iPhone 3.1.3 Firmware Issues Widely Reported [iPhone Battery Life Issues, iTunes Playlist Syncing Problems – Are You Affected?]

Since 3.13 on my 3gs I’ve had 3 random resets in 2 days. Never had a single problem before. Is Apple becoming Microsoft?!?!

I’m finding my battery running down very quickly since I updated to 3.1.3 without any change in use.

I have a 3G not the 3GS like the fellow above me, and I have the same issues, after about 5 hours of charge I come into the tv station I work at and the phone sits on stand by all day. Between 12pm being disconnected from the charger and 7pm it dropped 40% only having sent maybe 10 text messages. I made a 4 minute phone call and the battery dropped another 10%… This is actual battery life as well I have a 3rd party battery life indicator not the little icon at top. This is completely unacceptable, I would have blamed it on age but this phone was purchased on the 28th of december thus making it about an month an a half old.

it’s my problem from day 1, since i only got my 3GS iphone about 1 mth ago. my phone is still under warranty so there isnt any jailbreak or illegal stuff in it.

PROBLEM: the phone would heat up like HELL, then when i check the battery, it’s close to flat.

i think apple is using the iphone as a egg fryer or cup warmer, but they should at least tell me first.

1st gen iPod touch. Lots of apps gave Cannot install, resources have been modified, error message. Had to Setup as new ipod. Also scroll bar in main music app does not go to selected alpha letter any longer. Wish had not upgraded! Very annoyed.

My phone runs hotter, but my battery life has been longer. The thing about the update that really surprised me is that I now have the tethering option available under my network settings. I have not jailbroken or in any way hacked my iPhone for a while and have since done a factory restore. Has this happened to anyone else?

I’ve had the same issue with my 3G iPhone. Since the upgrade to 3.1.3 I find that I need to keep close to a charging point because my battery lasts less than 3hrs after a full charge!

I also have noticed that my wifi isn’t working any more!

Anyone with info on how to get back to 3.1.2?

Since the upgrade my battery life has been severly shortened.

having huge problems with my 3GS since upgrading to 3.1.3, it now randomly stops calling out.. i keep getting “call failed” all the time and have to turn off then on again to fix it
very annoying

Battery life is a lot worse now since the upgrade. I noticed this immediately after the upgrade. Sudden change!

I have lots of battery problems since the update. I have the 3g version. I have experienced this once before with a developer edition (where you could expect and live with bugs). At that time my phone was constantly heating up my pocket (nice in the winter time :/ ?). Had to charge twice a day. The problem at that time was ssolved by upgrading the software to a production version. However i got a nasty surprise after 1½ month; the reason for the power use was that it was transferring data like crazy – no idea where to/from. my data plan did not allow for that kind of usage and i was left with a bille of the equivalent to $800 :(. Long story short – i fear that the same thing is going on this time.

Had battery issues on 3.1.2 and updated to 3.1.3 and all appeared to be resolved until yesterday!

I got home from work just before 6pm and had 2% left. So fully charged by 7.45pm i had to charge again overnight as by 11pm i had 85% left after a 3 minute call and the phone being on the coffee table for a few hours!!

I unplugged the phone at 8.05am today and at 10.20am it is on…72% !!

I’ve used it as i would normally, bit of browsing, check F1, check iCal, answer a 3 min work call to resolve a situation my incompitent line manager has created with constant bad planning and changes, etc.

ALSO,… phone signal keeps dropping to ‘No Service’. This is a problem I experienced with 3.1.2 and was expecting to be resolved with 3.1.3 so called Vodafone who said “some iPhones are having trouble syncing with the Vodafone network and Vodafone and Apple are working on it now…”
“should be sorted within 2 to 3 business days”

hope this is of use.
Great phone, lets get it working eh?
I have 5 macs I use daily and the family has 2xiphones, 1xipod touch and 4 old ipods.

I had a BB for the last 3 years and am considering reverting back if these problems persist.

All the best.

My usage patterns haven’t changed, but my iPhone has gone from coming home at the end of the day with 50%+ battery life remaining to a dead battery in <5 hours since 3.1.3. If I completely reset and then don't access my calendar, mail or any games, the battery life is as normal. If I just load a graphically rich game for a few seconds or access my online mail or calendar, it seems like something "sticks" and the battery begins it's downward spiral. I've turned off everything including push, done a full restore, even run in a semi-virginal state with no apps installed. My only solution is using an external battery pack and carrying a charger so that I can plug into a wall outlet during meetings or on customer site. Oddly enough, my wife's 3gs is seemingly unaffected. But she has the Scrabble WiFi bug and I don't. So there is something different between the two phones that were ordered and delivered together. I really wish that they'd fix this. I hate being tethered to wall outlets to use my "mobile" phone.

It’s so funny I came across this site. I had my 3gs jailbroken and sadly had to upgrade. The previous firmware jailbroken with blackra1n locked up while and kept dropping calls and eventually wouldn’t restart….

I immidiately notced the battery difference afterward and I’m annoyed. What’s it doing in the background to wasted such battery life? I charge it twice in two days. Come on Apple, get ur crap together!

