Turn off WiFi and 3G when you’re not using the internet.
It seems like the new 3G iPhone’s battery life sucks, but this is not technically true.
What’s happening is that we’re A) using our phones more and B) using them like computers.
With an unlimited data plan and an a pocket of full of internet applications, your use patterns change. When I treat my iPhone like an old phone (waiting for voice or text messages instead of surfing the internet with power hungry WiFi or 3G) the battery lasts just fine.*
One problem I’ve seen is that the iPhone attempts to use 3G before EDGE, even in a spotty 3G area. This is bad because when you have a low signal your phone uses more power to “seek”. When I turn off 3G I’ll usually have good EDGE coverage.
The only problem is that this pushes a lot of cognitive overhead (AKA unproductive, annoying meta work) to the user. The iPhone needs an app where you can toggle the network power sucks (WiFi, 3G, Bluetooth, EDGE, and GPS**) in one or two clicks instead of the current “scattered throughout the Settings Preference Panes” workflow. Maybe it’s as simple as a HIGH and LOW toggle, where HIGH = “all on” and LOW = “EDGE, GPS, Bluetooth, and disable email push”.
Better still would be if the iPhone could intelligently manage this for us: “I see you’re playing with the internet right now. If there’s a good 3G signal or open WiFi, I’ll silently turn those on for you and then drop to low power mode when you’re finished.”‡
Notes:
* If I could just keep my damn hands off the iPhone I could get a couple of days of standby with casual voice and SMS use, but my precious demands to be used like a computer, not a phone. As it stands I have to charge daily, and sometimes even twice a day.
** Sorry for all the acronyms, blame the propeller heads. 3G is the new, fast cellular data network, and EDGE is the older, slower, but more ubiquitous cellular data network. For me 3G feels much faster (when it’s available), but it’s less ubiquitous, uses more power, and is more sensitive to buildings and terrain.
‡ What really matters is page rendering speed, not data speed. I’ve found that whether or not a website has been optimized for iPhone display is much more important than what network you’re using. When I use the native Mail.app, Twitterific.app, or the iPhone-optimized Gmail page, EDGE is slower than 3G, but still fairly snappy. Browsing unoptimized websites with EDGE however, is not much fun.
You can test and compare your EDGE, 3G, and WiFi speeds at iNetworkTest.com.
From results I’ve seen EDGE is about 1-4X 56k modem speed and 3G is about 3-10X 56k modem speed. It all depends on how good your signal is at the moment.
One other thing: 3G voice service feels very “digital” in that, when you have a weak signal, the parts you can hear are very clear, and the parts that get garbled just drop.
