Although many iPhone users experience better battery life after the iOS 4.0 update, a number of users have reported decreased battery life after updating. A sampling of reports from Apple’s Discussion boards:
- shafeen: “Losing about 1% battery life every few minutes.”
- Graham Powell1: “Upgraded 3G last night and bettery useage is through the roof. Getting less than an hour from full charge, phone very very hot.”
- vatkins1906: ”[...] Horrible Battery Life after iOS 4. Before going to bed my 3GS had 100% battery power. With no applications running in the background, I awoke with the phone completely dead! Before installing iOS 4 it would be at around 95%.”
Fixes
Check Internet tethering. Some reports indicate that the iPhone may be persistently attempting to establish a tethering connection, thereby draining the battery. Navigate to Settings > General > Network and tap Internet Tethering, then tap “cancel” if you it is trying to connect, or turn off tethering altogether. You may need to turn Wi-Fi off then back on to stop the tethering connection attempts.
Bad apps to blame? Anecdotal evidence suggests that apps incompatible with iOS 4.0 or otherwise problematic under the new release can cause battery drain issues. Backup your iPhone in iTunes, then delete apps from the device in groups (you can always sync them back from iTunes later). After each group, restart your iPhone and check for the battery drain problem. Via this method, you can isolate the problematic app and remove it permanently.
Also, make sure all apps are up to date; developers have released a flurry of iOS 4.0-compatible app editions in the past few days.
Turn off Push. Navigate to Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars and tap “Fetch New Data.” Turn off Push.
Calibrate the battery. Fully charge your iPhone, then allow it to drain until completely empty (device powers off on its own and displays a spinning progress indicator). Then recharge your phone and check for excessive battery drain.
Close open Safari windows. One iOS application that consumes memory and processor time (and therefore battery life) in the background is Safari. Close all unused windows in the application by pressing the page switch button in the lower right portion of the screen then clicking the X at the top left of each page. See this page for screenshots.
Restore, but not from a backup (use as a last resort). As is the case with some other iOS 4.0 problems, one less-than-ideal fix for the battery drain issue involves restoring the iPhone as a new device rather than from a backup. It appears that bad holdover data from iPhone backups can cause excessive battery use. Restoring as a new phone will delete contacts and other data, but may resolve this problem.
To do so, connect your iPhone or iPod touch to your computer, click “Restore” in iTunes, then choose “setup as new phone.”
Feedback? info@appletoolbox.com.
July 29, 2010 at 6:58 AM
After disabling PUSH in ALL aplications (facebook, mail, etc) my itouch suddenly decided that actually, instead of having less than 20% i have nearly 70% battery time remaining. thats a whopping 50% difference thanks to PUSH.
It should be noted that the battery bar does NOT indicate the level of the battery, rather the level of the battery according to current usage, (so if the iphone/itouch is actively doing something the battery level reamining will be lower than if the iphone/itouch is doing nothing). Not quite sure how the calculation is done but its similar to that of laptops.
July 30, 2010 at 7:01 AM
I was getting about 3 hours on a full charge and the phone was running hot. After trying several things, I finally did a restore of the software, but did not load my backup. I set it up as a new phone, reinstalled everything, setup my mail accounts and I am now back to where I was with notifications and location services on and I am getting better battery life than when running 3.1.3
July 30, 2010 at 5:22 PM
My 3GS started doing the same thing after installing the Facebook app. It dies in 6 hours. Tried a restore, deleted some apps, nothing helped. I called the Apple store, made an appointment. They looked at the phone and had no ideas, so, they replaced the phone. The new phone seemed fine until I got it home and restored it from a backup. I am now trying out the phone with push changed to fetch and with minimal apps loaded on the phone. We’ll see what happens. I guess those Geniuses aren’t so genius after all.
August 6, 2010 at 11:26 AM
Hi everyone!
Had the same issue as rest of you with the battery draining 20% per hour, until today!
I hade the phone on charge over the night, about 7 hours of charge, and today, playing with the phone, from 8 AM til’ now at 8 PM, the battery is at 71%.
This with 3G, push, notifications and fetch on with all supported applications installed on phone.
Give it a try!
