My iPhone 4 is a maybe a year and a half old and noticed yesterday that it completely discharged within a day. I didn't even use it very much. Today, same thing. About 50% charge since this morning (about 7-8 hours ago) and I haven't used it at all.
Do the batteries lose their ability to hold a charge that quickly? I thought I may have left an app or my iPod running, but I wasn't and I haven't changed any settings that I'm aware of. Anything I should check? If I have to buy another phone because of this, imma going to be pissed.

Help?

 

More than likely it is an app or your e-mail. Is the phone getting warm/hot? I have had this happen a couple of times on all of the iPhones that I have had (2, 3, and 4). This actually just happened earlier this week with my new iPad. The way that I resolved this issue in the past is restore the device back to the factory settings. Once that has completed, I do not let it restore from backup. I would just set it back up as a new device, and sync things over to it. I have to admit though, I do not have alot of documents on my phone/iPad so I was not concerned with the data. In my case it was usually the mail that was the problem. After the sync is done I just re-setup my mail etc. and the problem was resolved. Just my .02

 

Thanks for the suggestion, amble. But I'll reserve that as Plan B I hate restoring data from my phone. Something inevitably gets screwed up. Besides, my synching computer is in storage in another state, so if I did a reset/restore, I'd lose all my data. So, not even an option now.
Thing is, as I mentioned, I haven't changed any settings or loaded any new apps. This is just irritating....

 

I hear ya. I realize that the path that I laid out is a PITA, but like you, no new app/config changes, it just started to heat up and lose battery life. When the problem initially happened on my iPhone 2, what I laid out above is what Apple tech support had me do.

 

Did you install IOS5?

I've noticed that ever since I upgraded to the latest release, my battery drops much quicker.

Also, when looking at the homescreen, double click the home button. That will show all the apps/programs running in the background. Close all that you don't need. That will help. Genius bar guy showed me that one.

 

No I didn't. For the same reason as above. Don't have my main synch computer. Would lose all my data.
I did the double click thingy. Nothing obvious that isn't usually running.

 

Go to settings, locations and turn off time zone and any apps that you don't need location for. When you have time zone turned on it will always be pinging the server to see verify the correct zone vs the gps, I had location turned on for my local news apps, that was only for weather and I use a different app for that so I turned those off. If one of these apps with location turned on is in the bottom when you double click that means it is still alive and pinging home. All of that can waist a battery on an iPhone.

 

Take it to the Genius Bar Ed. They can give you a new one right there. I've had battery problems with every iPod I've owned and they swapped them with no hesitation.

 

Generally speaking, most apps and phone hardware won't suck up that much juice. Even GPS in high accuracy mode will run for days without killing the battery. The biggest drain is always the cell radio, and it always sucks more juice the farther away from a tower it gets.

So, if you're in an area with spotty coverage and running apps that constantly use data, the battery life will go down considerably.

Li-on batteries don't really have memory issues, but they do have a charge cycle life. If you've run your battery completely dead several hundred times, it could be getting close to worn out.

 

I had a case on my phone that covered the cooling port. It drained the battery and overheated once.