iPhone 4 battery life

[lazaruz]

with exchange mail and mobileme enabled i get 7-8 hours use in about 24hour period

[darkside flow]

I find that the iPhone's battery life can really be manipulated, in a good way, to fit what you need the phone to do.

I should note that the first shot below is my old iPhone 4 (purchased July 2010) and the second is a week old replacement phone, showing that I've had good results with multiple phones.



^ For this one, I put the phone to the test with constant high quality video streaming (Netflix and Skyfire flash video browsing). As you can see, 9 hours and 7 minutes of usage ain't too shabby.



^ This is my current battery stats. Minimal usage (1 hour 15 mins) but almost a day standby time with exactly 3/4 of the battery still left. Usage has been browsing, app data, email, and calls.

[Chris2183]

I find that the iPhone's battery life can really be manipulated, in a good way, to fit what you need the phone to do.

Those are some nice numbers.

[vietalogy]

I'm a heavy user so I use battery case.

[canadian studen]

With my 3G I got 3 1/2 hours. 3GS 4 hours. iPhone 4 5 1/2-6 hours if usage. I could only imagine what kind of great natter life were gonna get with the next iPhone.

[ahhdillon]

My 3G gets a good 7hrs with light usage, and probbably about 3 1/2 or 4 with moderate use, its disappointing really..

Glad to hear that iphone 4 has such a big improvement in battery life.

[stealthipad]

Even with poor reception and social networking running in the background you should get well over 8 hours. My phone comes off charge at 4am, handles 40-50 emails, several hours of phone conversation and multiple texts and still have never less than 50% when it goes back on charge at 9pm. It has been more than enough for me

[jbinbi]

am on vzw, considering moving from my droid. with lite use, about 10 min of phone calls, about 10 txts, and checking my emails from exchange about 20x (but not replying), and reading news groups for about 10 minutes, I can go easily go 24-30 hours on a charge. If I am travelling and really using the phone to actually respond to 35 emails emails, and talking 45 minutes, and using browser, some navigation, I still get about half that.

Can someone give me some idea on how well the iphone does on battery. I just test a droid 2 global and under the lite use above, it barely makes it 12 hours. Some friends with iphones tell me that they need to be close to a charger, especially if they use the phone for music while working out on top of their usage. thanks.

[RF9]

I can't say for sure how CDMA/EVO (Verizon) will change the battery performance as compared to GSM/HSPA (AT&T). But assuming they are similar, you can go a full day on the iPhone 4.
I found the two biggest contributors to battery drain are:
1) Playing video or playing games, especially streaming video (1 hour can trash you battery by about 30%) or streaming Sirius radio (uses some but not as much.)
2) Exchange push email when there is a lot of email traffic. Like 1 email every 5 minutes or more through a work day. By way of comparison on a weekend when there is almost 0 email traffic, exchange push uses almost 0 battery.

For example, today is a light email day and I've only done web an email. 4.5 hrs of standby, and 2.5 hours of usage (mostly web browsing and playing iTunes audio) and the battery is at 84%. That's 7 hours so far with moderate usage.
But I've had an 8 hour day tax the battery pretty nicely when there's a flurry of emails all day long. Each email sent (when using push) causes an email sync which uses power.

With the usage you're talking about, I estimate you'll have about 35-40% battery left at the end of a 12 hour day. But it kind of depends how active the email box is. Even on days when I have heavy use, I rarely ever run the battery down all the way.
The iPhone 4 which is what Verizon is getting has a much better battery than the iPhone 3GS. I seem to get about 2x the battery life.

Playing music from local storage (iTunes or a 3rd party app that lets you sync audio files) uses very little battery power. As long as the screen is turned off, you can play audio all day long without running the battery down. What uses power is the processor decoding video, playing games (processor heavy,) and 3G radio for transmitting data (streaming.)

That being said, it's important to have a spare charger and try to at least get a few minutes of a boost when you can, or get a portable battery that you can plug in to the bottom for marathon days. I have one, but have rarely needed it with the iPhone 4. The iPhone 3GS on the other hand I needed it a lot.