August 12, 2010 at 8:31 AM
I am laughing because the Apple support guy was not useful but a complete BSer on the situation. After the OS update, I had this issue and he stated that my memory utilization is very higher. iPhone OS is a “closed” OS which means we can’t tell it how to install apps, etc. And he stated that only thing I could do is restore back as a new phone. I told him, it can’t just be working fine and then go through battery guzzling on its own 2 days ago (especially when I didn’t have this issue and seems like after it was low on battery and went off). So what you write is as I expected
August 16, 2010 at 11:45 PM
I found that going to the Settings\General\Network tab there is a setting called CELLULAR DATA, and have switched it off and now the battery last for ages, after update 4 my battery would not even last a day, I had mail push switched off and all other things I could switch off. It has fixed my battery problem, also to note that this setting is not on an iPhone with operating system 3.
August 19, 2010 at 12:27 AM
the battery got worst after i updated to iOS4 and still having heat problem with my 3gs i could not even get through the day one charge..it will be flat when i reach home. So is it i had a defected battery units?
August 20, 2010 at 5:49 PM
i have tried all of the “fixes” for my 3G. i ditched apps, turned off my push notifications, and it still seems to be draining at an obscene rate of speed, on a fully charged battery i get maybe (if lucky) 4 – 5 hours of life out of my phone, my wife’s 3GS can get more than a full day out of a battery charge, me not so lucky…i am seconds from seeing if throwing against the wall will fix it, oh and it is still working super slow after the 4.0 and 4.0.1 update…i have had an iphone since the day they hit the streets in 07′ and never plan on having another phone, but come on these os updates are making my iphone experience unbearable…sniff, sniff
August 21, 2010 at 1:38 AM
the internet tethering on my 3gs keeps searching and i cant stop it, iam on 4.0.1 i tried everthing spent 4 hours on it still nothing and still eatting my battery.. go apple go
August 21, 2010 at 7:38 AM
OK, i thought i had turned off “Push notifications” but i didn’t i turned it off..turned it off, and it worked, thanks for the heads up and i am sure the “NEXT” update will fix this problem, problem is we are going to be too scared to install the next one…LOL
August 26, 2010 at 12:57 PM
I FOUND A POSSIBLE SOLUTION TO MY PROBLEM
I had a problem with battery drain, and after an intensive test i could conclude that the wifi was eating up my battery, and this was only when wifi was connceted to a router. This didnt happen when you had wifi on and not connected to a router/accesspoint. I had checked if the push, sbsettting, mobilesubstrate and all the other solution found in this thread and none of this helped me. Then i found an acticle below that about the wifi and mobile devices:
Your Smartphone Battery’s Worst Enemy? The Wi-Fi Radio – http://www.enterprisemobiletoday.com
I started to look at my router, as this happend that my phone will drain the battery during the night on the standby, useually 10-20 %. I today had an extra router and tried to setup one for my wifes iphone 4 on the old router: Zyxel, and the router iphone 4 on the new router: Netgear, and guess what i found out that mine on the new router only dropped 4% while hers were still dropping 15%. So i must have someone in this forum to try to test this, if they have a spare router (or borrow one).
My setup which works: I have sbsettings, 3 email accounts (2 exchange, 1 on them google) and hotmail pop3, all set to fetch 30 min. I have no unlock, only JB. 3G and data off, as i am always on wifi.
Test methods i used to find out if you have a wifi/fetch/push problem, where all background programs were closed:
1) Turn on wifi and not connected to router overnight, and check – GOOD
2) Turn on wifi and connect but put mails on manually check – NOT SO GOOD
3) Turn on wifi and connect delete some of the mail accounts, to see if one of them could cause your problem, and add one by one.
4) Turn on wifi and connect to a router with no security,password or mac filters – (Remember to turn on the security again!)
5) Finally change router and test – WOHAA nice battery GOOD. (Only connect your iphone, as the above article say something about that all devices connected to a access point could maybe not be served to put in standby thats why you see a problem)
Hope you guys find the same results.
October 24, 2011 at 12:51 AM
mine also same problem , iphone 3gs ios 4.3.3, after using wifi , my phone gets heat , and battery drains, if wifi is not used it is proper.. , wat to do ?
September 1, 2010 at 7:59 PM
Wifi/Push seems to be the only issue I have noticed with battery life.
