A couple times recently I’ve noticed that my iphone battery was unexpectedly drained; surprising given that normal usage hadn’t yet reduced me even to half power. I was pretty worried that something was wrong with my new phone for a short while but after struggling with google I discovered apple’s inconspicuous warning that leaving your iphone plugged into a sleeping computer can drain the batteries. iTunes 7.3 adds the ‘feature’ of silently refusing to enter sleep mode with a connected iphone but this doesn’t help if you plug in your phone while the lid is closed. What I couldn’t find mentioned anywhere is the fact that the power brick will drain the battery as well if left unplugged. I figured I’d post a warning just so no one gets worried that their expensive new phone is (seriously) broken.

Personally I think this bug is a bit more annoying than the battery drain caused by a sleeping laptop. I didn’t have any particular reason to plug my phone into a closed laptop so it won’t be any difficulty to avoid doing so in the future. However, it’s quite common for people to unplug electronic devices to free up an outlet and those people might not always be me. I kinda doubt that this issue can be solved by a firmware update but hopefully apple can replace the power bricks with something that works around this problem. At the very least they should warn people about connecting an iphone to an unplugged power brick.

I still love my iphone and think it’s the most amazing handheld gadget I’ve ever seen but that’s no reason not to acknowledge its flaws. I really dislike the emotional fans who resist even the slightest suggestion that their favorite product isn’t perfect and I’m not going to become one no matter how cool the iphone may be.