With the new GPS receiver and 3G radio sucking the life out of your iPhone 3G’s battery like there’s no tomorrow, you’ll likely have noticed shorter battery life compared with the first-generation iPhone. If the iPhone 3G is your first foray in to the world of Apple phoning, then just accept that whatever battery life you manage to get is normal.
But, just because you have faster data speeds (enabling faster web-surfing) and real-deal GPS hardware tucked inside that glossy-backed iPhone 3G of yours, doesn’t mean you have to live with shortened battery uptime. There are a few things you can do to try and increase the time between battery charges.
You can disable your 3G data radio. That means you get slower web-surfing and data-speeds. You’ll be limited to EDGE data access. But, that doesn’t necessarily mean your web-surfing times will suffer all that much. iPhone 2.0 OS boasts improved Webkit performance that helps load websites faster than with previous versions of the iPhone Mac OS. You’ll be surfing at slower speeds than if you had the 3G radio enabled, but you’ll still be surfing at faster speeds than the original iPhone running iPhone 1.1.4 OS.
- Navigate to Settings>General>Network>Enable 3G and toggle “OFF’
You can try to force-quit iPhone applications that may be running in the background and sucking precious electrons from your battery pack. Once started, most iPhone applications will continue to persist in an inactive state in the background. They wait for you to return to them, starting up lickity-quick in the same state that you left it in. Note: I should clarify that only Apple’s own default iPhone applications (the applications that came out-of-the-box with your iPhone) run in the background. And, with the iPhone 3G jailbreak now live, jailbreak applications can run in the background as well. Use this method for official iPhone applications and jailbreak applications.
- Open up suspect applications (anything that you don’t want persisting in the background) and hold down the “Home” (the only button on the iPhone’s face) until the application quits. It takes a while, be patient.
Try resetting the iPhone. As with any computer, a quick system restart can solve most problems faster and easier than tracking down the specific issue.
- Hold down the Power/Sleep button located along the top-edge of the iPhone until you see the “Slide to Power OFF” prompt.
- Flick the slider to the right and let the iPhone shutdown.
- Press the Power button to turn on the iPhone
Turn off your iPhone 3G or iPhone’s WiFi radio. If you have the iPhone 3G, you’re not hurting for super-fast data speeds anyway. If you have an iPhone with iPhone 2.0 OS, you’ll notice faster web-surfing on EDGE as well. WiFi can suck battery life like nothing else. Try disabling this to get more uptime from your iPhone batter.
- Navigate to Settings>WiFi and toggle to “OFF”
Change your fetch data settings. Your iPhone can automatically check various email accounts at preset intervals. Depending on the interval and how many emails accounts you have setup on your iPhone, checking mail can drain your battery faster than you’d like. Try turning off automatic email fetching (if email isn’t that important to you) or increasing the fetch-interval.
- Navigate to Settings>Fetch New Data and set your interval to “30 Minutes,” “1 Hour,” Or Manual
- Setting the “Fetch New Data” option to “Manual” will require you to update your iPhone Email client in order to receive new emails.
Turn off location-services. As cool as it is to see yourself located on Google Maps and have photos geo-tagged with your location, it can be a tax on your battery to constantly update your iPhone’s position. Try turning off the Location Services option.
- Navigate to Settings>General and toggle “Location Services” to “OFF”
Lastly, you can try to reset your network settings. This can also resolve any signal strength issues, but will also wipe any stored WiFi passwords and settings. Use this as a last resort – not because its dangerous, but because it can be a hassle to re-enter all your WiFi passwords.
- Navigate to Settings>General>Reset and hit “Reset Network Settings”
Good luck, and don’t forget to leave a comment down below!
Update
The list has been updated.