I recently gave in and bought an iPhone, primarily because I can consolidate my four primary email accounts and check them easily. My work provided Blackberry does not make this task simple or pleasant. 
I’ve read many rave reviews over the months since this chic product has become available on the market so I was expecting a pretty happy relationship with my new phone.
I must admit, it’s a sleek and thoughtfully engineered product. It can do almost everything you’d ever want a pocket device to do. Check e-mail? No problem. Surf the web? Yep. Locate yourself on GPS and then go someplace else? Easy. Watch a movie? In theory. You see, the iPhone has a major flaw – the battery life. If you use it to do everything it can do all the time, you will have about 30-60 minutes before you need to plug it in and get charging.
Luckily, Apple offers a few simple tips for extending your iPhone’s battery life:
- Minimize use of location services: Applications that actively use location services such as Maps may reduce battery life. To disable location services, go to Settings > General > Location Services or use location services only when needed.
- Fetch new data less frequently: Applications such as Mail can be set to fetch data wirelessly at specific intervals. The more frequently email or other data is fetched, the quicker your battery may drain. To fetch new data manually, from the Home screen choose Settings > Fetch New Data and tap Manually. To increase the fetch interval, go to Settings > Fetch New Data and tap Hourly. Note that this is a global setting and applies to all applications that do not support push services.
- Turn off push mail: If you have a push mail account such as Yahoo!, MobileMe or Microsoft Exchange, turn off push mail when you don’t need it. Go to Settings > Fetch New Data and set Push to Off. Messages sent to your push email accounts will now be received on your phone based on the global Fetch setting rather than as they arrive.
- Auto-check fewer email accounts: You can save power by checking fewer email accounts. This can be accomplished by turning off an email account or by deleting it. To turn off an account, go to Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars, choose an email account, and set Account to Off. To remove an account, go to Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars, choose an email account, and tap Delete Account.
- Minimize use of third-party applications: Excessive use of applications such as games that prevent the screen from dimming or shutting off or applications that use location services can reduce battery life.
- Turn off Wi-Fi: If you rarely use Wi-Fi, you can turn it off to save power. Go to Settings > Wi-Fi and set Wi-Fi to Off. Note that if you frequently use your iPhone to browse the web, battery life may be improved by using Wi-Fi instead of cellular data networks.
- Turn off Bluetooth: If you rarely use a Bluetooth headset or car kit, you can turn off Bluetooth to save power. Go to Settings > General > Bluetooth and set Bluetooth to Off.
- Use Airplane Mode in low- or no-coverage areas: Because your iPhone always tries to maintain a connection with the cellular network, it may use more power in low- or no-coverage areas. Turning on Airplane Mode can increase battery life in these situations; however, you will be unable to make or receive calls. To turn on Airplane Mode, go to Settings and set Airplane Mode to On.
- Adjust brightness: Dimming the screen is another way to extend battery life. Go to Settings > Brightness and drag the slider to the left to lower the default screen brightness. In addition, turning on Auto-Brightness allows the screen to adjust its brightness based on current lighting conditions. Go to Settings > Brightness and set Auto-Brightness to On.
- Turn off EQ: Applying an equalizer setting to song playback on your iPhone can decrease battery life. To turn EQ off, go to Settings > iPod > EQ and tap Off. Note that if you’ve added EQ to songs directly in iTunes, you’ll need to set EQ on iPhone to Flat in order to have the same effect as Off because iPhone keeps your iTunes settings intact. Go to Settings > iPod > EQ and tap Flat.
- Turn off 3G: Using 3G cellular networks loads data faster, but may also decrease battery life, especially in areas with limited 3G coverage. To disable 3G, from the Home screen choose Settings > General > Network and set Enable 3G to Off. You will still be able to make and receive calls and access cellular data networks via EDGE or GPRS where available.
If you follow every tip, your iPhone is immediately only half as useful. That means that most iPhone users, myself included, will spend a lot of time turning features on and off.
It may be that Apple will develop a better battery for the first generation iPhone. In the meantime, the included battery leaves something to be desired. In particular, DO NOT leave any e-mail account set to push. My work account (Exchange server) was set to push e-mail and kept failing so it would try over and over. This drained the battery repeatedly and caused me a great deal of heartburn.
If you really have to use every feature of the iPhone all the time, you might need to buy Mophie’s iPhone battery extender, which purports to add an additional 8 hours of talk time to your iPhone. My best guess is that eight hours of talk time equals about 2 hours of movie watching, 100 e-mail account push attempts or a few hours of internet browsing.