Coming in 2008: iPhone battery rot?

Nope. Mine is doing great. Bought it the first day it came out and have been using it like nuts.

I love my Nokia N82! Using it to take pictures, movies and live blog is great, but the best part is I can carry 3 or so batteries in my pocket and not have to worry about being in a situation where I’m without connectivity.

No problems here. I’ve noticed that with the 1.1.2 firmware, the wifi finder is a bit active and tends to run things down a bit quickly. Aside from that, seems fine – got it launch day.

– we sure have a lot of problems with Apple stuff –
Yep, between the two of you, you’ve had more trouble than any 100 Mac/Apple owners I’ve ever known. You don’t live in the same area so it’s probably not the water but it has to be something.

No problems here. With average use (about 1 hour a day email/web/phone & 30 minutes or more music playing), I only plug in my iPhone every two days or so and it still has nearly 1/2 charge.

…and it’s reasons like this why I don’t have a iPhone and have not considered another Mac. In fact, I just bought a (heavily discounted thanks to Black Friday specials) PC based laptop.

-A

Yes. The same issue here, but even less. I am done with it, sadly. Given that I am in the presence of other sufferers, I feel compelled to gripe that of the last 3 Apple purchases I made – all three failed. Two laptops and now this. Failed in the sense of expectations.

As a long time developer, primarily on the Win platform (primarily web based apps), I wanted to make the move to Apple. I wanted to do so in order to not only enjoy a different, sexy OS, but also to more easily test, and frankly to enjoy a different feel. While I had used Apples, I had not purchased one since pre-Win 95.

But as stated in the Godfather – every time I try to get out, they pull me back in. The first laptop (this past summer) had heating issues. I then got the new Santa Rosa MacBook Pro and not only did it have heat issues, but the vid card was bad.

It should not be so hard to leave the non-Apple systems. It is not even about dumping Windows, since Bootcamp gets rid of that. Sigh. Three strikes and you are out perhaps, but damnit, I find myself wanting to try again because it seems as though I am missing out (and practically speaking – I want to be exposed to the platform and testing).

But I am not going to keep burning myself literally and otherwise, because as they say, when you continuously repeat the same act over and over again as though the results are going to be different and they are not…

Dave Winer posts about problems with Apple. Scoble posts about problems with Apple. Must be a few weeks since the last lot of “Apple, oh Apple, woe is me. Thee has let me down for the last time” posts.

Say it with me: The singular form of data is not anecdote.

That was a real link-baiting headline, Robert. I expected better of you

Yep, I’m having the same problem too. At the moment my phone seems to last a day with quite low usage. I suppose I’ll have to take mine into Apple as well.

If only they had user-replaceable batteries.

Call Apple. Since the iPhone is less then a year old, I am sure it is eligible for a free battery replacement.

If only they had user-replaceable batteries — and then you’d be bitching about how thick the iPhone is.

Scoble, you and I must represent the ying and yang of Apple ownership. In 10 years: 4 notebooks and 2 desktops, 4 iPods, 2 airport base stations, and one iPhone I have used Apple’s warranty zero times. I have experienced no dead pixels, no death on delivery, no failed keyboards. Nothing – every piece of equipment is either still functioning in my possession or working when I sold it. (And in that litany of ownership, those aren’t all mine, they are the family’s, I’m not replacing iPods and computers every year – personally, it is more like every 30 – 36 months.)

To all the suckers who clicked, to all the Apple haters here to get their daily dose, to all the commenting Microsoft BlackPR A holes, and to Robert (who is now a little richer), have a merry Christmas and happy new year-from Zato.

brand new iPhone is in standby mode (not sim unlocked for my network yet) and hsa WiFi off, over night loses half its charge. SUCK MY APPLES!

My iphone battery is working fine. Haven’t missed a call yet. Can’t say that about my previous phone.

Hey on another note- what ever happened to that Surface crap that MS was going to launch supposedly this year??? That should have been voted the worst vapor-ware of 2007!

1 iPhone, 2 MBP’s, 3 iMac’s, and a Mac Pro along with a display over the last two years between home and office purchases. No problems to date. My 3rd gen iPod kept having hard drive problems but Apple kept replacing. I don’t keep the wifi on for the iPhone very much as our office wifi is a pain to attach to. I do keep the Bluetooth on all the time. Battery life is very good for me.

I think your problem is user error

My iPhone’s battery is doing fine — I use it very heavily, but it is yet to run out on me before the overnight charge.

I have a feeling that a lot of the people having battery problems have jailbroken phones running badly designed apps. Certainly true in the case of one of my colleagues. (Like #15′s post — no doubt his iPhone keeps trying to connect to a GSM/Edge network all night long thus his battery runs down.) It’s amazing how people don’t put two and two together.

OK this could indeed be a problem but let me add that so is the battery in the last two LG phones I’ve owned in the past couple of years. Oh yes, there’s also the failure of my Vaio Laptop battery that gives me about 25 min instead of 4 hours. If it is a problem Apple should have done what the other gadget manufacturers do – make sure no one notices until the warranty is up in a year.

I know 2 people with iPhones, one doesn’t have a problem with it, only because she uses it only for phone calls. As for my mum, her battery doesn’t last beyond a 16-hour day, but she takes a lot of pictures.

This may not be what’s causing Patrick’s problems, but one issue that’s arisen with a couple of iPhones in my circle of friends has had to do with wifi. Our iPhones burned through the battery every day if we left wifi turned on, especially in Mountain View where there is a relatively week and constant Google municipal wifi signal. Turning wifi off eliminated the problem entirely.

Just a felt sense, but it seems that our phones used up a lot of energy negotiating connections with weak/transient wifi signals. When used in the presence of a strong wifi connection, wifi doesn’t affect battery life noticeably.

Bought my iPhone release day, use it every day to listen to podcasts on the bus on the way to work and on the way back (hour each way). Use it to surf ad email all that time. Use it as my phone, plug it in each night. I am not seeing any reduction in battery life I have noticed if I accidentally have a javascript heavy page that does quirky stuff and I leave it open and return to the main menu (not quitting the browser by holding down the home button nor closing the page), the battery will run down quicker.

Same here. Battery is more than half empty in the morning, fully charged when going to bed. But I suspect it could have something to do with 3rd party apps, such as the Last.fm client Mobile Scrobbler that’s running in the background. And leaving SSH on seems to be eating away the battery life as well. So, I’m trying to single out the issue that’s really causing the battery drain.

No problems here in the Uk – mine seems fine, but battery life is one of the things I have listed as a needed improvement.

Third party apps are obviously going to affect it – not because of any lack of skill on the part of the developer because they’re working new technology which is as yet undocumented. I noticed my battery was draining about 30% overnight so I turned off the email checking automatically every 15 minutes. Funnily enough it stopped me being woken by the device at 2 am because someone wanted to sell me cheap whatevers! Bonus!

The lack of “sleep” has to be major too. iPhone is always awake.

Robert,

Do you know if Patrick has tried re-calibrating his iPhone’s battery (i.e. full charge followed by a full discharge)? I think it will help.