I’m having this issue of battery running down extremely quickly at times (from full to zero in 2-3 hours) and going hot but I’m still on version 3.1.2 and have not upgraded yet.

Is it possible there’s another cause?

I have a iPhone 3G. Since the update I’ve only noticed that when the phone gets down to 20% and below the phone begins to heat up and it also heats up when I charge the phone using the apple ac adapter or plug it into a PC.

I recently upgraded my iPhone to 3.1.3 and the battery life has dropped off so dramatically that I hit Google to see what was up and found this forum.

It’s pretty annoying as I am on travel and won’t be able to roll back the upgrade for another three weeks.

Updated to the 3.1.3 version; have the battery problem, also the phone gets really hot at times. The GPS map feature is screwed up not like it was in version 3.1.2. Is there any way to go back to to 3.1.2 from 3.1.3? This new firmware version is bad.

So I have a 3G and after I updated to 3.1.3 my screen will not rotate into landscape. Tested with calculator and other apps. Anyone have this issue or do you think its unrelated to the upgrade?

No probs with iTunes, but the battery is really whack since the upgrade. Going from full to nothing, running very hot. Something is definitely not right.

Yeah, problems. I have a jailbroken 3G in China. No signal now… lots of problems, but any solutions?

Ditto here with the battery problems, plus it just seems more buggy than before – sometimes I can’t pick up calls, or it takes a while before the call is terminated when I press ‘End Call’. Also service seems to come and go suddenly… and my phone is 2 months old, never been jailbroken or anything…

Why oh why Apple did you do this, just to catch out some jailbreak users who probably didn’t even upgrade anyway?

my iPhone battery life not only sucks, the phone randomly shuts down, then drains the battery.

i too am experiencing problems with the battery charge after upgrading to 3.1.3

i do have a first gen ipod touch, but the battery life was just fine and dandy before i switched to 3.1.3 firmware.

i’ll charge it up overnight, and then after 5 minutes of wifi use, or 5 minutes of gaming, the battery goes down to 20%. then, after about 15 minutes of being in standby mode, the battery meter shows that my battery charge is back up to about 60%.

my wi-fi is off when not in use, and so is push for emails and so forth…i’m really trying to figure this out because i know it’s kind of hard to find a replacement battery for a first gen, so i want to make absolutely sure it’s not a firmware problem before i get a new battery. i’m actually glad to know that i’t's not just me who’s having this problem.

I’ve noticed two issues. Battery life does seem to be shortlived vs before. The main problem I’ve noticed, however, is my wi-fi. Before the update I could work online from the iPod for hours with no problem. Since the update I can barely even get on, there’s almost always a single dot for the signal, even if I sit it on top of the wireless router. Before I maintained an full strong signal strength. It really sucks! I wish I could back out of the update.

I am having issues downloading version 3.1.3
I have been trying to download it for my ipod touch since it has been out and it will download so far and an error message will pop up that pretty much says something occured while trying to download and that i need to be connect to the internet and to try again when my computers internet connection is fully functional. I would like to know why this keeps happeneing

I have been having nothing BUT problems with my iPhone since the upgrade. I have exchanged a phone (because I have extended Apple Care) about 4 times. Disclaimer, I think one of the 4 in the past month was a refurbished one, and it had it’s own set of very different problems.

I noticed the problem when my camera shutter wouldn’t open. Figuring it was a sync issue, I tried to sync and it would only let me restore my phone. I have restored, I have set up as a new phone over and over. I am now dealing with a major loss of data (in the notes app and saved “favorites” under the phone section) and the camera worked for all of a day.

Then when I tried to sync it, I got an error code and it wouldn’t let me put apps or my music back on. After 30 minutes on the phone with customer service, nothing had changed (on 4th total restore, 2nd try with setting up as new phone). The really weird part was the apps that come with the phone were located where I had arranged them with the other apps, but any downloaded apps wouldn’t show. And, the phone was registering “other” data (the orange color) at 11 GB+…when there was nothing on the phone.

Then, I loaded up everything, external hard drive, computer, iPhone, iPod, shuffle…and made an appointment at the apple store. The Genius sat with me, we made sure the apps loaded and the camera worked. Then we made sure I could download some music (instead of sitting through the whole process of downloading 1,400 songs) camera worked for an album. But, a day later the camera shutter won’t open and the battery sat at “full” all day yesterday–after me using it non-stop, which I knew wasn’t the case, so I turned it off and back on, and sure enough it was “low battery 20%.”

I have a PC and I’m running vista, but iPhones are supposed to work cross platformed and SOMETHING is not.

Don’t worry, AT&T–I’m quickly coming back around on a blackberry!

Yep, I had my phone replaced when I first purchased it last year after 4 attmepts at the store and jumping though every hoop they have, to get one with a battery that was good. finally a month later and a new phone, everything was super until this last 3.1.3 update and here we are again. I am seriousy concidering just the Ipod touch (much lighter) and a regular cell phone. who needs to spend this many hours on a battery issue! 7 months of use and at least 3 of those months are spent coddling the damn thing.