I consider myself to be a moderate to heavy user and I usually have about 35%-40% battery when I plug it in to the charger at night.
On weekends I'll be lucky to get blow 80% unless I've been using it for hours of entrainment.

I hope that helps.

[Frank S]

I learned a long time ago (well, when I first got into smartphones) that if you are serious about wanting to have your phone available when you need it, you buy extra power. I've purchased extra power for every single smartphone I've ever owned. The one I have now I have 5 batteries for. I always have a spare with me to plop in if needed. I rotate the batteries to keep them in good shape.

From what I've learned about the iPhone (I had a similar question) I've found out that although you can't keep "spare batteries" for the iPhone, you can purchase a "spare charger unit". This is an interesting device in that you charge it up and then it becomes a stand-alone, no-power-required, charger for your iPhone. I saw it being sold for $49. Not bad. So, instead of plopping in a spare battery, you just hook the iPhone up to this portable charger unit and charge your iPhone back up. Not a bad system, I think. I would definitely buy one or two of these charger units on the same day I bought the phone.

-Frank

[RF9]

With the iPhone 3GS, I would have recommended the Mophie Juicepack (case with a battery.) It is the most elegant solution if you find the battery capacity really isn't up to your use. It's also not cheap and adds bulk. However, as I already said the iPhone 4 battery life is roughly double in my experience and having an always-attached battery is not necessary with moderate use. I can't recall more than 1 or 2 times I actually needed emergency power and that was because I wanted to watch slingbox or play games while traveling.

There's an inexpensive $20 battery here. It's small and you can bring it with you on long days away from outlets when you think you might need it, but I think those would be rare.
http://richardsolo.com/iphone_and_ipod.html
Monoprice.com used to sell a great cheap one for $12, but they seem to have stopped carrying it, I think for reasons of Apple patent infringement.

Obviously get a spare charger and use it when you can, that'll eliminate any problems. But I know that some people aren't around outlets and there are times when you'll go a long day away from an outlet and need to rely on the battery.
I also have a Zagg Sparq 2 (Zagg is always running sales and got it for 1/2 price once.)
http://www.zagg.com/accessories/index.php
It's perfect for taking on a plane in your carry-on.

But keeping the orig. question in mind, you'll be fine with the built in battery. Just remember that the first week the battery is new and won't have much of a capacity. It takes about 7-14 charge cycles to really break in the battery and get to max capacity.

[jbinbi]

thanks. when i am out of the office, i usually try to charge in the car between appts, even if only for 20 minutes at a time. vzw is only getting iphone 4, so that is the info i am going with.

[RF9]

I only mentioned the iPhone 3GS because if you read about people complaining about battery life on an iPhone, it was most likely pre iPhone 4 models and to point out that the iPhone 4 is dramatically improved with regards to battery life.
For what it's worth, yesterday I had :
Usage: 3:10, Standby 10:52, Battery 64% (Total of 14:02)
Usage: 4:43, Standby 14:09, Battery 33% (Total of 18:42)
That was moderate to heavy usage. It included some streaming video and some game playing (as well as a lot of web and email.)
At Usage 5:26, Standby 15:42 (Yes, it was a 20 hour day for me,) I hit the 11% mark because I was playing a game that last hour and a half of usage. (The game heavily taxes the battery.)

All in all, I think that's more than adequate for your use.

[XFF]

I thought Standby was inclusive of Usage, in fact I'm pretty sure it is.

In other words if I unplug the phone at 8 am and use it until 8 pm, it'll show 12 hours of standby, regardless of how much usage I have incurred in the mean time.

[fairen]

Mine lasts the whole day. Carry a car charger to give it some juice while you drive and you wont have anything to worry about.

I recently bought an iPhone 4 from timtechs and I also used to own a 3GS before that and I too noticed the vast improvement in battery life with the iPhone 4. Mine also lasts the whole day maybe because I'm not much of a heavy user but I do make sure that I re-calibrate the battery by draining the battery at least once every 2 months to keep the battery in good shape