Question: I was getting problems with using the “other” for e-mail while using a Hotmail account. I had the option to turn off push while under that account.. I just found out I am able to use MS Exchange. I switched to MS Exchange and it makes me push to inbox.. Will this hinder my battery life?
September 2, 2010 at 3:36 AM
read a lot of posts and this helped considerably for me:
- bought BatteryDoctor to (trickle) charge battery cycles
- bought system activity memory, which frees memory (!)
- switch off most settings, especially 3G and WIFI
- close all running applications at night
September 10, 2010 at 8:26 AM
I have the same problem after upgrading my 3GS to ios4, the battery life is unbearable.
So what you are saying is that in order to fix it, we have to turn all of the services off on the phone?? The reason why we have the iPhone is so that we can do all these things….what sense is it to have them turned off?? This is unacceptable. It’s getting tired if ya ask me.
We are forced to get the iPhone 4 because the 3GS can’t handle the update. But oh..the iPhone4 has reception issues. So why get that??
Cool phone but it might be time to abandon the ship. Damn it’s gonna suck buying an itouch!
September 16, 2010 at 4:28 AM
My iPod Touch 3rd Gen used to be “pocket luggage” – always there, always ready. It was neat to be able to flip its case open and just use it, without thinking about the battery life other than charging it every few days.
Since the iOS4 upgrades, most times I go to use it it’s mostly dead (red lightning-bolt) or really close to it (20% battery warning), even it it was charged the previous day and not been used since.
I was quite looking forward to getting an iPhone, but after this experience, I think I’ll head for an Android instead.
It’s not the bugs in the release – annoying but they can happen – it’s the lack of acknowledgement from Apple, or any tips on how to work around them. Is there any serious expectation of getting these problems fixed, other than waiting and *hoping* that the next upgrade?
The walled-garden approach is supposed to fix these woes, but we can’t even downgrade back to 3.1.3 – which worked well, and (for me) had solid Wifi performance that didn’t drop out every minute or so, as iOS4.1does.
I’d resisted entering into the walled garden but once I bought the iPod Touch I could understand the appeal. It WAS a really nice bit of kit. Now, as it’s usually dead or close to it when I come to use it, that’s no longer the case.
I hadn’t wanted to jailbreak the phone – I just want it to work. Apple, if you’re not going to address these problems at least let us downgrade.
Giovanni
September 23, 2010 at 2:45 PM
My iPod Touch battery life also took a dive with the installation of OS4 exactly like most of the comments made here. I turned off “push” and turned “Airplane Mode” to on. I now use “Airplane Mode” exclusively to go on or off Wi-Fi. My battery life appears back to normal as before the update.
September 27, 2010 at 11:51 AM
iphone 3gs (unlocked from apple) keeps connecting to internet every 15 minutes or so. I have push turned off, fetch on manual, no email accounts, location turned off, wifi turned off, tethering turned off. Trying to find solution to stop unwanted connections as its running my battery down and i really dont like idea of not being able to control phones connections.
September 30, 2010 at 4:13 AM
I never had a problem on the old os but now i have no battery life at all. I am sick of reading switch this off switch that off if I would do that I should have bought an old £10 Nokia not a frigging £700 so called smartphone. F U Apple and all your unborn children! Android here we come (unless they let us all dowgrade back to os3)
September 30, 2010 at 2:39 PM
I have an iPod touch 3rd gen. I upgraded to iOS4 when it first came out and had no problems. For the last week (no new apps added except the Camera good beer guide) the battery goes flat within 6-8 hours e.g. over night. If I disable WiFi then the problem goes away. The problem does not occur at work where it also has a WiFi connection all the time. I have since disabled notifications and all push activities with no result?
October 4, 2010 at 5:31 PM
I don’t know which gen. of iPod I have … but I just recently upgraded it to the 4.0 & my battery drains within a 6 hour period!! WHY?? I have a cell phone that is 3 yrs old and the battery lasts longer in that then the iPod – which is less than a year old!
This seems to happen during every upgrade but this time it is 10x worse… it’s just aggravating!
October 5, 2010 at 2:10 PM
Yep,
At least once a week i go to bed with my phone charged to 100% and an alarm set using the default clock app…and i wake up (at whatever time) to find my 3GS is dead…we’re talking 5-6 hours…from 100% to nothing. I do the same routine before going to sleep; wifi off, phone on standby…and it’s totally random. I have never used push or notifications for any app and i always switch off wifi…thing is, during the day even with the wifi connected at work, i never drop below 80% unless i’ve made a lot of calls.
