iPhone battery life + some questions

[Dracoro]

Am considering a SE C905 and have previously written off the iPhone due to poor battery life.

However, am researching how bad it actually is and how good/bad it would be with my usage which would be as follows.

Internet - prob not a lot as I work from home most the time but sometimes when out and about I'd like to check e-mails and a little surfing for 20 minutes here and there (e.g. checking news or looking at a map etc.). I'd possibly use it at home from time to time (using the wi-fi I guess for better speed) but again, not a great deal. Many days I wouldn't use it at all, so prob happy to turn all the 3G/Wifi off whilst not browsing (does the iPhone auto-turn-off 3g/wifi when not browsing? or can I make it do this)

Music + apps - I have a normal 60GB iPod so prob would like to use iPhone for bit of music for the odd train journey or when away. May play the odd game here or there but not much.

Phone calls - typically 20/30 minutes per day, sometimes no minutes, sometimes 1 hr.

Texting - quite a few throughout the week, 10/20 a day possibly. Can I send a text to multiple recipients.

As per my other thread re SE c905, and this is ESSENTIAL, can I copy/paste contact numbers into a text?

So, from the above, how long between charges would I typically expect? Many days I wouldn't use the internet bit at all.

Can you get car chargers? and spare charger for when away on holiday or weekends away etc. What does the phone come with as standard? A dock of some sort?

Phew, a lot of questions, hope someone can advise

[silver.fox.2008]

I don't know if you already do so, but to prolong the battery on the iPhone switch off your wireless and 3G unless browsing the web. The constant 'ON' state drains the battery a lot faster.

[Bee_Jay]

It comes with a USB cable and a plug that has a USB socket in it.

I use a mophie for mine if I am going on extended trips (2-3 days) where I know I wont have a charger. I use mine with 3G on all the time, along with wi-fi and bluetooth and without the Mophie I get about 12-16 hours out of it at best, with it I can guarantee 2 days, if not 3. also the Mophie charges off mini-USB, meaning you can charge the iPhone with mini-USB.

[Zod]

silver.fox.2008 said:

I don't know if you already do so, but to prolong the battery on the iPhone switch off your wireless and 3G unless browsing the web

which rather removes the point of the thing.

[Dracoro]

What's a mophie?

Is the charger the same as the iPod? I have spares and an iPod car charger so would these work ok?

[Bee_Jay]

Dracoro said:

What's a mophie?

Is the charger the same as the iPod? I have spares and an iPod car charger so would these work ok?

Mophie is a case with a battery in it that charges/powers the iphone (i.e. bigger battery) - www.mophie.com

The charger is the same as the iPod, your car charger SHOULD work (some accessories don't, but all my iPod chargers do work with it)

[jameshaworth]

Dracoro said:

Am considering a SE C905 and have previously written off the iPhone due to poor battery life.

However, am researching how bad it actually is and how good/bad it would be with my usage which would be as follows.

Internet - prob not a lot as I work from home most the time but sometimes when out and about I'd like to check e-mails and a little surfing for 20 minutes here and there (e.g. checking news or looking at a map etc.). I'd possibly use it at home from time to time (using the wi-fi I guess for better speed) but again, not a great deal. Many days I wouldn't use it at all, so prob happy to turn all the 3G/Wifi off whilst not browsing (does the iPhone auto-turn-off 3g/wifi when not browsing? or can I make it do this)

Music + apps - I have a normal 60GB iPod so prob would like to use iPhone for bit of music for the odd train journey or when away. May play the odd game here or there but not much.

Phone calls - typically 20/30 minutes per day, sometimes no minutes, sometimes 1 hr.

Texting - quite a few throughout the week, 10/20 a day possibly. Can I send a text to multiple recipients.

As per my other thread re SE c905, and this is ESSENTIAL, can I copy/paste contact numbers into a text?

So, from the above, how long between charges would I typically expect? Many days I wouldn't use the internet bit at all.

Can you get car chargers? and spare charger for when away on holiday or weekends away etc. What does the phone come with as standard? A dock of some sort?

