IPhone dies while using radio app 3g plugged in?

Question

I am curently in the hospital under going antibiotics treatment and will be stuck for 2 weeks. So I thought to myself I better bring my charger and I should be all good. I have noticed on several occasions that while using a radio app or watching a movie over 3G my phone dies even while plugged in? It don't make sense. I thought if I have a full battery and plugged in I should be good. But when listening for a couple of hours even with the screen locked it shuts off and I get the too low to turn on battery icon? Is this a major flaw that apple forgot to mention that the phone draws more power than it takes in while charging or plugged in?
This is not acceptable. My phone is not jailbroken and I am not tethering. So what's up with this?

Answer 1

I don't live in that area (I'm in northern Orange County, CA), but my neighbor and I have been having the same problem since last Saturday (Feb. 5) in the area around where we live (we both have iPhone 4's, and they still work fine in other areas). Note that we have full bars, and the "3G" symbol on the display, but get no data over 3G; disabling 3G allows access using EDGE (slowly), and phone/texting works fine (it's just the 3G data in our neighborhood that's broken). Since we both have WiFi in our homes, we didn't initially identify the 3G problem; what we both noticed was a sudden increase in iPhone power consumption (beginning last Saturday) when we are in our neighborhood (even when the phones are idle); I used to go 3-4 days on a charge, but now the battery drops at a rate of about 10%/hour when I'm around the house. Interestingly, my neighbor also has an iPad, and it doesn't exhibit the problem. Both phones and the iPad are running iOS V4.2.1. We've tried all the normal things (rebooting, clearing network settings, etc.), and nothing works. I spent some time on the phone last night with AT&T, and they are going to send someone out to check connectivity.