Hunting Cows

I have a love/hate affair with my iFail iPhone 3G

I knew what I was getting into when I bought the iPhone and yet I did it anyway. I’ve never known anyone who didn’t:

(a) have to replace the phone at least once a year or
(b) have an issue with battery life.

While I can’t do much about the first category, exhaustive tinkering has allowed me to come up with some pretty useful battery-saving tips for this device.

[BlackBerry users, I know you don't have the same interface but I'm pretty sure you can use a few of these tips as well, especially the call-forwarding stuff on the end]

On with the tips!

3G Antenna

• Savings: Moderate
• Drawbacks: Much slower internet, requires several clicks to access the setting
• Settings: on/off
• Additional Considerations: EDGE is far more reliable for making phone calls, especially if you are in a spotty 3G area. By turning off 3G and relying on EDGE, you may get a fairly constant 4-5 bars while 3G will have only 1-2. In addition, polling for a lost signal is battery-intensive. Again, in a spotty 3G area your phone may spend a LOT of time looking for new towers, even if you have a little bit of signal. Finally, 3G isn’t particularly useful unless you are in a data session. It’s totally irrelevant to a voice call.

Location Services (GPS Antenna)

• Savings: Large (doubles my standby time)
• Drawbacks: iPhone does not know where you are, many 3rd party applications nag
• Additional Considerations: Easy feature to access (2-clicks) but easy to forget to turn off again. The GPS antenna is not supposed to be active unless an application is using it, however, many apps seem to access it anyway – without the explicit consent or knowledge of the user. Whatever the explanation, many people experience far better battery life with this feature turned off.

iPhone Location Services Setting

Bluetooth Antenna

• Savings: Light to Moderate
• Drawbacks: Only if you have a bluetooth device
• Settings: on/off
• Additional Considerations: It’s a near-field device, range is pretty limited. Bluetooth doesn’t draw a whole lot of power when it’s not actually being used (just listening for connections). If you are actually using a BT device though, send/receive mode can start to drain the battery a bit more. That’s more a trade-off for comfort vs battery life. Just be near a charger for long conversations.

Wi-Fi Antenna

• Savings: Light to Moderate
• Drawbacks: Wi-Fi, when available, is much faster than 3G or Edge
• Settings: on/off
• Additional Considerations: Just turn it off when you are not at a wi-fi location. Every internet enabled app will nag you for a wi-fi connection otherwise. (There is a setting for this too – turn off “Ask to Join Networks”) — [edit 3/19/09]

Push Mail/Calendar/Contacts

• Savings: Variable depending on how many email addresses are checked.
• Drawbacks: Push is real time, Fetch checks in intervals.
• Settings: Push on/off, frequency of checking (fetch), frequency per email account.
• More Info: Lifehacker.com wrote up a fantastic article on what Push mail is, why it is useful, and the various settings involved.

“After my phone died in the ER, I tracked the [issue] to the push drain. It was a high volume email day and it killed the battery” — Tim S.

Reduce your screen brightness

• Savings: Light to Moderate
• Drawbacks: Your iPhone is harder to read
• Settings: Brightness Slider / Auto
• Additional Considerations: Battery savings will depend in large part on how much time your screen is on (what is the time out on your backlight, for example?) and just how bright you like it to shine. This may vary greatly from user to user.

Turn off EQ

• Savings: Depends on use of the iPod feature in your iPhone
• Drawbacks: Your music has less boom
• Settings: on/off
• Additional Considerations: iPod battery tip sites have always said to turn off EQ as a trade for longer battery life so it doesn’t hurt to re-print the advice here. If you don’t have your iPod on your ears very often though, it’s probably not worth the downgrade in sound quality.

Lock your iPhone

• Savings: Light to moderate depending on your timeout
• Drawbacks: If your phone is code-locked, it may take a moment to turn back on
• Settings: Switch at top right on your phone
• Additional Considerations: The timeout on my phone is set to 5minutes, which means the phone is going full-strength with all activated features and only a slightly dimmed screen that whole time. If I lock my phone, it is immediately put into sleep mode, which saves power. If the phone is clicked to check the time (or by mistake), it goes back to sleep within 10 seconds.
• Bonus: No pocket dials!

Use Airplane Mode

• Savings: Massive
• Drawbacks: Your phone is now a PDA, it doesn’t make calls or surf the net
• Settings: on/off
• Additional Considerations: As established in the section on the 3G antenna, searching for a signal is a battery-intensive process. If you know that you have no signal 90% of the time, put the phone in airplane mode until you need it. I do this up in Sonoma all the time where reception is notoriously awful, especially indoors.Airplane mode is a whole lot less painful if you follow the next suggestion…

Learn to use call Forwarding as often as possible

• Savings: Large to Massive
• Drawbacks: Your phone now rings on a different line where your contact list may not exist
• Settings: on/off + Where to forward calls
• Additional Considerations: I have found call forwarding to be a life saver in two critical situations. The call forwarding settings are found in the phone section of your settings list (green icon).

iPhone Call Forwarding Screenshot

1. The first is at home, where I have absolutely no cell phone reception except by the window. The minute I walk into my apartment, I forward my calls (make sure you have reception when you access the setting). My phone may float in and out of range but it just picks up text & email messages as it gets a signal. On the other hand, all voice calls go directly to my VoIP phone – so I never miss or drop a call.
2. The second is when it’s late at night, I haven’t charged my phone in 16 hours, I know for a FACT it’s going to die, and I have no charger. At this point I will simply forward my calls to a buddy’s phone (make sure it is someone you trust) and turn off my own handset completely. When I leave, I will have just enough battery life remaining to remove call forwarding and allow calls to go to voicemail until such time as I have a charge.

———
Thanks to the following blogs for helping me flesh out my ideas:
http://www.43folders.com/2008/07/23/apples-iphone-battery-advice
http://www.technobuzz.net/iphone-3g-battery-saving-tips/