Phew, a lot of questions, hope someone can advise

I have an iphone 3G and have had it for a few months now. The battery is relatively poor - it needs charging every night (if not the next day the battery will normally just die without notice) and the battery indicator is inaccurate (many times while showing nearly full the battery just dies)!!! However, I do use it quite heavily - maybe a 1-2 hours per day talking and a 10+ texts/emails. Based on your useage if you charge it every night or every other night then I think you won't have any problems with the battery life.

Internet browsing unsurprisingly puts a large drain on the battery life.

Yes you can get car chargers c. £15 I think - an absolute must! And you can also buy spare chargers - I have bought 1 for the office!! The phone comes with 1 mains charger, but no dock as you may have seen in the Apple stores (the docking stations are available at extra cost).

You can send texts to multiple numbers but the iPhone has no facility of copying and pasting (applies to both emails and texts) which is a real pain!!

Overall I think its a pretty good phone, its main benefits being the internet browsing and email facilities - hope this helps!!

[Dracoro]

The inability to copy/paste a contact number into a text is a deal-breaker for me. Simply, if the phone can't do it, I'm looking elsewhere. Pretty crap if it can't do this simple task, it's something I do a lot.

[Bee_Jay]

This absence of copy and paste is annoying, as is the inability to forward text messages.

I use mine against our corporate Exchange email and no copy and paste pisses me off at times...

[Leithen]

Get a dock and drop it into it when you go to bed - sorted. Car charging and charging on the hop via mophie etc for heavy users is also a solution.

Re cut'n'paste - we are all waiting for it and no doubt it will turn up in a software update. Not a deal breaker for me, but understand that it might be for others.

[Dracoro]

Anyone know if it's going to be in an update soon (in the next 2/3 months)?

[Mr E]

Dracoro said:

Anyone know if it's going to be in an update soon (in the next 2/3 months)?

Probably, but no idea when or what's in it.

If you need copy/paste, you don't want an iPhone.

[Bravia]

With 3g etc all on, I can get 2 days usage.

WIth it off, 3- 4 days

[Bee_Jay]

Leithen said:

Get a dock and drop it into it when you go to bed - sorted.

Indeed, it does amaze me the number of people that can't cope with charging phones every night. Regularly have people walk into my office with a small ordinary Nokia asking if I have a charger (2 today alone) - which means they obviously haven't charged it for at least 3 days. I always charge my phones every night, and when in the car and carry a charger in my bag. I did that when I had phones with a 10 day battery and I do it with my iPhone. Years of travel has taught me to never pass up the chance to charge (includes laptops and other devices too...)


I remember having a phone in the early 90s that didn't last 3 hours on one battery and it was HUGE...

[Bravia]

Bee_Jay said:

Leithen said:

Get a dock and drop it into it when you go to bed - sorted.

Indeed, it does amaze me the number of people that can't cope with charging phones every night. Regularly have people walk into my office with a small ordinary Nokia asking if I have a charger (2 today alone) - which means they obviously haven't charged it for at least 3 days. I always charge my phones every night, and when in the car and carry a charger in my bag. I did that when I had phones with a 10 day battery and I do it with my iPhone. Years of travel has taught me to never pass up the chance to charge (includes laptops and other devices too...)


I remember having a phone in the early 90s that didn't last 3 hours on one battery and it was HUGE...

Ummmmm.....all of that kinda ruins the batteries life..... espicially doing this bit from brand new.

"Indeed, it does amaze me the number of people that can't cope with charging phones every night."

[PTOTY]

I believe that little and often is the best way to treat the charging of these new Lithium Polymer batteries....gone are the old days of battery memory and waiting until dead before a full charge.

[Leithen]

PTOTY said:

I believe that little and often is the best way to treat the charging of these new Lithium Polymer batteries....gone are the old days of battery memory and waiting until dead before a full charge.

Correct, they do not suffer the same memory effect that NiCad and NiMH did. Apple recommend a full discharge once a month. Even after the advertised 300-400 full discharge cycles the iPhone is rated to retain 80% of it's original capacity if maintained properly.

Battery life was perhaps the biggest area of FUD perpetrated at its launch - almost 18 months on and the battery life of my first gen one has actually improved thanks to the latest software updates.

[SJobson]

On my 1st gen iPhone I find I virtually never need to recharge it properly if I plug it into my car for the 30mins each way to and from work.

