Thread: Power Drain iPhone: SOLVED

Back in November, I got a used iPhone 3GS.
It had been jailbroken through a number of versions of iOS.
So, Cydia had SHSH blobs on file back to 4.1.
At the time, it had iOS 5.0.1 and was running iPad baseband 6.15
This was all so it could operate on T-mobile.

I noticed that it had terrible standby time, so I came up with a repeatable test.
- Charge the battery to 100%
- Turn off all the radios: GPS, bluetooth, wifi, 3G, etc. and put it into Airplane mode.
- Now, let the phone blank its screen, but wake it up every few hours an check battery level.
- Terminate the test when you get to 20%.

I'd heard that the percent indicator on battery charge might be at fault.
So, I turned it off , and it had no effect.
I heard it might be the 6.15 baseband rom, but as I was stuck there, I hoped not.
AND, iOS 5 had a bad reputation, but the previous owner swore it ran fine for him.

I ran six tests and let's say it lasted around 13 hours.
Shut down, and doing nothing.!.!, just thirteen hours!
Clearly, this is not a good sign.
How much more badly would it do in regular service?

... to be continued ...

Back in December, I had an idea.
Maybe it was just a bad battery in the phone.
So, I ordered a replacement, and did the surgery to install it.

Turned out, this battery was 1600 mah, and the stock battery was only 1200.
That's encouraging!

My numbers were a bit random in five tests.
So, let's call it 15 hours run time.
With some additional tweaks (how I activated the phone), I got as much as 18 hours.
But it wasn't repeatable.
And still clearly not acceptable.

Well that told me several things.
- the original battery was fine
- this new battery was working well and giving more run time, just as you'd expect.


Jumping forward to January, I got a broken iPhone 4.
It was obviously much better on power consumption.
I didn't know how good 'till I tested.

In a 50 hour test as above, it dropped from 100% to 98% !.!
Wow, we're onto something here!

It came with iOS 4.2.1, and baseband 3.10.1
I looked for a Jailbreak that would work with 4.2.1, because I was NOT going to update it!
(never been jailbroken, so no SHSH saved, and no way to revert to any ver below 5.0.1)

(btw: greenpois0n was the tool of choice)


... to be continued ...

In late January, I was playing around with an activated sim, on AT&T.
No unlocking required.
Jailbreaking is always fine, though.

I intended to run it in my iPhone 4, but wanted to see it work in the iPhone 3GS first.
Why? Well, I would have to cut down the sim to fit the iPhone 4.
And even though I had a tray to restore it to a full size sim, that wasn't a very workable solution.
So, cutting was a one-way street.

The 3GS wasn't taking to the new sim.
It worked in a Nokia and my Motorola Razr, but no love in the iPhone.

In the many months of study, I learned about a number of things that could trip me up.
So, I knew I had to start fresh for the best chance of working.

* Bright Idea: *

What about rolling back the iOS to an older version to see if my power drain was related to 5.0.1 ?

In the mean time, Sn0wBreeze had been updated to v2.9.1.
It claimed to handle a bunch of old versions of iOS!
Wow, this might be just what I need.
I built a copy of iOS 4.3, keeping my ugly iPad 6.15 baseband.
That first night, I got nowhere.
Next night, I defected to RedSn0w to see what it would do.
Well, it didn't actually support my 4.3 at all!
So, I went back to Sn0wBreeze and tried again.
The author is iH8sn0w, and he has a suite of tools you'll want.
With the use of TinyUmbrella, iReb, and iTunes, I finally got a jailbroken iOS 4.3 onto the 3GS !

... and iTunes auto-activated the phone with my new sim installed!
(if you don't know what that means, trust me, it's wonderful!)

The phone came alive, and immediately received an SMS message.
Just spam to the previous holder of my new number, but a GOOD sign!


So, what ever happend to the battery life?
Well I just completed the first overnight run.
12 hours to the 98% point, and it turns out I'd forgotten to put it into Airplane mode.
Not much point running the test again.
This was already wonderful!

Now, was it a combination of the iPad baseband 6.15 and iOS 5.0.1?
I can't really test that.
But, you can #$^& well bet I won't be putting 5.0.1 on my iPhone 4 any time soon!


... feedback requested from iPhone 3GS users running iOS 5.0.1 and NOT baseband 6.15 ! ...


-[30]- (the end)

I have an iPhone 4 running the latest updates and do not see this battery drain issue. If I do not have many phone calls during the day the battery will still be at 85%+ at bedtime (I charge overnight). But, I suspect that the battery drain issue could be an interaction of the new IOS and certain apps, or maybe certain cell towers (i.e. you were roaming off the AT&T network on a third party's cell tower).

Evidently there is a battery drain issue on some 3GS phones with iOS 5 and above. Check out this thread for example:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3382459

Sent from my iPhone using SatelliteGuys

Originally Posted by Ilya

Evidently there is a battery drain issue on some 3GS phones with iOS 5 and above.
Check out this thread for example:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3382459

Wow, those people are hoppin' mad, and rightly so!
For the most part, they seemed to be running stock baseband, so maybe it IS just 3GS+iOS5 that is the killer?
Thanks for the input.

There do seem to be two totally different battery symptoms, though.
And for the most part, nobody has noticed that.
One, is the phone cutting off with a high indicated battery charge.
The other is rapid discharge of the battery.

I'm really not having either any more.
But, I have detected a new trouble.
It seems to be temperature related, but too soon to say.
I tried to actually go out with and use my 3GS several days last week.
But, it didn't perform in the wild nearly as well as it did in the confines of my house.
Returning home, it regained its composure.