I'm hoping that in a few weeks, like the Tilt, that the battery life will improve significantly.

[JeffGr]

Ever since moving up to a 3G phone (Treo 700p), I've definitely noticed the lower battery life. I also have gotten into the habit of plugging the phone in while at home or at my desk and I also have figured out a general set of rules as to when to shut down push email and other similarly battery-draining services to make sure that I don't run short.

Of course, there are always those occasions when getting to a charger during the course of the day just isn't practical, but I may still want to make use of the 3G services. For this, I have a spare battery as well as an external charger that allows me to charge up both batteries simultaneously. The fact that this isn't possible with the iPhone strikes me as a ridiculous flaw in the design. Looking back, I think that Handspring/Palm finally switched to the user-swappable battery with the 3rd generation Treos. Maybe Apple will follow their lead...

[lutzh]

To keep a long story short: The iPhone is just like any other 3G phone. Nothing special here from Apple, no re-inventing the wheel in terms of energy consumption. Just cosmetics on something that should have been there in the first place. Where is that hype coming from again? Great UI and yes, available in white colour! Uhhh... Can't wait not to buy this....

[kahm]

I've been using my iPod touch a lot more since the 2.0 update and I've found, to my surprise, that I can blow the whole charge in a couple of hours! Before, when I just used it as an MP3 player, the charge would go for days. Now that I can practically do anything I want with it, the battery life has become a big issue. I was aware that it would be, but the magnitude of the problem still caught me off guard.

[GoodThings2Life]

I often find myself turning off EVDO connectivity on my Mogul for the same reasons-- if the EVDO signal isn't very strong, it will constantly flicker back and forth between EVDO and 1X-CDMA which kills the battery really quickly.

In areas the EDGE coverage is better than 3G, any GSM phone will act the same way and have the same issues.

[Chris]

James,

Do you have any info on some batteries that attach to the iphone for some extra battery life? I've heard of them and seen some pics, they make the phone look a lot longer. They supposedly add double the battery life though. Any suggestions of which ones are better? Ever used one?

[Constable Odo]

This is about the only device so far that can help the battery life of the iPhone 3G and it's not all that practical in terms of added bulk:
http://richardsolo.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=264&HS=1&gclid=CLba1NH8v5QCFR8cagodQm8PUg

[Oliver]

Ignoring the topic at hand, James, why do you refer to discussions in the "intrawebs"? (I have noticed that in other posts as well). As far as I know, the common meaning of intranet (and intraweb) is "internal network of an organization/company". Any discussion that's happening on internal sites of my company wouldn't be accessible to you :)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intraweb

(sorry to be picky... or maybe I am missing something).

[Eddie W.]

I've had the HTC Advantage X7501 for quite a while now. When I'm streaming Internet radio through AT&T's network, I can easily lose 30-40% power in a couple of hours. To keep working all day, I keep a charger at my desk and plug in the Advantage when I'm there. I also have a charger on the night table by the bed for overnight charging (and for late-night music listening and reading my favorite jkOnTheRun blog). Sometimes I'm away from my desk all day, so I always carry one of those little Lenmar Power Packs. It uses the USB port to run/charge devices. It's much smaller than the Advantage, and probably weighs less than 200g. A quick look at the website (www.lenmar.com) shows a universal kit that supports the Apple iPhone (but doesn't say which version). (I'm not affiliated with Lenmar in any way -- I was given a Power Pack for Christmas last year and have been very happy with it.) Highly recommended!

[Steve W]

So... was Apple right to suggest that 3G was to power hungry for a version 1 phone?

By introducing an EDGE phone first, they can now say "I told you so" to people who complain about 3G performance. Because you can double battery life by turning off 3G, you can prove it to yourself.

Even though no other 3G phone does much better than the iPhone, some people still want to blame Apple, or AT&T for delivering exactly what they promised.

Kinda like saying that selling 1 Million phones in 3 days is a fiasco; because they should have sold 2 million, rather than the predicted 500,000.

[Mark]

I was at a really dull baseball game a couple of evenings ago with the 3G and the Sprint Touch. Both had been fully charged when I left for the game and I hadn't used either since pulling the plug so I thought I'd see how they stacked up. With bluetooth off, Wifi off (on the 3G, no wifi on the Touch) and 3G on and the Rev-A system on the Touch, I started browsing around, playing music, watching video, text messaging and using one to call the other and vice versa. After 3 hours of this, both had burned through about half their battery. "About" because neither really has an accurate gauge and I really wasn't interested in being all scientific and anal about it. By that time the 3G had only been through a couple of charge cycles but the Touch had only been through a couple of dozen as it had been a replacement for one that had fried from heat. So I'd say that, for me, there's no real difference in battery between what I had and what I now have.

[NigelG]

These "Oh isn't the battery life terrible" views are like the conversation I had with someone who was disappointed about the MacBook Air and it's lack of "stuff" that he thought he needed. Like early tablet and UMPC users did before - you just get used to it.

Same with 3G phones, you learn to live with the battery. Although I do wonder if the constant switching between 2G and 3G can be the main culprit - this used to be a regular feature of the 3G network in the UK (and still is in some areas). You drop out of 3G and the phone wastes its battery seeking out new 3G networks (easy to test it yoruself, see how quickly the battery drains when you don't have a signal).

In recent years my 3G signal has been pretty strong at work, and battery life has improved because of that.

[Tom Basham]

I'm not sure I agree... I've used a lot of phones over the last few years - part of my job has been to evaluate them for my company. For a phone that's advertised as being 'Enterprise Ready' the iPhone battery life really isn't great. Sure the talk time mumbers stack up, but under real world use with push email, browsing, etc. from what I've seen so far it can't really match the Nokia's and HTC's of the world. The numbers in the reviews and tests simply don't match with what I've seen.

I've got one iPhone here that won't last more then 5 hours between charges, and that with no calls, no bluetooth, no wifi, no GPS and no 3G. I'll be sending that one back, but the others don't seem to be much better to be honest.

I'm actually a big fan of the phone itself, but I'm really not sure its all that useful when you need to carry a charger round with you all day.