Hi, I been using my 3gs 32bg for about a month and its been working perfectly until this past week. I usually charge my battery every other day at around 10pm when it hits 20% (aggressive texter and mild wifi usage). Now i'm starting to have the battery problems where it drains faster than usual (doesn't even last a day or 3 hours). Take in to consideration that I have not changed any settings since then( no 3g, no push, very low brightness). One thing I notice when this started happening was my battery meter has been showing irregular battery life. Often times when my batter is at a certain level it would jump up 10-20% when i put it to sleep then drops super fast when I use it. I also notice that the battery charges to 100% faster than normal (about an hour now). Once, i depleted the battery until the phone turned off then charge it for about 10 mins and when the phone turned on by itself it was showing 50% battery life. I took it off the charger to use it and the battery instantly changes to 90% with 10mins of charging! My brother also has a 3gs and his battery only decreases, never increase. Is my batter now defective? I tried depleting the battery several times and recharging it to 100 but no avail.

3gs with newest ultrasnow and jailbroken by redsn0w. I'm pretty sure its not the software because i formatted twice already with nothing installed. And yes i did setup the phone as "new".

Yes, you do have a defective battery. The battery should only decrease and never increase, much less 20% at a time.

Restore to 3.0 and take it to an Apple Store. They will change your phone for another.

dang! i guess i have to bring a buddy with at&t then?

fwiw, I saw the same symptoms in my non-jailbraked 3GS (which I had restored from the backup of an unlocked 2G) when I had very high GPS use (I used a bike tracking app). I noticed because of the weird jump up of the battery meter and then quick battery drain. The phone would also get VERY hot, and I was lucky to get 6 hours of battery life.

Before returning to Apple store (even made an appointment) I restored, set up as new phone, and was careful to limit GPS hungry apps (nothing other than google maps). Haven't had a hot phone since, and I am getting 2 days out of my battery.

All I am saying is that it could be a bad battery, but it could also be a software problem.

I just got my iphone 3gs and have all the bells and whistles activated 3g, wifi, mobileme push....my battery lasted aleast a day with all this on before and this morning I took it off charge and the battery drained in less than 4 hours down to 25%. I don't get it could my battery be defective?

Originally Posted by bend007

I just got my iphone 3gs and have all the bells and whistles activated 3g, wifi, mobileme push....my battery lasted aleast a day with all this on before and this morning I took it off charge and the battery drained in less than 4 hours down to 25%. I don't get it could my battery be defective?

turn off push then try again.

I think your battery is defective. Me also faced the same problem. My battery begun to die so fast. It was charged full but in a few times it became empty. I replaced it with a new one. I would advice you to do same.

I have noticed a similar problem i have a 32GB 3GS running jailbroken 3.0 firmware, after the phone was jailbroken it was set up as a new iphone and has never been restored to a backup.
The thing that i cant understand is the rapid battery drain is not constant some days the phone seems fine and others is is gone within hours.
On one of the days where it was draining i tried rebooting the phone, and using boss pref to turn off all services except the phone but the battery still drained at the same rate

Use apple Tips ...Apple - Batteries - iPhone

turn off push

good luck