If you’re like many iPhone users, you suck the power out of your battery completely about once every 24 hours. The more useful a thing is, the more you use it–hence, my iPhone’s battery tends to be more empty than full. Here’s what to do to keep that battery alive:

1. Disable 3G. Bar none, this is the single most effective way to increase battery life on the iPhone. If you can tolerate the slowness of Edge and you don’t use any realtime data apps (like VoIP stuff, say), then Edge should be sufficient. You’ll probably have fewer dropped calls with Edge too.

2. Turn off WiFi and Bluetooth. Unless you’re using them, WiFi and Bluetooth are battery killers. Besides, the gimpy-ness of the iPhone’s Bluetooth support makes me question why anybody would leave it on at all.

3. Decrease the frequency of e-mail checks. This will result in fewer data transmissions and preserve the battery.

4. Install the 2.2 firmware update. Apparently, it helps.

Tags: 2.2, 3g, battery, dropped calls, firmware, iphone, voip, wireless

Among the improvements cited by Apple’s release notes for the 2.1 iPhone firmware were decreased call drop frequency and improved battery life. And on one of those (call drops), I’ve definitely noticed an improvement. Also, it seems that the availability of the 3G network is greatly improved.  But I have no noticed no difference in the life of my iPhone’s battery, despite Apple’s claims to the contrary.

Tags: 2.1, 3g, battery, firmware

Scott at iPhone, Therefore I Blog has posted an interesting theory about the relatively poor battery life of the iPhone 3G, and what he’s done to curb excessive battery suck. Scott’s theory is that the EDGE/3G network switching bug (the same responsible for lost calls) is what’s behind the battery drain.  He also recommends disabling WiFi and Bluetooth by default.  I would add that disabling the GPS receiver (location services) would improve battery life, though not much.

Tags: 3g, battery, bluetooth, edge, gps, wifi