It’s pretty apparent by now that the battery life of the new iPhone 3GS and 3.0 software update sucks. Whether you are checking mail constantly, texting a few people throughout the day, or leaving the phone just sitting by itself, the electronic juice sucking monster comes by and tends to drain your battery pretty well throughout the day. Luckily, you came here to Appmodo (aside from loving the site and hanging out here all day long) to find out how to fix that!

Now there are a couple of things to note right off the top. First of all, if you are using your iPhone as a gaming device (especially the 3GS with openGL) your battery will be given an almighty sacrificial giving to the power gods. Secondly, if you are an email nut, the increase in network speed that came with the 3GS (7.2 mbps) and processing of the 3.0 software update will also contribute to a consistent drain.

Here are some tips to help alleviate your battery life problems.

Tips

1) Reboot your iPhone – You want to do this regularly anyway, especially after installing applications. While the iPhone doesn’t quite allow multiple background processes, it is possible for some applications or processes to run in the background and get hung up. Make sure you restart your iPhone regularly to help prevent this. Also do it if your iPhone is getting excessively hot.

How to reboot your iPhone: Hold down the sleep button located at the top of the phone and the home button for approximately 5 seconds and the phone will restart itself.

2) Force quit applications – If you’re not using an application any more and simply close out the app, it can remain open in the background or be eating up some of your processing power. Just to be safe, try force quitting the application instead. Click here to find out how to force quit an application.

3) Modify your Push settings – With instant and faster connectivity comes a trade off: battery life. While Push allows you to access your latest mail, calendar, and contact updates, it can also access data for other applications such as games, social networking apps like Facebook and Twitter, or Instant Messaging applications. Try changing your settings or delete accounts that you don’t necessarily need access to 24/7. This can be done in the Settings area under Mail, Contacts, Calendars. Also check the Notifications section for any applications accessing Push Notification.

4) Disable 3G and *GASP* WiFi connections – If you don’t need to access web pages or don’t mind the slower connection times of the Edge network for checking email, disabling 3G will dramatically increase battery life over the course of a day. Turning off WiFi when you are not using it will help as well. To turn off 3G, go under Settings, General tab, Network tab.

Other battery suckers to turn off are Bluetooth and GPS/Location Services, both found under the General tab within Settings.

5) Drop the brightness – Another dramatic change that can increase your battery life is the pesky screen. While auto-brightness adjusts itself to current light conditions, your battery can still be drained when the screen is lit. Go to Settings and turn down the brightness level to around 1/4 of the slider bar. Your eyes will have to work harder but your battery will thank you.

6) Restoration Hardware – No, I’m not talking about the store but instead, your iPhone. If all else fails, restoring your phone to its original OS can clear any bugs or problems that occurred during previous synchronizations. Just be aware that any profiles or progress with games WILL BE DELETED. Unfortunately syncing with iTunes does not store personal profiles and other data associated with apps. Yeah, it sucks, get with it Apple!

If any previous restorations do not help, then most likely one of your applications either has a problem and was saved in that state, or there’s an issue with the firmware in one of your backups. You may have to create a “new iPhone”.

Please post your comments, tips, and your own reviews below in the comments area!

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