Dear iPhone Dev Team: Please just admit that jailbreaking kills battery/performance

[Joe McG]

OK, so I have now jailbroken my iPhone 3G, and now my iPhone 3GS several times now. I always have to restore my phone because of several reasons:

iPhone 3G:
1. Phone lags alot
2. Battery life goes in the toilet


iPhone 3GS:
1. Battery life goes in the toilet

I tried an experiment over the past few days. I jailbroke my 3GS by doing the following:

1. Restore iPhone as new phone (no backup restore)

2. Synced my programs/music/contacts with iPhone

3. Jailbroke using redsnow 0.8

4. Opened Cydia and installed all updates.

5. DID NOT INSTALL ANY OTHER PROGRAMS!

Over several days, I was really disappointed in the battery life. I charge my phone overnight, and take it off each morning at 6:30 AM. By 5 PM, my phone was giving me the 20% battery life warning.

So, I restored the 3GS again. This time, I restored as new phone (no backup restore). I did not jailbreak. By dinner time, my battery life is over half with roughly the same usage.

This really irks me for several reasons. First, I don't understand why simply jailbreaking the phone would kill the battery. Second, I don't understand why the Devteam won't admit that it kills the battery.

I have a few theories:

1. Jailbreaking requires an active program to run in the background that detects things like syncing with iTunes, etc. It then actively blocks iTunes from detecting the jailbreak. A program running in the background certainly would explain reduced battery life.

2. Maybe Apple can detect the jailbreak, and purposely runs a background process to kill the battery so users are forced to restore again, and thus admit Apple is all knowing.


Thoughts? Experiences?

 

[lionheartednyhc]

It doesn't affect battery performance nor cause lag if you do it properly. It just gives you the ability to download programs that have that potential. Do you blame the grocery store for causing cancer too, because they sell cigarettes?

stop spreading these BS rumors and giving JB a bad name.

 

[xultar]

My battery performance has acutally been fantastic.

I was about to post yesterday that they needed to admit that memory suffered. But I have a question.

I'm using only one 3G Restrictor, it runs in the background. I think that baby sucks serious memory. Because when I was JB and I wasn't running it, my memory was fine.

I edited my post cuz I reread yours and you answered all my questions already.

What about Push apps. What are you running there?

 

[Joe McG]

OK, so I just laid out a straightforward, unbiased test I did which showed the battery life decrease and you're accusing me of spreading BS rumors?

1. Are you retarded?

2. I really want the jailbreak to work properly. I have read that the purplesnow version worked better for some, but it doesn't work for 3.0.1, so I didn't get to try it.

3. Are you really retarded?

4. Actually, the test wasn't unbiased. I actually WANTED the jailbreak to have no effect so I could keep it jailbroken, and attribute the bad battery life to the hardware.

5. You ARE retarded.

 

[Joe McG]

@xultar

I have jailbroken my phone 5 or 6 times now, and wanted to get to the root of why the battery life suffered. That is why I didn't install any applications. In the past I installed SBSettings, Winterboard, etc. This was just to test if jailbreaking ONLY was the culprit.

P.S. I used Redsnow 0.8 for Windows XP. Maybe if you jailbreak with a Mac, you don't get these problems??? I am stumped.

 

[mfriedman79]

I really doubt it's the jailbreak that is causing the battery drain. I found that I would have a similar battery issue after restoring a backup and it was usually caused by one of my email accounts. Usually if I delete either my exchange or yahoo accounts and recreate them my battery life would return to normal.

 

[Joe McG]

@xultar

I use gmail fetching every 30 minutes, and push email is always off. For push apps, I use Sportacular, AIM, and Ebay. However, I use all of these in both the jailbreak and non-jailbreak test so they are both constants in the experiment.

 

[mfriedman79]

"So, I restored the 3GS again. This time, I restored as new phone (no backup restore). I did not jailbreak. By dinner time, my battery life is over half with roughly the same usage."

**********
"This was just to test if jailbreaking ONLY was the culprit."

Unfortunately what you did here does not prove only jailbreaking was the culprit. To prove out a single variable, all other variables must be the same.

 

[xultar]

With my 3Gs on travel days I use A2DP. I can go from 4PM to 8:30PM with A2DP and be drained down to about 20%. That also includes assorted calls and some Slinging via 3G and surfing while listening.

Yes I know you are supposed to turn off for take off and landing but I don't. No way BT and an iPhone is going to bring down a plane. If it does we are all in trouble.

 

[lionheartednyhc]

OK, so I just laid out a straightforward, unbiased test I did which showed the battery life decrease and you're accusing me of spreading BS rumors?

1. Are you retarded?

2. I really want the jailbreak to work properly. I have read that the purplesnow version worked better for some, but it doesn't work for 3.0.1, so I didn't get to try it.

