iPhone Battery Trouble Solved: It Was Software

Written by Pats Papers | Monday, 8 March 2010 12:13 PM

The inquiries and comments started coming shortly after I put up my post about spotting Alan Alda at the Apple store. People wanted to know more about the real reason I was there: to ask for a solution to my growing low-battery problem with my iPhone 3GS.

Remarkably, we found the solution and it didn’t involve buying or replacing anything. My battery life is DOUBLE what it was on Friday.

Here’s the short version if you want to skip the details: if you don’t regularly sync your iPhone to iTunes, do it today.

First, a little bit about my iPhone trouble. Somewhere around two months ago my iPhone battery life went from reasonable to impossible. I’ve been charging three times a day and out of frustration spent $80 on a Mophie battery case that turns the phone into a brick but does give you power to spare.

I prowled online and found plenty of absurb tips such as:

- don’t use push e-mail
- don’t use wifi
- don’t use 3G internet
- don’t use Bluetooth

I don’t doubt that shutting all of those things off extends battery life—but why have a fancy phone if you have to turn off all of the fancy features?

When I bought the battery case, the salesperson at the Apple store recommended I book a “Genius Bar” appointment to have them run a diagnostic test on the battery. So that’s what I was doing at the Apple store on Friday night.

The appointment started a good half hour after my scheduled time, but I was rewarded for my patience with a very helpful genius who began with a review of two weeks of my battery charge history. The diagnostic computer insisted it was normal. I assured him it wasn’t. After a few more minutes of discussion I think he was satisfied that charging three times a day wasn’t “normal.”

We had the discussion about things like push e-mail and bluetooth. He shut off the “shake to shuffle” feature on the music player. (I didn’t know that feature existed so that was an easy decision.)

And then he asked about the phone’s software version and whether I’d upgraded recently. I rolled my eyes. It seemed like he was just looking for a way to pass the buck to me.

But, the reality is that my iPhone hasn’t been connected to my PC in weeks. I sync my calendar and contact data through MobileMe. My e-mail is replicated elsewhere. I have little need to connect the phone to iTunes. As I sat at the genius bar it was pointed out to me that I didn’t have the newest version of the iPhone software.

I was dismissive of the idea that a new software version would give me anything more than a few extra minutes of battery time, but out of my desire to play along we came up with this action plan:

1) I would go home and connect to iTunes. This would accomplish two things: a) my phone would automatically load the latest iPhone software and b) my phone would be backed up so I could return to the Apple store for a replacement if necessary.
2) If the battery still sucked I would return to the Apple store to request a warranty replacement of the phone or battery.

I still don’t really believe it. But whatever happened to the phone when it was connected to iTunes was remarkable. The transformation of my battery is amazing. It was almost 9 hours ago that I took it off the charger and it’s still got 81% of the battery left.

Last week I’d have already been getting my low battery warnings by this time in my day.

I’ve ditched my giant Mophie case and am back to the slim case I bought after I dropped (and destroyed) by first iPhone.

I don’t know what Version 3.1.3’s particular power management characteristics are. All I know is that if your iPhone doesn’t have that software version it should. Maybe Apple needs to do a better job of letting people know how important this is, because I’ve doubled my battery life.