Hi guys.

I got my iPhone 3GS this monday. And since I live in Sweden I had to jailbreak and unlock it. I used purplera1n and ultrasn0w. However, my battery life is lousy...

I have tried turning wi-fi, 3G and push off but still draining out way too fast.

I have searched the forum and have heard about similar issues but no solution.

Is there a solution to my problem?

How is your battery life?

Best Redard KiWo

__________________
OTB iPhone 1.1.2@1.1.3 // 8 GB Week 45

Jailbreaked/Activated: Yes
Unlocked: Using EasyiSim with Halebop [SWEDEN]
All works

Let your battery completely drain ...then only charge the Battery with the iPhone in completely OFF

...this way you will get longer life from your battery

also your right make sure that if you are not using something on the iphone turn it off...turn it on when you need it

ie:

Wifi OFF
Notifications OFF
Push OFF
Bluetooth OFF
Location services OFF
Fetch new Data OFF

etc...etc..

__________________
iPhone 1.0.2 OTB->Virginized-> 1.1.4 FW->
winpwn 2.0.0.4 FW 2.0.1 Quickpwn Win XP 2.0.1 to FW 2.2.1 - 2.2.1->redsnOw->3.0 FW
itunes 3.0.1 FW->redsnOw 8 to unlock


Can someone give me a thumbs up click on Reputation ...thanks

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What are your expectations?

I've had iPhones since the beginning and hacked them all. When I was using the 3G, I spent the vast majority of the time leaving it on GPRS-only (I use Vodafone in the UK, no EDGE) because of a combination of the fact that the 3G baseband occasionally got into a loop when transmitting 3G data and switching between cell towers (causing the phone to eat the battery rapido and get *very* hot), and that I thought that the main battery drain was 3G.

I'm now not so sure. I'm still trying to replicate the 3G cell-tower switch loop problem with the 3GS (the baseband is the same in the 3GS as the 3G, but there have been updates since the particular one I was running), but I'm coming to the opinion that it's searching for Wifi that is the big one.

Now MobileSubstrate is safe on the 3GS, I'm using SBSettings to quickly switch the various functions on and off (and checking using Terminal.app and the CLI tools).

My usual procedure is to pick the iPhone out of the charger / holder in the morning, go to work, don't charge it at work, come home, and only connect to charge when I go to bed or if I need to sync some tunes onto the phone (everything else syncs over the network). So I haven't tried longer than single-day tests, but it's very clear when one day has eaten more battery than another.

Firstly, my usual method was to leave 3G off, and use GPRS instead because of my mistaken belief that 3G ate too much power (and my train journey into London and back sometimes caused the baseband bug). My data use is light but regular - IMAP email on regular fetch from my OS X servers, plus a MobileMe account, and Bloomberg news and text-only news websites / forums. GPRS is slow but just about usable for this.

The 3GS ended the day with 60% battery life remaining - which was a lot less than the old 3G, which could do the same day with 80% remaining. I was hacking about a lot more with the 3GS though because it's so much faster it can do so much more...

So I tried putting 3G on for the day - and it ended up with 55% battery life remaining. 3G is *not* the problem.

I noticed that as the train travelled through London, even though I had 3G off, and 'light power' GPRS on, I'd constantly get Wifi popups asking about joining networks - this must really eat power so I tried switching Wifi off for a day, and using 3G instead (until I got home where there is a secure Wifi network). 80% at end of day.

The 3GS is also a LOT more aggressive at shutting down the Wifi when the screen blanks out - irritating if you're on an SSH session to the phone - so I've had to install Insomnia which works well.

I reckon the Wifi on the 3GS is either a bit more powerful or it checks for networks more frequently, because the change in battery consumption when I switched it off for the work day was very noticeable and more so than my 3G.

Note that I only do 'work' stuff and hacking with my iPhone - I don't play games much, and the 3GS is *so* much faster than the other models that the CPU must eat a lot more power. I'd guess any regular game playing would drain the battery much faster on a 3GS than an old 3G.

These are just anecdotal observations made over the last few days since I've got the thing up and running the way I want to (i.e. jailbroken and with certain tools) - it's not proper controlled data. But Wifi seems to make a lot more difference than the 3G radio. I'll try to do some more controlled tests.