It seems random; what’s really worrying is that different people had different experience with the same phone…which would suggest it’s a hardware fault, probably specific batches off the production line…except that everyone now has O.S4…and we’re all now having problems…
I’m a PC…always have been…the iphone is the only thing that has ever tempted me over to Apple…and as great as it is, my 4 year old Sony Erikkson walkman mobile holds a charge for 3 days…
I’ve seen on ebay the battery upgrade kits…anyone had any experience with them?
October 20, 2010 at 8:18 AM
I am not sure if I am correct or not but I also faced the same problem with battery with my iPhone 4. When i went to sleep battery was 100% at mid night when i woke up battery was 37%.
One thing which i have noticed is that due to alerts battery drains more faster. Alerts like calender alerts or something. After alert pop ups on lock screen try responding it, like opening the calender entry and closing the calender back or something.
the above has happened twice with me and in both occasions calender alerts were the culprits.
did any one else also noticed this?
October 21, 2010 at 7:43 PM
Does anyone know if the most current release 4.1 solves the battery drain? I have just kept my ipod on airplane mode and the battery life is as before.
It is quite annoying.
October 22, 2010 at 4:43 AM
Rich Alger: to my experience 4.1 is worse than 4.0, my ipod drains within a few hours when turnoff if I forget to put it in airplane mode.
If I could down grade to before 4.0 I would do it…
October 23, 2010 at 8:55 AM
Haha, I’ve had this problem ever since I upgraded to 4.0
I go to sleep with 80% battery, wake up with 1% and it shuts down in like 15 seconds of usage at minimum brightness
tried to fix all the wifi-related issues, hope that works..
October 23, 2010 at 9:01 AM
OR, you can also turn on airplane mode when you go to sleep
October 26, 2010 at 8:57 AM
I have same problem here with a 3GS. After updating to 4.0 a while ago I already noticed more poor battery life.
2 days ago I updated to 4.1. The same night I went to bed with about 35% battery life. The next morning I overslept as I missed my wakeup alarm. Battery dead.
I dont use push email. Wifi is off. 3G is off.
This is completly insane. Before going to work I charged battery back to 40%. In the afternoon my phone was dead again. I did’nt made 1 phone call the whole day. No 3G. No Wifi.
This is totally unacceptable to me and if this continues i’m forced to use Nokia again.
And is switching off everything an Iphone is capable of the solution for their crappy updates?
My most terrible issue is that stupid multitasking. I want an option to switch it off. I never use that function. Many times I use my gps navigator and when finished driving I switch it off normally. But many times I forget to switch it off in multi-tasking, restulting in the navigation app to keep running and drain the battery for gps use.
Completely stupid.
And is this to get us into an Iphone 4? Come on, guys, this will get us into the latest Nokia or Samsung or whatever. If not fixed I never buy apple products anymore. This is an expensive phone and you may expect something in return for that.
I want to be able to return to IOS 4.0 or even lower. Battery life was always good. Usually around 2 days. Since 4.0 it’s much worse but 4.1 really killed it. 5 hours with all apps switched of, 3G off and wifi off!!!! Back to the stoneage time? Get an Iphone from Apple.
October 27, 2010 at 5:57 AM
Same problem as everyone else on this blog, bad battery life after 4.0 & 4.1 update. Why have 3GS iPhone if features have to be disabled to maintain standard battery usage? Frustrated by update and will have to consider other options when contract is up next month!!! Someone want to suggest iPhone alternative?
October 28, 2010 at 9:05 AM
I have switched off locations service now. 3G is off. Wifi is off. Haven’t made any phonecalls these last days.
Still my battery is draining like hell. Where the hell does it go to? What the hell is going wrong here? 3 days s ago, just before I update to 4.1 I could last 2-3 day with this kind of use.
Now all of a sudden the location service should be the problem? I haven’t changed my use, or installed any apps since the update.
The only thing I did was to upgrade to Ios 4.1.
This is the beginning of the end of the magic Apple smartphone monopoly. For sure all the other manufactures are laughing out so loud I can even hear it from here. Nice all that new features like multi tasking and so on. But the battery only works for 5 hours if we switch all these features off. If switched on, the batttery is dead in 3 hours.
