I recently upgraded from my iPhone 3GS to an iPhone 4.
Usually, I’m the first of all my friends and relatives to get the new tech, but this was a work phone … and it took some time. However, the wait only sharpened the anticipation – and one of the things I was looking forward to was better battery life.
With my 3GS, I got maybe a day and a half of battery life – less if I used my phone a lot. I was hoping for much better from the iPhone 4. It was a huge disappointment, therefore, when my new iPhone 4 seemed to lose all battery charge daily.
The loss of charge was so bad I suspected getting a lemon. Even overnight, when I put my phone in airplane mode, I’d lose about 10% or more. The 3GS had never lost more than 1 or 2% of battery charge overnight. I seriously had to recharge my iPhone4 daily. So I did some investigation.
It turns out that if you set up your new iPhone 4 from a backup of your old iPhone, some old settings which relate to battery life get installed on your new iPhone … and your battery use is totally de-optimized.
The solution: set up your iPhone 4 as an entirely new phone.
Here’s how:
- Connect your iPhone to your computer
- When iTunes opens and your iPhone is active in the source list, select the Summary tab at the top
- Click the Restore button
(this will delete everything off of your phone, so be sure you’ve done a recent sync and no important information is only on your phone - After your phone is restored, set it up as a new phone in iTunes
- Re-sync all your data, email, songs, apps, etc. over to your new phone
- Enjoy your new much longer lasting battery life!
After doing this, my iPhone 4 battery life is MUCH longer. Currently, I’m at about 2 days with reasonable usage … and my battery is still at 34%.
Now that’s what I expected from my new iPhone!