Extending the Battery Life of my iPhone 3G

I love my iPhone 3G. Sure, I’ve got some gripes about Apple policies and the current state of the iPhone SDK, iPhone OS, and iPhone NDA, but it probably one of the most single useful gadgets I’ve ever owned. The only real downside to it is that I feel like I’ve got it plugged into my Mac ALL THE TIME. Not because I’m an iTunes junkie mind you, but because it was always running out of battery power. Now, just for the record, before my iPhone I was using a Motorola RAZR V3, which doesn’t have great battery life, but nor is it a total slacker.

So I started trying to determine what was eating up so much battery. What I found was that for the most part it was a product of having everything turned on. 3G, WiFi, etc. I’ve found that simply by putting the phone into EDGE mode rather than 3G if I don’t need the faster data speeds dramatically extends the battery life. I also tend to leave WiFi disabled unless I am specifically using it. Some people have mentioned turning off the “Ask to Join Networks,” also extends battery life. I have that in combination with WiFi disabled. Similarly, I only turn on Bluetooth if using with my headset. I tend to leave location services (GPS) enabled, as it hasn’t seemed to affect battery life significantly. Again, turning it off would likely offer some battery time extension.

I suspect that also adjusting the frequency of IMAP/POP email checks would again help battery life. I use the automatic screen brightness functionality, but again, it might assist some users eking out additional battery life by having it at a lower setting than it might select otherwise.

Running WiFi, WiFi Search, G3, and GPS all the time is a recipe for short battery life. What this lead me to realize was that there needed to be an easier mechanism for changing these kinds of settings. They are currently buried within several different menus within the “Settings” app on the iPhone. One has to traverse numerous menus to make any one of these changes to the iPhone.

Because I am a registered iPhone developer (covered by that pesky NDA) I began searching for the underlying SDK mechanisms by which to change these settings. Unfortunately they do not currently seem to be exposed in any easily accessible way. I’m not sure why, but it seems to me that this is precisely the kind of app that has been set aside for this version of the iPhone SDK. The network/location/savvy programs have been the emphasis, which I suppose I understand, but find unfortunate.

It is with this in mind that I’ve set out to hack together “PowerBuddy,” which will be a preliminary version of a future application that is more fully featured “PowerProfile.” It is my intention to make PowerBuddy freely available and charge $1.99 or $2.99 for PowerProfile. We’ll see how this goes as I also attempt to survive the move from New York to Georgia.