3GS battery is failing badly

Apple iPhone - 3GS battery is bad

My 3GS battery is failing badly, going essentially to zero by 6 pm.

When I double click the home button, it shows Safari, Game Center, Phone, Mail and multiple others still running.

How do I shut off programs? I've tried by turning off notifications, shutting down bluetooth, and Mail is only to check once an hour. The only thing left is to put it in Airport mode or simply power it off.

The iPhone is only 5 months old.

iPhone Battery
Hold down one of those running icons for a few seconds. Then they wiggle just like the desktop icons. You can then delete the programs that you want to stop.

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Of course, many of the programs displayed in the "rapid-switching" tray may not actually be running. It simply displays the last 40-odd Apps that were run.

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You might have a faulty battery.

I got my iPhone 3GS in July 2009. It worked great, but the battery life was nothing... it would bounce around between 13% and 85%, then just drop dead without warning. I got a new phone about a month into my contract, and no more of those problems.

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Just because an app appears in the try when you double click does not mean it is still running. It is really a fast switching system. It just saves your information so you can go back to the same location in a hurry. Very few things continue to run. Some that do are navigation software and VoIP.

That should read "appears in the tray".

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And it does not delete the apps, but "force quits" the apps.

To be clear, here are the steps. Double click the Home button and a tray of apps should appear. If you hold one they should all start to jiggle and have a minus sign appear on each. (The app running in the foreground will not be shown.) Click the minus to force quit the app. You can scroll right to see all apps that are available for fast switching, and some running in the background like audio players, GPS/navigation, and VoIP. Click the Home button once to stop the jiggle, and once again to return to the last page or the foreground app.

And if you are running an audio or video player (iPod.app, uTube, Pandora), Skype, Twitter, or Maps a lot during the day and you are getting to 6 PM, then your battery may be normal.

My 3GS was made & purchased in July of 2009 and used daily for the audio player, and since iOS 4 much more for email and video. 5 or 6 PM and nearing 20% or less sounds about right for my 14 month old 3GS.

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When you see that list, tap-hold until they wiggle. Should be obvious from there.

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It sounds to me like you are running iOS 4.0.x on your iPhone. I had the same problem after upgrading my 3gs to 4.0. Battery life was horrible. I temporarily solved it by making sure that Safari was turned off after leaving it. Others have told you how: double click home, hold the icon till it jiggles, then tap the - bar.

After upgrading to iOS 4.1, I no longer have that problem. I can leave Safari active in the multitask bar and it doesn't drain the battery.

It was a real pain to me to have to stop Safari that way, because of the 7 pages I keep open all the time, two of them require passwords to open and I would have to re-login. With 4.1, I no longer need to stop Safari from the multitask bar to save the battery, and I also do not have to re-login to the sites I keep open.