iPhone users harangue Apple over battery life

By Gregg Keizer

July 6, 2009 05:59 AM ET

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"I've had each generation of iPhone since they were launched in 2007, and upgraded from my 3G to the new 3GS a week ago on the day of its release," said "ahawkinson" on June 27. "My experience with the battery life has been really, really poor."

As is usually the case, others stepped in with advice or theories. One of the latter blamed corrupt backups from earlier models, while the former centered on doing a factory reset of settings, then downloading and reinstalling iPhone 3.0.

But that recommendation only raised hackles. "All this rubbish about make sure this is turned off, do resets, clear this that and the other, just so you can preserve battery life is a load of rubbish!" exclaimed a user labeled "::..S a m..::" in a 3GS support forum. "What's the point of having all these features if you don't have the power to run them?"

Apple's own advice about extending battery life made Sam's point, as it suggests that users turn off a myriad of features, including some it touted when it rolled out iPhone 3.0 in March and the iPhone 3GS in early June.

To add to the problem, the iPhone doesn't let users swap out a fresh battery for one that's died, something other cell- and smartphones allow. The omission of a user-replaceable battery was a point of contention in 2007, when the iPhone debuted, with at least one consumer group questioning the practice. For the most part, discussion of the merits of a sealed battery haven't plagued Apple since then.

iPhone battery consumption has even made the national mainstream press. Late last week, after one Los Angeles Times reporter filed a story about the problem, another chimed in with some personal observations after seeing fast draining on her own iPhone 3GS. "The 'S' in 3GS may stand for many things on this device -- 'sexy,' 'speed,' 'sweet' -- but it certainly doesn't stand for 'stamina,'" said Michelle Maltais. She later dubbed the issue "iDrain."

Help, however, may be on the way, said Rapid Repair's Vronko. "Apple has already delivered the iPhone 3.1 SDK to developers," Vronko said. "I wouldn't be surprised if that didn't fix some of the problems."

Apple was not available on Sunday for comment on the "iDrain" reports from users.

Read more about macintoshes in Computerworld's Macintoshes Knowledge Center.

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