OS4 multitasking and battery drainage

Question

I have seen some discussion of this, but it is pretty basic as changes go. After I upgraded to OS4 my battery life all but disappeared. The problem: multitasking applications running in the background without my knowing it. These applications sat quietly alone in the previous OS causing no harm. Now they drain the battery down rapidly. The solution: double press the home button, the bottom row of applications you now see are likely four in a large number you didn't know are running continuously. Press and hold one of the apps gently until they show a minus sign. Now close most or all of your apps. Swipe left to right to see the many apps you had running in the background and close them to conserve your battery. This strikes me as a clumsy system but at the moment I don't see any other way to protect your battery.

Answer 1

David, I don't think you're going to get anywhere with this guy Allan.
He's more concerned about how you spell his name and making you look like an idiot than giving meaningful information. Since 2002, you've made 385 posts, roughly one a week. It's looking like this poor fellow is posting more than ten a day, every day, for years. You pointed out how many tens of thousands this guy has made - someone needs to get away from the keyboard more - there's a world out there, though I did notice that he's in Texas in the dead of Summer.
I love my cars - I kept my last one for 10 years. I love my cell phones - they had to pry my Samsung flip phone from my hands after more than two years to get an iPhone. I freakin' loved my 3gs and then made the mistake of my life. I upgraded.
Yes, I went online and was one of the chosen 600,000 successful pre-orders. I was a first-day recipient of an iPhone 4 - it took me all of 5 days to take it back to the AT&T store. What a colossal disappointment. And the poor AT&T guys are fundamentally clueless about what might remedy some of my problems.
I'm in New York - a known "challenging" area for AT&T. The 4 could not hold onto calls anywhere near as well as my 3gs - and I kept it in my leather 3GS case (with a piece of cardboard to compensate for the thinner 4 case) to avoid shorting out the antenna. After a boatload of screen freezes and error messages and my cheekbone repeatedly pressing keys on the phone, I took it back to the AT&T store, where they had the balls to hit me with a restocking fee. I won't change my retirement plans over $20, but man, that was nervy.
However, in the interim, I gave my old 3gs to my daughter, still with OS 3 on it. I then had to get a new 3gs to replace the 4 I had returned, and it came standard with OS4. What a week it's been.
The first word is "cluster" - you can fill in the second one.
I can't make it through a day on a single battery charge - this is dramatically worse than my original 3gs battery life which was excellent for the 8 months I owned it and used OS3.
So, now I'm stuck - I tried to follow your trials and app issues, as well as the link provided and the condescending suggestions by his holliness (the extra "L" is in case he loses the one in his name again.)
I am a very lightweight user - on Weds, I made a total of 46 minutes of phone calls. The rest of my iPhone use was checking and reading mail frequently (none with downloads or attachments - just plain-old emails) and I performed less than 5 searches using the Google app and a few checks of the weather on the Weather Channel app. Shortly after dinner, I got a battery warning and by 8PM, the phone shut down - this followed a 100% reading when I unplugged it from the Apple-issued wall charger that morning.
So, if there are any other folks following this thread, or Alllllllan, if you feel you can play nicely in the sandbox, I'm open to what I can tweak on my 3gs with 4.0 running, so I can make it back to my charger at bedtime with a working phone.
I had to be an early adopter - couldn't just shut up and enjoy my 3GS with OS3. Boy, this just *****.