Iphone 4 and battery life

[carey]

My iphone battery drains awfully fast....any suggestions on how to preserve the battery life longer than 1/2 day?  I've noticed if its 100% charged and no use overnight I could have only 97% in the morning...thats with NO use overnight.  Is this normal

Airplane Mode-OFF

WiFi-OFF

Notifications-ON

Thanks

[dbbrass · Accepted solution]

Let me get this straight... You were at 100% to start and then overnight (8 hours?) you were then at 97%?  If so then that is excellent battery life as you only lost 3% over 8 hours.  The phone does use power when in standby just like any cell phone.  The iPhone in fact has about the best battery life out there.  To do any better than this, you'd have to physically power the device off.

[carey]

Good news than thanks!  Is there anything else I can do during the day to preserve the battery life with my settings?

[dbbrass]

The biggest thing to do is adjust your brightness settings to as low as what you can tolerate.  Under settings/brightness, lower the slider down to a level that suits you.  If you leave auto-brightness 'on' it will go from minimum to where-ever you leave the slider.  I find that unless I'm in extremely bright outdoor conditions, about 30% on the slider is more than adequate.  You can also limit the amount of apps that are pushing data down to your phone and also change your email retrieval to manual.  These sorts of items don't dramatically impact your battery performance, but if your looking to maximize, then these can be fine tuned too.  Use WIFI wherever possible.  And finally if you're in an area of which you have no signal, then you're better off switching to Airplane mode as this prevents the phone from constantly looking for a signal.  IF you have WIFI but no cellular signal, you can also disable just 'cellular data' (under settings/general/network).  This will also prevent the phone from searching for a signal and needlessly wasting battery.  Just remember to re-enable these things as you find necessary!  Good luck.

[mikedamirault]

Like dbbrass said, the battery life on the iPhone is pretty good when compared to other smartphones (Droids being the worst, they are battery hogs)

Depending on how much you use it, it can last anywhere from a full day to about 2 or 3 days (at least for me anyway), the more apps you have open, and the more you use the phone, the faster the battery will drain

I noticed that you said that you had Airplane mode off (meaning leaving the radios on), Airplane mode is a feature that shuts off every wireless feature/radio on the iPhone in order not to interfere with airline communication equipment when flying (hence the name Airplane mode), WiFi can be turned on seperately since airlines have allowed WiFi during flights, allowing the iPhone to function as an iPod Touch, when Airplane mode is OFF, it means that all radios are ON, therefore draining the battery, if you turn Airplane mode ON, it will save battery life, of course with Airplane mode on, you will be unable to send or receive 3G data, text messages, or phone calls

Closing apps should also save battery life (one of the reasons why the Droid has bad battery life), double tap the Home button for a task list, hold down on an app until they jiggle, then tap the red dot for any apps you want to close, the more apps you close, the better battery life you should have

[carey]

Thank you everyone!!