For a year long I had no problems with battery. So on a monday everything is ok. On monday evening you do the upgrade to Ios 4.1 and on theusday morning your battery is dead. And then suddenly it has to do with hidden apps that use location service? Or you used the wrong charging procedure?
All we want is to have the option to downgrade to 3.x or 4.0.
Nokia N8, here we come? Or we give Apple one more chance to fix their shit?
So my 600 euro Iphone was a complete waste of money.
Just wondering now if the Imac’s are also this lousy shit quality. Offcourse it’s great that it looks nice, but if it does’nt work it’s still a failure.
I buy a phone to make use of it. Not to show off.
Switching flight mode on to keep your battery alive for 8 hours….what the F*ck is that for solution?
November 2, 2010 at 7:58 AM
I have an iTouch 30G that’s about two years old. Shortly after upgrading to iOS4 it starting eating power in sleep mode. Over night it would completely drain. I thought it was perhaps the battery. So I decided to buy a new iTouch 64G and keep the old one docked and use it as an internet radio. As soon a I upgraded the new iTouch to iOS4 it too would lose all its energy (from 100% to 20% in about 12 hours in sleep mode). I’m hoping Apple soon acknowledges this problem and supplies a fix.
November 9, 2010 at 5:32 AM
SOLVED!
Guys, I had same problem, turned all notifications off, Wifi Off, phone still continues to access internet non-stop and drains battery at very fast rate. You can check that by keeping phone close to sound speakers, there is a sound confirming transmitting activity.
I solved it this way:
Open http://km.support.apple.com/library/APPLE/APPLECARE_ALLGEOS/TS3398/SignedDefaultEASTaskTimeout.mobileconfig
OPEN THIS LINK FROM YOUR IPHONE, install and this background transmitting stops. Thats it!
Regards,
Guncha
P.S. (you can also read information and get this link from http://support.apple.com/kb/TS3398)
November 22, 2010 at 2:14 AM
to save battery life use http://www.EcoZi.org, its just a black verson of google. its only for mobile phones but the idea is it will use 4x less battery than normal google (which is good for people like me) and its supposed to use less bandwidth (so it uses less data and saves money on wireless plans).
it helped ive been using it for a couple weeks and the difference is huge. thought id share it.
November 23, 2010 at 6:23 AM
HI all i try all think to fix that problem but it not fix it i try to downgrade my iphone 3G from 4.1 to 3.1.3 but it’s same so i think after all that the problem come from MODEM FIRMWARE
anyone try 4.2 if it fix that problem with new MODEM FIRMWARE come with New IOS 4.2
November 24, 2010 at 10:00 AM
I just got the Iphone 4 about a month ago. I can’t believe I’m having this issues with such a new phone. I called Apple about it and they said I could send the phone back for a fix but it will cost me about 50 dollars!!! plus I will be without a phone for about a week, I should of stay with Verizon… anyway, thank you all for all your suggestions, I will try a few of them, I just updated the phone to the new 4.2.1 but I still have the battery drain issue.
November 26, 2010 at 1:46 PM
I have a 3G that I upgraded to 4.2.1 yesterday. I did not use it at all and it was dead by 7pm yesterday. Left it on charge all night. It had a 100% at 8 am, received one call and made one call 10 minutes long. It was down to 22% by 2.00pm. WiFi is turned off, 3G now turned off, location services and push all off. There is no quick charge working. Been on charge 2 hours and now only just reaching 60%. Up until yesterday, I was only having to charge every three days or so. Dont use it that much I guess.
Anyone got any answers?
November 29, 2010 at 9:32 PM
Hi Guys,
I wasn’t having a problem with my iPhone 3GS battery until about 4 or 5 days ago. I don’t think it has anything to do with the IOS because I’ve had it since it came out.
I plugged in my phone to charge it, and I picked it up and it was dead. I saw that it was actually unplugged the entire time I thought it was charging. I plugged it in, turned it on, and it said it was 100%. I thought it was odd but I went with it. I put it on sleep and went to bed. Usually the next morning it’s at about 95%, but this time it was dead. Ever since then I’m losing about 20% an hour.
