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Exchange Email and Battery Life Misery

3K views 13 replies 7 participants last post by  Chookaboom 
#1 ·
Fellow iPhone users….

This will be a little long, sorry, but will take this long to fully explain what I am experiencing.

I have searched the forums and I cannot find comparable issues (if my searching has been poor, please ease off on the flaming and please point me to what I may have missed). Several others within our company have the same issues I am seeing. Once I have enough feedback, I want to go back to IT and see if there is something they can do to fix this (if possible).

Recently, my company has started to "tolerate" but not officially support the iPhone for Exchange use. The service workes fantastic (functionally) I get my emails way before they hit my PC. I come to you now out of frustration. I am taking issue with the way that my Exchange has turned the iPhone into a turd for me. Essentially with Exchange active in any way on my phone, I might as well be tethered to a LAN line and a desk phone. Below is a summary of my observations. I ask that you please provide you feedback on your experience with Exchange and Battery life.

** Note: Normal usage prior to the use of Exchange ... multiple email accounts (Rogers Fetch 15 mins, personal domain fetch 15 mins and Mobile Me Push), I was able to go all day with pretty heavy usage on 3G, lots of app usage, GPS usage, ipod usage.

** Note: 3G is enabled all the time with very good coverage at home and work and everywhere in between. WiFi is turned off, as our Facility is not iPhone WiFi enabled yet.


So what's my beef you ask.. Ok here goes….Very early in my day (prior to 9am usually) I was getting the 20% then 10% battery warning. This came with only minimal usage... checking the emails that came in, and occasionally fiddling with an App or two, but more or less very low usage considering I had other work to do.

That night, I gave it a full charge and unplugged before bed. When I woke up (6am), I checked it and the battery was ALREADY down to about 20% or less. WTF? I checked the usage stats and the "Usage" and "Standby" times were pretty much equal to the time since I unplugged the phone (9 hours 9 mins of stand by 8 hours 45 mins of usage). Wait a sec, 8 hours and 45 mins of usage, this is BS! I have been freaking sleeping! Essentially, just leaving the phone in standby mode in holster the battery ran out by doing nothing hands on.

So, something is not right. I figured it might be a bug with the 2.0 software, so I updated to 2.1, no change. 2.2 just came out and it too has no affect on this issue. I can prove the issue to be Exchange related, as as soon as I turn off Email/Calendar AND Contacts, the issue goes away. I individually tested whether the issue was Email/ Calendar/Contacts related, use of any of the 3 induced the CONSTANT "Usage" event on standby with battery drain very fast.

I tried to remove the account from my phone and re-apply, no change to the symptoms.

I changed from Push to Fetch at all the different Intervals and to Manual check mode. Nothing made a difference.

Something is causing the iPhone to constantly be in use, I assume there is some constant communication from the Exchange server, which seems contrary how I understood (this might be my issue) Push with exchange to work. I thought there would only be communication when something new needed to be communicated.

lil help?

cb​
 
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#2 ·
I can only compare to my situation.

1) I use exchange too in push mode.
2) I leave my iphone on the charge cable beside my bed all night
3) I turn off 3G unless I plan on websurfing


I have lots of battery and usually go to bed at 60%. If I play during the day, it may go into the 40's.

I also plug it into the usb when possible at work (then I usually have 90's before I go to bed).



Try turning off 3G and charge during the night. You have it charged at 100 then 8 hours + of 3G.
 
#4 ·
Thanks for posting your usage MikeyXX. I also appreciate your suggestions, though this does not address why I am only getting maybe 6-8 hours in standby mode with Exchange (a far cry from the 300 hours claim on Apple's site). I know there is fine print with that 300 hours, but still, when in standby I am getting usage time as well...and that just does not seem right, or else the interweb would be FULL of pissed off 3G Exchange users.

Which leads me to Script Kiddie's comments (thanks for your thoughts), I am tempted to agree that something is running unnecessarily, though I am not sure what it is. I am not sure any applications are installed, security certificates and policies are for sure.

