Tame the iPhone 3G Energy Hog - Improve Battery Life
July 25, 2008 by Derek Walter
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my YouTube videos can suck your battery dry. So learning to manage your iPhone’s battery life is critical if you are going to enjoy your iPhone experience. This way your phone won’t die in the middle of a conversation with someone you have been waiting to have for a month. And of course you can’t remove the battery to swap it out, so you might as well love the one you have and treat it well.
If you find yourself getting a screen like this too often, it’s time to consider some changes:
It's time to change your battery habits if you get this message often.
Apple has its own list of recommendations for how to increase battery life. Here I will look at some of the optimal ways to conserve your battery without turning your iPhone into just a pretty thing to make calls with.
Push back your email
One simple fix is email. Unless you are a power business user, you may not need your email pushed directly to your device (plus this only worked if you have MobileMe, use Microsoft Exchange or Yahoo! Mail) or fetched that often through IMAP.
Push email will drain your battery dry. So unless you need instant email access, this probably ought to be first to go. Then there’s that little doggie that fetches your email through IMAP. You can set it to fetch at 15, 30, 45, minute intervals or every hour. Again, the more often, the more the drain on your battery. Take into consideration how often you want your iPhone to be checking email and how that balances with your battery needs.
This screen lets you configure how often you want your iPhone getting your e-mail.
BatteryTube
Sure, watching all those YouTube clips is a great way to kill a few hours. But you’re also killing your iPhone’s battery. Recently I put it to the test, and you can get about a solid three hours of YouTube watching in before the phone calls it a day. So if you are going to be away from a power source for a while, may want to lay off searching for the latest celebrity videos.
Charge it up
Equip yourself with the right tools to charge your iPhone in a pinch. There are several aftermarket car chargers out there that make re-powering your iPhone super convenient if you are going to spend any amount of time during your day in the car and want to give your iPhone a quick boost. Plus, if you are at work, in a class, or somewhere near a power outlet, it couldn’t hurt to charge the thing for even just 20 minutes to stave off any issues. But keep in mind there is a good chance the charger you may have been using with your iPod or first-gen iPhone may not work with the 3G model. And be careful when you purchase a new one that it doesn’t turn out to be a dud for your iPhone 3G.
Also, Apple recommends that you go through at least one charge cycle per month; this means you should fully charge your battery then let it completely run out. Over the long haul this will help your battery keep its charge for longer periods of time.
Do you really need 3G?
Well, probably yes. It’s likely this is the reason you upgraded to the current model. But if you don’t get 3G coverage in your area, or it’s fairly spotty, it may be worth it just to turn 3G off. EDGE isn’t fantastic, but the extra time you have to wait for web pages to load will be paid off by a longer and healthier battery.
Overall, managing your battery is a matter of finding what features are must-haves, which ones you can live without, and how that balances with your battery needs. Being a true iPhone Nut means digging into all the features of your phone so that you know it in and out. This will make for a happy battery, and an even happier owner.
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