How to solve your iPod Touch battery problems with iOS 4

Like many people I upgraded my iPod Touch to iOS4… In general it
works well and the new folders feature is brilliant… I am not so
keen on the multitasking and that isn’t Apple’s fault, I have an
Android phone and I don’t like the multitasking on that either… The
most used apps on my phone and my iPod Touch are their task managers
to kill off the running apps… Anyway I digress…

Since my iPod Touch has the same processor as the iPhone 3GS, iOS 4 is
quite quick and I don’t see any lags or delays that older iPod Touch
users can see… But one thing that was bad was the battery life… I
say “was” as I have now found a solution!

During the first night after my iPod Touch had iOS 4 installed, the
battery went flat while it was in “sleep” mode. The next night I made
sure that there were no back ground tasks running, but again the same
thing. In the end I stumbled upon using airplane mode to silence the
network activity and wow, the battery didn’t go flat. Now I could use
it as an iPod and a games device without the battery going flat, but
it was pain to have to keep flipping in and out of airplane mode all
the time.

Finally I came across some instructions which finally tamed by iPod
Touch and let me leave airplane mode off without worrying about my
battery.

The trick is to make sure that there is no background network access.
To do this you need to turn off Notifications, Fetch New Data (for
email) and New Invitation Alerts (for Calendars):

Settings -> Notifications = Off

Settings -> Mail, Contacts, Calendars -> Fetch New Data -> Push = Off

Settings -> Mail, Contacts, Calendars -> Calendars -> New Invitation
Alerts = Off

In fact the first two where switched off already, but that third one
caught me, I didn’t realize that this little “New Invitation Alerts”
setting could flatten my battery so quick.

So there you have it, now my battery life is better. I still have a
sneaky feeling that the game, video and Internet usage is down but I
need to double yet that with some real numbers!

Gary