iPod touch owners continue to report battery drain issues even after applying every single software update released by Apple since the iOS 4 debuted this summer. Currently at their third attempt to get the iPod touch in good working state, users have taken to Apple’s Discussions forums yet again, hoping the iPod vendor will eventually do something to repair the damage.
Ever since the introduction of iOS 4 earlier this year, iPhone and iPod touch users alike began experiencing abnormal behavior.
Although the most frustrated of all seem to be iPhone 3G users, whose handsets are virtually useless because of slow performance under iOS 4.x builds, iPod touch owners are pretty much in the same boat, with their great majority reporting severe battery drainage after applying iOS 4, as well as all incremental updates that followed.
Complaints about the matter continue to emerge on Apple Discussions in a 104-page-long thread titled “Low battery life on iPod touch after installing iOS 4”, following the recent launch of iOS 4.2.1.
As before the release of iOS 4.2.1, users try to isolate the cause of the battery drain, but with little luck.
Many of the affected customers agree it has something to do with multitasking, although second-generation units - which don’t support this feature - seem to be just as affected by “batterygate”.
“As I said before, for some of us the problem is actually at least partially the multitasking,” user zoobrikovlok writes.
“Whether you can see the apps running or not, when I tested it, there was obviously a buildup of processes happening. The more apps you start, the faster the drain. Don't start any apps, no drain,” the customer observed.
“I updated to 4.2.1 from a jb 3.1.3 and had the same battery problems (two hours to discharge while it was in standby), slow operation and impossible to synch with Outlook,” spwhiting@ explains.
“I've gone back to 3.1.3 and all is well with my 32 gb 3rd gen touch. Appple [sic] fixed nothing with 4.2.1 - They want us to buy a touch 4th generation but even that has battery problems,” the frustrated customer opines.
A piece of advice from forum user xs1137 goes: “If you have a 2G touch I would stick with 3.13 as most of the benefits of 4 are only applicable to the 3G and 4G models, yet you may still get the drawbacks of 4. I wish I still had 3.13.”
As Softpedia noted on numerous occasions, this customer also believes that “Apple is really failing it's customers by not giving the option to let older hardware run the firmware designed for it.”
One forum user claims he was able to fix his batterygate issues by putting the iTouch into Airplane mode:
“…if you put the itouch into airplane mode then the battery lasts for over 10 days,” user tkesforever claims, whereas not putting the device into this state will only allow it to hold a charge for three days tops, he notes.
As usual, our own readers’ comments are also very important and generally indicative to the cause of these issues.
For example, when Softpedia posted an informative story about What iOS 4.2 Brings to Each Device, three of the first four comments we got were battery-drain related.
“So it's official? Nothing again, again, again, for battery drain on iPods?”, reader Nytroutbum said.
Replying to his comment, greg said: “i could not agree more.apple left us out in the cold.”
The same greg follows with a more elaborated comment, saying:
“4.2 did nothing to remedy the battery drain on my ipod touch 2nd generation.the recent updates have ruined my battery life.calls to applecare and even sending it in for repair did no good.they said the battery was fine.what a joke.very disappointed in apple.”
