New iPhone battery died in a few hours

In My Humble Opinion
1

My wife and I have new iPhones we bought on the same day. The main difference between our phones:

  1. I keep 3G off on my phone, she keeps hers on.
  2. She has Skype on her phone to contact her parents, and she leaves it on 24/7 to hear when a message comes in.
  3. I always double click the home button to turn off running programs. She does this maybe once a week.

Everything else is the same.

Yesterday, something weird happened. We both leave our iPhones charging all night. The battery on her iPhone completely discharged about 4 hours after she unplugged it. In the same amount of time, mine was at ~87%. What I found was that she had around 12 programs running on her phone. Closing those helps, I know, but would it cause a complete discharge within 4 hours?

Also, it wasn’t just a normal “low power, shut down” shut down. It was absolutely, completely disharged…down to less than 1%. After plugging in the charging cord, it still wouldn’t turn on at all for about 30 minutes.

Do we have a defective iPhone that needs to be exchanged?

2

I don’t think it’s defective. I think Skype is the big drain. Does she have her bluetooth on as well? That really makes a dent in my battery life.

Can’t her parents email her: “Hey, turn on Skype!”

3

Although, on further review, this seems a little odd. I would set up an appointment at the… gak… Genius Bar… so they can take a look at your wife’s phone. Might need to be replaced.

4

Googling “iPhone Skype Power Consumption” gets a LOT of hits, including on the Skype forums, saying that it makes the phone run hot and discharge the battery very quickly.

5

But, she’s been doing this for over two weeks now, and this is the first time it’s happened.

6

I actually work in iOS tech support, and it wouldn’t be unusual if some of those 12 apps have location services on. Location Services is probably the biggest drain on battery life. Assuming you’re running iOS 4.x, just go to Settings -> General -> Location Services, and turn it OFF for anything that you’re not actively using.

Like others have said, Skype is a huge drain, and I’d recommended leaving it off most of the time, to conserve battery life.

One other trick you can try is to let the battery drain all the way (let it run until it runs out of juice), charge it fully, let it drain fully again, then charge it fully. This trick doesn’t work quite as often in iOS (I’ve been in both iOS and CPU support for Apple), but it seems like the batteries sometimes… just haven’t charged quite right or something. That usually kicks them out of their weirdness.

7

She turned off skype, and now it seems to be equivalent to mine. Thanks for all responses. :slight_smile:

8

What a shock :wink:

9

Another big battery burner is the MotionX GPS navigation program, running that app can take my battery down to critical in around 3 hours, a car charging cord is mandatory with that app, and even then, all it does is stop the discharge from progressing…

(if I start MotionX with lets say 42% battery life remaining, plugging in the car charger cord will keep the battery at 42% as long as it’s plugged in)

The Maps app can drain the battery almost as quickly when used a GPS, must be a combo of the location services, GPS circuitry and cell tower triangulation burning the battery up