What I am hoping to find is other users of Corporate Exchange NOT having the same issue as me, so I have reason to go back to IT to question their configuration. There are others I have found in the company that share my issues, and wiping their/my devices clean likely won't solve anything if the misconfiguration server side is still present.

cb
 
#5 ·
I would not say Exchange is the sole one at fault, because I have not connected to Exchange with mine yet and I too have this battery life issue. I think it may be one of the Apps. I do not think they are turning off when you go back the Home screen. This is one thing I think Apple could add to the Settings area, show which apps may be running and have the ability to shut them down.

I have not been able to pin point which app is draining the battery because it may not be the apps fault but maybe the firmware.

For example yesterday after a full charge I was using Pocketpedia adding all my DVD collections when I was done the battery seem to be at 75%. This is just before going to bed about 1 AM. I closed the app by clicking on the home button and lockd the phone. Then when I got up at 6 AM, the phone gave the message that the battery was at 10%. This is very weird and not like this every night.

Like right now here it is 1:07 PM , I removed it from the charger at 6 AM, it says 15 mins of usage, I have used no apps just taken some phone calls, and the battery is showing at what looks like 100%.

So my conclusion is something is not shutting down the app properly, and the app is continuing to run even though we think we have shut them down.
 
#6 ·
I use exchange sync, with all options (email, contacts, calendar) on, and have not encountered the same issues. Not to the same degree anyway.

If I charge before I go to bed and undock, I do notice that the battery will drop about 15% overnight. Whereas with 1.1.x, with no exchange, and no data plan, that same iPhone would maintain a charge so high, that it was indistinguishable from fully charged by the battery meter.

One thing I have noticed with ActiveSync turned on is that even in the presence of WiFi, I will hear a lot more GSM chatter over my desk speakers or headphones, something I used to only hear once every hour or before a call.

Perhaps it's some sort of check that the ActiveSync software tries to perform with the server, but then never gets a reply, forcing the process thread to be open and waiting for a response all that time.

Regardless, I have less faith in your IT team being able to fix it server side, than I am with you doing a full restore. I highly recommend you do so restore, and choose to set it up as a new phone (rather than restoring the backup). This fixes so many issues with the 2.0.x firmware.
 
#7 ·
Thanks guys for the additional input. I originally thought it was another APP possibly sucking the life juice from my phone, but as soon as I turn off Exchange (email, calendar and contacts), the issue goes away. This is also occuring with every user in the company that I have discussed this with, granted I only know about 5 folks so far that are using... still need to find a wider internal audience. Essentially, with Exchange turned on, I am NEVER in standby mode, even though the phone is locked/screen off.

I will do as suggested tonight and do a full restore to 2.02 clean and ONLY activate Exchange and post back the results tomorrow.

Thanks everyone and if anyone else has any input, I a'd love to hear your experience with Exchange, as short of this battery life issue, it's fantastic.

cb
 
#11 ·
Not sure if it's the same cause, but my first day with the phone was very bad, battery wise. I had a full charge overnight, unplugged it from the charger around 7am, by 4pm I had less than 20% & was getting the "low battery" warnings until I got home at about 6:30 & plugged it in with nothing showing in the battery on the charging screen.

I probably was running it fully loaded - here's the settings & apps I had:

Mail - 3 accounts, 2 .mac ( one on push, one on manual fetch), 1 yahoo.rogers.com (manual fetch on)
Other settings left with defaults, like wifi on, location on, etc.

Apps loaded: AIM, Urbanspoon, SportsTap, Showtimes, iChoose, myLite, Remote, eReader, reMovem free, Moonlight Mah Jong Lite, Hangman, SudokuFree, Othello.

I'm going to try tomorrow with 1 .mac mail account on push, and just as a hunch, AIM set to "Signoff on Exit" - I think this means don't poll for buddies or allow conversations in standby mode.

If battery life doesn't improve significantly, like allow me to use the device for more than a full day, two or three being ideal, then I might have to give it back.
 
#14 ·
This is my ONLY complaint with the phone so far. I have been able to live with little buggies here and there, but Exchange's battery sucker (for me at least) is a show joke.

LUCKILY, I don't "NEED" work email on my personal phone, but it would be a big big bonus. I will start trying to find a fetch setting that gives me an acceptable balance.

cb
 
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