3. Are you really retarded?

4. Actually, the test wasn't unbiased. I actually WANTED the jailbreak to have no effect so I could keep it jailbroken, and attribute the bad battery life to the hardware.

5. You ARE retarded.

Am I retarded? You said you did a supposedly empirical test that is far from it (please take a research methods course before you attempt to find causality, you have much to learn) and then theorize (based on absolutely nothing but your own paranoia) that Apple probably runs a supersecret background program designed to kill battery life on JB phones .

Yeah, you're right. Definitely no BS rumors in your post. Carry on. The black helicopters will be there for you shortly.

 

[Jeremy]

OK, so I just laid out a straightforward, unbiased test I did which showed the battery life decrease and you're accusing me of spreading BS rumors?

1. Are you retarded?

2. I really want the jailbreak to work properly. I have read that the purplesnow version worked better for some, but it doesn't work for 3.0.1, so I didn't get to try it.

3. Are you really retarded?

4. Actually, the test wasn't unbiased. I actually WANTED the jailbreak to have no effect so I could keep it jailbroken, and attribute the bad battery life to the hardware.

5. You ARE retarded.

None of the above was needed. Please keep it civil from now on.

 

[Joe McG]

OK, for the last time:

Test 1: Restore as new phone (NO BACKUP RESTORE), then jailbreak

Test 2: Restore as new phone (NO BACKUP RESTORE)

All other parameters were kept the same. Same email, same apps, same settings. The only thing different was jailbreak. I'm sorry the truth hurts. I wish this wasn't the truth. I really like my jailbroken 3GS and miss biteSMS and SBSettings alot.

My phone dying while I'm eating dinner has nothing to do with paranoia.

 

[Joe McG]

@JFSikora

My apologies....

 

[Jeremy]

OK, for the last time:

Test 1: Restore as new phone (NO BACKUP RESTORE), then jailbreak

Test 2: Restore as new phone (NO BACKUP RESTORE)

All other parameters were kept the same. Same email, same apps, same settings. The only thing different was jailbreak. I'm sorry the truth hurts. I wish this wasn't the truth. I really like my jailbroken 3GS and miss biteSMS and SBSettings alot.

My phone dying while I'm eating dinner has nothing to do with paranoia.

Just because you have issues does not mean that everyone has the same issues. So you can not say for a fact that jailbreaking kills the battery for all users. That is absurd and is far from the truth. Do other people have your bad luck as well, sure but not all of us are so unlucky.

Perhaps you can get your hands on another device to try jailbreaking again?

Also have you tried to jailbreak from a Mac?

 

[Joe McG]

What's going on here? Am I in the twilight zone? If I do 2 tests, one with jailbreak, and one without, and keep all other variables the same, how can it be disputed?

I can't even believe this. I thought I knew what fanboyism was, but I didn't. NOW I do. . .

 

[Jeremy]

What's going on here? Am I in the twilight zone? If I do 2 tests, one with jailbreak, and one without, and keep all other variables the same, how can it be disputed?

I can't even believe this. I thought I knew what fanboyism was, but I didn't. NOW I do. . .

Let me say this one more time, just because you have an issue does not mean that everyone does. I'm sorry you have this issue but don't you think that maybe just maybe if this was a huge problem you would see many more people out there complaining and jailbreaking would not even be worth it? Think about it.

And trust me, I've done a lot more testing than you have ever done so I know what I am talking about.

 

[Joe McG]

OK, so if you have done more testing, what is the answer? Shouldn't a piece of hardware act the same as another with the same software loaded? Is there some sort of force in the universe that causes a phone to waste battery inexplicably.

I didn't say the 3GS was unusable when jailbroken, I just said the battery life wasn't as long. I could certainly keep it jailbroken as long as I could re-charge in the early evening. This isn't an option for me since I travel alot and don't always have access to an outlet. I suspect jailbreakers (again, wish I could be one) just live with the fact that they need to re-charge at some point in the day.

 

[Jeremy]

OK, so if you have done more testing, what is the answer? Shouldn't a piece of hardware act the same as another with the same software loaded? Is there some sort of force in the universe that causes a phone to waste battery inexplicably.

I didn't say the 3GS was unusable when jailbroken, I just said the battery life wasn't as long. I could certainly keep it jailbroken as long as I could re-charge in the early evening. This isn't an option for me since I travel alot and don't always have access to an outlet. I suspect jailbreakers (again, wish I could be one) just live with the fact that they need to re-charge at some point in the day.

There are so many factors that come into play here. Listen it is simply a hack. Sometimes things don't mix well. Who knows, it can simply be a computer issue that you are using. Again have you tried your Mac?

 

[xultar]

None of the above was needed. Please keep it civil from now on.

Agree wholeheartedly.

 

[Joe McG]

@JFSikora

I don't have a Mac, so I can't try this. I'm certainly considering this as a factor. Maybe the jailbreak for Windows has a problem...