Follow-up: extending iPhone battery life #2

Will wrote an article a little while back, about a stack of tricks to extend your battery life (you can find that here). That article generated a LOT of comments, and some really great comments too!

Now being an iPhone user (but certainly not a worshipper, that device has some issues!), I have noticed my battery getting shredded on a daily basis – so I’ve been analysing why my battery is getting killed.

Not withstanding the buggy causes of battery drain (like when your email client is collecting from a POP mailbox, and gets it to an infinite loop of trying to collect, but failing…), there are a load of radios you can turn off:

• GPS
• Bluetooth
• WiFi
• 3G

You could argue that some of these should be able to be left on – and I’d agree on the front of things like Bluetooth (since I have a Car Kit that automatically hooks in, IF the Bluetooth is on, on the iPhone!). However, things like 3G to me are not hyper-important unless I am browsing – besides, having it off has meant I can accurately evaluate whether being on solely 2G gives better runtime (it’s a well known fact that being connected to a 3G network drains the battery faster).

Interestingly, even just on 2G, I’ve been having issues with runtime – and so that lead me to the area of Applications – that is, those that hog or continually use a data connection. Because even if you’ve optimised (read: turned off) the devices hardware network connections, if you are continually using the only radio that is still turned on, things are going to go downhill fast on the battery front.

For Apps, I have a calendar syncing with an Exchange server – uh oh – how frequently is it doing this? Well, anecdotal reports suggest the frequency could even be every 15 mins! Aha, do we have our candidate here?

Picking up on the previous thread too, there was a great suggestion from one of our readers, Susan, which I’ll reproduce below:

Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) really should have made that side “quiet” switch… user programmable.

We could then go to a new “Settings->Side Switch” and decide for ourselves what we would like that switch do to:

• GPS on/off

• EDGE on/off

• 3G on/off

• BlueTooth on/off

• Ringer on/off

• Vibrate on/off

• Auto-lock on/off

• Wi-Fi on/off

Saving battery-life!

Mine would be configured to:
“Everything off”… but “Wi-FI on”.
(Many airlines are now allowing wi-fi… but you must
turn everything else off.)

… all by instantly, throwing 1 (configured) switch.

Hmm, I like that idea of Susan’s – Apple, you listening?

Without wanting to re-tread the same debate about battery life before, anyone else experienced odd battery behaviour, or found ingenious ways to squeeze extra runtime? I usually get about 1 days’ worth…..

Ben