However, playing games seems to kill the battery. It seems to last much, much longer if recharged using the mains adapter rather than USB plugged into a computer, or via the car.

[Bee_Jay]

Bravia said:

Bee_Jay said:

Leithen said:

Get a dock and drop it into it when you go to bed - sorted.

Indeed, it does amaze me the number of people that can't cope with charging phones every night. Regularly have people walk into my office with a small ordinary Nokia asking if I have a charger (2 today alone) - which means they obviously haven't charged it for at least 3 days. I always charge my phones every night, and when in the car and carry a charger in my bag. I did that when I had phones with a 10 day battery and I do it with my iPhone. Years of travel has taught me to never pass up the chance to charge (includes laptops and other devices too...)


I remember having a phone in the early 90s that didn't last 3 hours on one battery and it was HUGE...

Ummmmm.....all of that kinda ruins the batteries life..... espicially doing this bit from brand new.

"Indeed, it does amaze me the number of people that can't cope with charging phones every night."

Not with li-Ion and Li-Polymer, as others have said, continual topping up is good. Full discharge before recharge is an old Ni-Cad thing...

[cyberface]

Bravia said:

Bee_Jay said:

Leithen said:

Get a dock and drop it into it when you go to bed - sorted.

Indeed, it does amaze me the number of people that can't cope with charging phones every night. Regularly have people walk into my office with a small ordinary Nokia asking if I have a charger (2 today alone) - which means they obviously haven't charged it for at least 3 days. I always charge my phones every night, and when in the car and carry a charger in my bag. I did that when I had phones with a 10 day battery and I do it with my iPhone. Years of travel has taught me to never pass up the chance to charge (includes laptops and other devices too...)


I remember having a phone in the early 90s that didn't last 3 hours on one battery and it was HUGE...

Ummmmm.....all of that kinda ruins the batteries life..... espicially doing this bit from brand new.

"Indeed, it does amaze me the number of people that can't cope with charging phones every night."

Bzzzzt. Lithium ion and lithium polymer batteries all operate at their maximum life if kept topped up. The best way to treat a lithium-chemistry battery is to first charge till full, then run to empty (so the charge electronics can calibrate themselves), and then on keep the thing topped up above 50% charge at all times.

The iPhone (both the old and new, less so for the new) is pretty good on batteries considering the size and brightness of the screen, the CPU power and the fact that it's usually used as a music player as well. Don't underestimate the power drain from that big shiny screen! Even so, compared with my smartphone of choice (Palm Treos, from the early ones to the 680) the iPhone battery life is a revelation... with push email running, the Treo 680 would last less than one business day, requiring a charger *wherever* I went - now that was pretty useless.

However due to the fact that the iPhone is running fairly complex software (on a version of OS X), the biggest 'WTF' I've encountered are the occasional days when the battery drains at 10x the usual rate. Normal end users can't really see what's going on (it's usually one of the unix daemons getting in a loop and keeping the phone awake and CPU running - the unit ends up getting rather hot as well) so there is the expectation that the 3G battery life is unpredictable and poor. It's not really, it's just that the baseband is full of bugs Switching from cell to cell with 3G on can often cause problems.

Since I rarely use the 3G data, I'm happy switching it on when required (e.g. if I want to browse something data-heavy where GPRS would be too slow) - I don't need 3G bandwidth in the background, I'm not running torrents off my phone. As a result I leave it in GPRS mode and the battery icon is still full when I put it back in the charger at night. I have no doubt that it would last 3-4 days, if not more, on a full charge, using only GPRS (but with push email and basic calls / email / SMS / lightweight web / Bloomberg / etc.)...

The iPhone is certainly no worse than any other smartphone out there on the market for battery life, in fact it's better than most of them (and has to be, because the battery isn't easily replaceable and you can't carry spares around with you). But it's a bloody powerful little computer... and if you want to see the battery really huff and puff then try playing X-Plane for half an hour or so...

However there are certain 'missing functionality' features that can be deal-breakers for some. If you really need copy/paste and SMS forwarding, then don't buy an iPhone for the 'shinaay' factor and then go bhing about it afterwards... (incidentally there are third party utilities to compensate for the lack of these functions).