After upgrading to my Ipod Touch to 3.1.3 from 3.1.2 it turned into a brick and no longer is recognised by any PC’s i plug it into….:(

I purchased an apple iphone 3Gs for my son 18th birthday present. In less than two weeks of getting the phone on contract he’s already having problems with it. The iphone was fully charged on the day, and the next minute we knew it had switched of completely, for the entire day. There was no power connection at all. My son put the iphone back on charged overnight and when he woke up the next morning the phone was working again. He is now in NZ for a holiday and the damn iphone is still having the same problem. HE’S ONLY HAD THE IPHONE FOR THREE WEEKS NOW, and no he hasn’t added any applications to it yet.

After 3.1.3 upgrade my phone cannot always “find” the phone network, even when it is strong. This is noticeable when I dial someone and wait and wait while the phone “searches” for the signal that used to be “right there.”! It also seems now to drop more calls, but not being able to connect and dial is a problem PLUS sometimes when it does connect, I cannot hear the party or they cannot hear me. Finally, there is the delay – a call comes in and I slide the bar to answer and…no dice! It just sits there ringing, and I cannot answer the call. Note — ALL my problems are with phone functionality, although I have noticed some delay in hitting keys while in Safari.

as we have gathered, the battery issue is highly evident.. anyone actually have any solutions to this problem? is it possible to resolve without downgrading the firmware?

Well I have the same issues, I have 2 3GS and 1 3G and right after installing 3.1.3 both 3GS phones work just fine but the 3G all of a sudden depending on the the time and the position of the moon does something different. Sometimes it finds cell phone signal, sometimes it doesn’t find the sim card and sometimes iTunes can not recognize the iphone. If I shut off the phone and turn it back on I have to restore. I just drove two hours to the nearest Apple store and they hooked it up and said that the firmware is interacting with the hardware and that I would have to buy a new phone and there is no way to go back to 3.1.2.

not sure if anyone else has had this issue… but after my download and resync… my OTHER was filled to 6G and then my music is gone? any insight on what this “other” stuff is.

Just spoke to Apple – even though I downloaded 3.1 and now my battery will not even last past 30 minutes on a phone call or 20 minutes just listening to aol radio – I get to pay for a new battery as their solution.

I dont see how it is fair for Apple to debate people about an issue that they were involved in causing. They say that forums like this one are not representative of all Apple customers going through battery life issues.

Up til yesterday, when I got sick of this battery going down – did I even know that this forum existed. I am not a tech guy, I just want to fly on from LA to PHX and be able to listen to music without it shutting down by it’s self.

Get out your wallets if you download this platform, my worked fine until this happened.

The problem I have encountered since 1.3.1. is that all 3rd party apps crash upon launch. That is quite irritating but not as much as the battery issue, which I haven’t really noticed. hope it doesn’t evolve into a placebo…

really wanting to downgrade to 1.3 by restoring, but sometimes better leave the dogs sleeping

I hadn’t synced for a while because I stopped using the computer I had been syncing to (just getting bits through the air from exchange). All was great, I would listen to NPR on my rides to and from work and not drain the batter much. This is my 3G. I sync’d the other day and it pushed the version up to 3.1.3. My battery life was IMMEDIATELY effected. The phone got crazy hot (I could feel it on my leg in my pocket – not good). I then switched to a new 3GS I had gotten for my wife which she decided not to use (go figure). I pulled my sim card and started to use it as a brand new phone and it had no problems. Today I went into work and restored my data to it and in the process it said it was going to upgrade to 3.1.3. The 3GS then was having problems the moment it was done restoring. Battery draining like crazy and getting very hot. I turned off all push, wifi, bluetooth and location services. It was still hot and burning through the battery. I had to turn the thing off for it to cool down. I’m really bummed to see that this has been a problem since early February and there doesn’t seem to be a solution to the problem. I was very happy with my iPhone, and now I am completely annoyed because I have to think about how I use it rather than just use it. BIG PROBLEM!

How can Apple ignore this?! Are they too busy counting their benjamins or something? The only reason I upgraded my iphone to 3.1.3 is because some stupid App required so. Now I’m sitting here with a phone that drains over 45% in six hours standby. Yes, real standby! Goto sleep at 100% and I wake up six hours later and it says 56%

Some details; Iphone 3G, Push: Off, 3G: Off, Location Services; Off, Wifi: On.

This is my standard configuration, I always have these settings. – 3.1.2. used to last two days.

yes,i also encountered such experience. I fully charged my iPhone before I went to sleep.at the morning,approx 7:30 am,I saw the battery meter shows 51%. The battery lifes dropped almost 50% in just about 6 hours without usage.
I even put the push notification, wifi and 3G off. I wonder how this could happened.
btw, i’m also using 3.1.3.

…I forgot to specify that if the iPhone is in standby, it doesn’t lose the charge.

With all the shite that Apple has been throwing recently AND this perennial problem of sporadic battery charge/discharge, makes me want to smack whoever is responsible upside the head.

ARE YOU LOSING IT ALREADY STEVE!! I mean WTF, u dont even acknowledge genuine issues in your products now?? think all these users are crazy here??

Me too- hot, short battery life., randomly freezing