Does anybody know if I could have maybe tricked the battery into thinking it’s fully charged but it isn’t? Also, how can you check a history of app updates? I remember updating some Apps the night before.
I’ve tried alllll the above tips and tricks, I can’t figure it out.
December 1, 2010 at 11:16 PM
Hey Guys,
My iPod touch 3G has worked fine with no problems till recently when I updated to iOS 4.2.1, now it’s fully charged when I go to bed only to find it practically completed drained by the time I wake up.
Any suggestions? I’ve tried the suggestions above but no luck…..please help me!!!!
December 6, 2010 at 2:31 PM
Guncha’s advice a few posts above works!
Well done Guncha for discovering this for yourself and sharing.
The wifi now disconnects automatically after switching to standby (or leaving it to turn itself off). It then reconnects when you turn back on. This is of course exactly how it should be, and was until v4.
Shame on you Apple for letting this run for almost 6 months and doing absolutely nothing, despite so many frustrated customers posting on so many forums. You should hang your heads in shame.
December 12, 2010 at 6:58 AM
Yes, even i am having the same problem. It loose 1 percent , battery for every 2 min.
December 15, 2010 at 7:13 AM
** solution **
you need to close all apps running in the background. press the ‘home’ button twice and it will show you all active apps.
apparetly iphone4 allows multitasking so if you running a program and press the home button, it does not exit the app – it continues to run in the background
December 17, 2010 at 6:08 AM
internet tethering is clearly the problem, but I cannot turn it off with the method described above. turning wifi on & off does not help. Internet tethering just continue to work.
December 17, 2010 at 6:09 AM
internet tethering is clearly the problem, but I cannot turn it off with the method described above. turning wifi on & off does not help. Internet tethering just continues to work.
December 19, 2010 at 11:43 AM
Post 84 definitely fixed my 2nd gen touch anyway. 100% works.
December 19, 2010 at 3:34 PM
I upgraded to the latest jailbreak / unlock on my 3g iphone and now my phone charges quickly and dies extremely quick no matter what settings I have turned off. I tried all the suggested advice it seems like but it still dies quickly. The phone will also beep constantly when plugged in unless you reset it while plugged in. i heard their was some cydia SAM fix but couldn’t find it and not sure it would help either. Anyone else having this?
December 30, 2010 at 5:19 AM
Sadly, none of these tips will work for me. I turned my
iPod completely off last night, and this morning when I turned it
on, it was dead.
January 3, 2011 at 9:47 PM
Dear Apple Team
I recently purchased iphone and got it upgraded with the latest software
Post that my battery life is amazingly terrible – it is draining in almost less than 2 hours without using -
It is actually considered to be a pride to own a iphone here but given the situation your friends laugh at it – and say why dont you buy some local or Chinese phone – it works and serves better
Please can you help me out here
Many thanks!
BT
April 7, 2011 at 6:56 PM
There is a website where you can download the old osx you want and then it loads into itunes. you can select restore to ___ old osx (whichever one you downloaded. It’s my understanding though that it deletes eveything on your phone, so make sure you’ve backed up EVERYTHING. I can post the link to download the old versions if anyone wants it? I have to get it out of the history of the other user account i used yesterday on this comp. i haven’t tried it yet…i can’t get my phone to even turn on right now, but i plan on downgrading to osx 3 as soon as I get my little phone charged enough to turn on and last through the update!
May 9, 2011 at 7:10 AM
The post from Guncha, Nov 9, 2010 fixed my battery drain problem! Thank you Guncha.
Here was the KB article from Apple, even though it does not mention any symptoms of battery drain:
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS3398
June 29, 2011 at 9:13 AM
Had the same problem. Do this
Wifi off
notification off
location off
tap home button twice>
all open apps will be seen on bottom row >
hold any 1 app for 3-4 sec>
a ‘minus’ sign on top left will appear>
select minus sign>
this will close the app completely
it will not delete the app, so dont worry>
close all such apps, so nothing remains
on the bottom row>
charge iphone and verify how long charge remains>
if resolved,
can start using all apps 1 by 1 till the culprit
is caught.
cheers.
August 30, 2011 at 1:58 AM
Dear, pls help me to resolve the issue. My iphone 4 gets switch off with 40% battery automatically. Pls suggest wht is the issue. Even i cant litsen songs on.