Obviously check for runaway OS processes - though Terminal.app always seems to start upside down for me, it more or less works, and can tell me if something is taking up more CPU than expected. It's difficult to tell if the baseband processor is stuck in a loop and burning through battery though, other than unexpected heat and short battery life. Anyone know if there are any commands you can send through minicom to check how active the BB CPU is?

Well unfortunatly I've had wifi off since my last recharge wich was this morning (charged all night to 100%). Now at lunch im down to 55 % even though my iPhone was turned off for two hours and apart from sending a few textmessages it has been doing nothing at all. :/

__________________
OTB iPhone 1.1.2@1.1.3 // 8 GB Week 45

Jailbreaked/Activated: Yes
Unlocked: Using EasyiSim with Halebop [SWEDEN]
All works

you can try to install a system/prozess monitor to see what process take most cpu-time. my friend also had this problem since he use ultrasnow.

markus

That doesn't sound right.

I'm not using ultrasn0w as I had my hacking fun with mk1 and have used factory unlocked phones since then.

But the dev team write tight code. I'd definitely look at OS processes to see whether it's the OS eating the CPU (if the CPU is idling but the phone is getting hot and the battery is running down, then it's the baseband) or the radios.

I'd probably restore from scratch though to baseline for a day (is it usable with a PAYG SIM from the 'official' provider?) to see whether it's faulty hardware, and then if not I'd use purplera1n and then ultrasn0w (if you need unlock) in the cleanest environment possible. Running these hacking apps on a machine that's also got a load of other stuff running can be a bit undefined.

One specific thing that's caught me out numerous times is that the Dev Team's older apps (PwnageTool and QuickPwn) don't expect more than one device on the USB tree... trying to jailbreak a 3G iPhone when there's an old mk1 iPhone connected to a USB hub that's hanging off the same machine causes confusion. I'd expect that any iPod connected may do the same thing.

So try a *clean* reinstall and see if you still have the problems.

For that speed of battery drain, you'd have to be running the hardware 100% - which indicates a bug somewhere, an infinite loop of some sort. Even heavy radio and CPU use (a good example is restoring an entire phone setup over Wifi with Cydia and iTunes - Cydia downloads packages over Wifi, the debian packaging tools use the CPU to install stuff, and with a full reinstall it's a fairly intensive workout for the phone) won't take half my battery in a couple of hours.

If it's any help, I read about the rapid battery drain problem occurring in the 2G and 3G after Redsn0w/Ultrasn0w were used. If you check those forums, as well as the DevTeam blog, there are solutions posted for it.

I copied out what those solutions are in case I run into this problem, but now I can't find it. Otherwise, I'd give them to you. Sorry about that.

I had the exact same problem after jailbreak. I did a complete restore from scratch and it fixed the problem. I went from having everything off 3g, location, wifi and push and having 19% after 12 hours since recharge. To now having absolutely everything on and having 24% left after the entire day of heavier use, browsing texting phone. It's a huge difference. Don't know what caused it, but I'm nervous about jailbreaking now. Anyways good luck.

In the 3GS UltraSn0w forum is a new thread on how to solve the battery drain problem, with some ideas on what's causing it too. I haven't tried it yet, but it looks like the solutions I found a while back in 2G/3G threads and the DevTeam blog.

One of the things I have noticed and think could be causing a kind of placebo effect is having the battery percentage meter on, the orignal battery icon is very small an only makes incremental changes throughout the day where the percentage meter obviously updates constantly thus creating an effect the batter is running down faster.

I have found that the percentage meter lowers and predicts usage based on how your using the phone so if for example you have been listening to music and browsing the net for news etc, it will often show a lower percentage because it's based on predicted usage, I have noticed my percentage increase if I have used the phone heavy for a little while then placed in my pocket for a little while also.

I remember a couple of years ago similar debates between nokia annd sonyericsson handsets and which were better for battery life one thing that became very apparent is that nokia would show high battery figures for longer and the rapidly drain towards the end of the day where sonyericsson were more progressive and slowly updated throughout the day. My point with this would be how many people are allowing their phones to drop into 10% for example as mines seems to drop initially a lot but hangs on a lot longer than expected when I get below 20%.