battery is hemorrhaging like a wound

[IRSmart]

to start, i have an iphone 4 16 gig running iOS 4.3.2.

so, for the past two days, i've noticed that the battery life on my phone has been horrendous. not the normal wear you would expect on a phone that is 10 months old, much much worse. for example, i unplugged my phone from the dock at 8:45 am. by 10:30, i was down to 65%. by 2:30, it needed to be recharged. the kicker? i hadn't used it, not one single time! not even to check email or look at facebook, nothing. yesterday after i realized it was doing so bad i closed all my open apps (even though i know they don't technically "run" in the strictest sense of the word). today, when i noticed it was still doing so poorly, i even held both buttons until it reset, still nothing. i even called apple, who told me to update to 4.3.3 and if that still didn't work to bring it in.

now, another symptom of the cancer that has seemed to posses my phone is today, it took almost 5 hours for it to charge back up to normal. and once it did, someone advised me to look into Settings->General->Usage and tell them what the usage and standby values were. well, what i saw was that the usage and standby times were identical (i have a pic, but it won't let me post it yet). so obviously my phone is doing SOMETHING while it's in standby, i just can't figure out WHAT. i know all the questions you're going to ask. yes, i have bluetooth turned on. yes, wifi is turned on. yes, push is turned on. no, i don't have mobileme set up, other than to use it for "Find My iPhone." but none of these features have changed in the past few days. in fact, i haven't done anything new to my phone in the past few days, it just decided to get terminally ill. anyone have any ideas? it's kind of irritating to have the battery capacity of my old 3G iphone.

 

[Dave12308]

Well, this might seem like a dumb idea, but you might want to take Apple's advice. Sometimes an OS reload helps issues with battery life, assuming it's not being caused by a badly programmed app or the battery itself. If it's the battery, you will just have to get it replaced. Is the phone still under warranty?

 

[EWyatt]

Interesting! Of course I don't have an answer, except that your battery may be defective. You didn't say (I think) (yes you did: 10 months...) how old your phone is, but if within warranty time-frame, see the store! Get back with us on how this turns out. Thanks.

 

[IRSmart]

yes, it's under warranty. and i bought the extra year so it's covered for the next 1.5 years (10 months is an estimate, i bought it about a month after the 4s came out last year, whenever that was). i am still at work right now so i haven't had time to do a restore.

btw when i wrote this at 8:03 my battery was at 91%. it is now at 83% and i haven't even touched it since then. i don't think it's a battery issue, because my usage time and standby time are the same in my settings screen, so the phone is doing SOMETHING, i just can't figure out what. oh, and it's a little warm, too.

EDIT: i find it ironic that my icon for being a newb is a dead battery lmao

 

[eddieg]

turn off wifi and push and see what happens

 

[IRSmart]

so i did the 4.3.3 update last night, and it helped. the battery isn't dropping like a stone, but there is definitely still a drain. now, if i go into my usage screen, the usage value is less than the standby value, but it's still pretty high. for example, right now since i unplugged it and hour and a half ago, it's showing about 56 minutes of usage. i haven't used it at all. so what is it doing that it is draining my battery? i've never had this issue before sunday. i'm considering wiping the phone tonight and doing a restore to see if that helps. if not, new phone for me.

 

[eddieg]

did you try what i said? something is running its not your battery.

 

[IRSmart]

i did not before, but i just did. i haven't changed any settings on my phone in forever, so why would those just start causing issues now i wonder?

 

[eddieg]

the reason i asked is i had a slight problem with wifi sometimes running when the phone is sleeping i tried everything and nothing made a difference untill i turned wifi off and then the problem was gone.

 

[IRSmart]

well, it wasn't the wifi or the push. what i did last night was i synced the phone and created a backup, then i went into the phone's settings and erased everything, setting it back to factory settings and wiping everything on it. then, just for good measures, when the "connect to itunes" message came up, i held both buttons on the phone to reset it again. did that do anything? who knows, i just wanted to be thurough. then i set up the phone using the backup file i had just created. this seemed to work, as now the usage values in the settings seem to be correct, and there is no more horrendous battery drain. the phone is not warm to the touch anymore, either.

 

[justinp95]

Ya, mine is bad too and its brand new.