I’ve been having one heck of a time with my iPhone 3G.   I really have…and YES, over and above the problems that everyone and their brother have been documenting all over the Internet.  I’ve been tweeting up a storm lately about how my iPhone 3G has been dropping calls, crashing, and more importantly, had the worst battery life known to man. At best, my battery would last about 90 minutes between charges, at the outside, 120 minutes; but that’s only if I had the thing in front of an air conditioning vent, keeping the battery cool.

I took my iPhone to the Oak Brook, IL Apple Store today, and had resident Genius Extrodinaire, Pat take a quick look at it. Yep… Totally defective.  He said the battery had the worst standby time he has EVER seen in an iPhone/iPhone 3G; and it was likely the first defective iPhone 3G that he has seen.  To make a long story short, he swapped it out without any other questions.  I got the very LAST white replacement model they had in stock.  I then watched him as he totally wiped my old iPhone of all content so that my “top secret” information wouldn’t fall into “enemy” hands.

I am in the process of restoring this new iPhone from a backup, and we’ll see how things go from here on in. It did NOT come with the 2.0.2 update on it. I had to update the device to that version before the restore would work.  Then I’m gonna sync it, and see how things go…

I’m planning on giving it a full charge and then leaving it off the battery until I go to bed tonight, or it dies, which ever comes first.  I need to give the battery a bit of exercise, and see how long it will last after a full charge…ESPECIALLY with the 2.0.2 software, now that I have a device with a (supposedly/hopefully) non-defective battery.

I saw this at iPhone Alley and had to relay the information.  It appears that one user’s iPhone 3G’s battery got so hot, it melted the plastic backing, killed the sync connector and burnt his leg.  You can see the article here.  The picture, below, came from their site, so all credit to them for the pic. (Thanks, guys!!)

I’ve noticed that my iPhone 3G gets very hot, and it seems that when it does heat up, the battery drains very quickly, in under 2 hours, in fact. However, I’ve noticed that if you cool the phone off and keep it cool, the battery drain stops and returns to normal. I’ve got a phone cradle tatooed to my dash, and it sits right in front of the air conditioner vent. 

I kinda did this on purpose, not to cool the phone, but because it was the best place to put it. The decreased battery drain is just a bonus, I guess. However, I wonder if better venting might help increase battery life?  Why not join us in the discussion and give us your 2 cents..?