A short and glorious life, or a long and dull one?

Owners of the new 3G iPhone face the same dilemma put to the Greek hero Achilles by the gods of Olympus. In the end, he chose glory. But iPhone users might take a different view.

The new phone has a more power-hungry chipset. Walt Mossberg is not the only one who has found “the battery indicator on the new 3G model slipping below 20% by early afternoon or midafternoon on some days, and it entirely ran out of juice on one day”.

I take and make much fewer calls than he does, and I notice it too.

Apple has published a page of tips to help users manage this Achilles’ heel.

Much of the advice is common sense: reduce the brightness of the screen, minimise or turn off the phone’s “push” features, turn off Wi-Fi and Bluetooth if you don’t need them, don’t play games on it, and so on.

But three of the suggestions were news to me.

First, you can turn off 3G and still receive calls and data via GPRS and EDGE. Makes sense, but it never occurred to me. You will find the option in the Network section of General Preferences.

Secondly, “applying an equalizer setting to song playback on your iPhone can decrease battery life.” You can switch that off, or set it to “flat” in the phone’s iPod settings.

Lastly, Location Services chews a lot of power. Switching it on only when you need it will prolong the life of your battery.

Finally, it surprised me with its advice on cycling the battery:

For proper maintenance of a lithium-based battery, it’s important to keep the electrons in it moving occasionally. Be sure to go through at least one charge cycle per month (charging the battery to 100% and then completely running it down).

I have always thought—following someone’s sage advice when I was a gullible new Switcher—that it was important never to let the battery level fall too low. Now I know.

Luckily, just like Achilles my iPhone thirsts for a short and glorious life, so there will be no problem getting the battery charge down.

[Via InformationWeek ]