I’ve had my iPhone since launch and days one and two were very worrisome for me in terms of battery performance. The first day I only made it to around 5pm before my charge was gone (starting at 8am). The second day I made it to around 10pm.

But now — a few charges later — my battery life just keeps improving. Today I went a full 18 hours with moderate to heavy use of all features. I think the key is both how you have your phone configured during the day, as well as the quality of the charging process. Here’s what I suggest:

1. Reduce your brightness as much as you can tolerate. I personally find that about 30-40% of max is plenty for me, and that difference in output is significant.
2. Consider keeping WiFi disabled by default. You can always enable it when you find a hotspot and want to use it.
3. Use a bluetooth headset that turns off when not in use. The folding Motorola brands as well as the new Apple iphone headset have this ability.
4. Try and run your device until it completely dies before charging, and use the AC adapter rather than a computer to charge up.
5. The iPhone battery charges faster when the radios are off. Rather than disable them manually, consider using the Airplane Mode feature, which will disable all three radios in one motion. If you need to receive calls while charging, just disable WiFi and Bluetooth.
6. If you haven’t done a full drain-to-maximum charge cycle yet, power down the phone and reset the usage statistics before you put it on the AC adapter. This seems to be helping zero out stats and allow the OS to display the fully charged icon.

These tips are definitely working for me, as I’ve gone from roughly 9 hours of combined use to over 18. Time will tell whether or not I’ve reached my maximum, but my suspicion is that I have not.

Thanks dmiessler.com

Labels: iPhone