Q: iPhone 4s Battery Life?

After reading a few of these pages it appears that the battery issue is a software issue. Some rogue process or app is hanging and causing the battery drain. I don't see this as being a hardware issue.

I'll add my experience to this and some observations.

The battery drain on my 4S appears to happen primarily when calendar alerts occur. What I have seen is that an alert for an event in the calendar comes up on the lock screen, the time of the alert (on the right of the banner) flashes between when the alarm was scheduled for (say 10:00 AM) and how long ago it went off (say, 5 minutes ago.) During this flashing phase, the battery drains significantly faster AND the device warms up alarmingly.

I have also noticed increased drain when using 3rd party apps that play music (Spotify specifically) or when multitasking on the phone (listening to music and reading facebook last night on the train.) This not only caused the phone to drain the battery quickly, but caused the phone to, what I can only describe as, refresh the home screen or possibly a soft reboot. What happpened was the open apps (iPod and Facebook) closed and I was briefly presented with a black screen with a loading circle, then the lock screen. The phone also became quite warm during usage.

I got my 4S 64GB on day one and the battery has been pretty bad. Just scrolling through settings for a couple minutes drops my battery a couple percent. I've tried pretty much all the suggestions:

• iCloud syncing off
• Time zone location service off
• Reset network settings
• Turned off push mail
• Restored to new phone (without restoring settings)
• Restored to previous backup
• Several full discharge/recharge cycles

Those are just a few things I tried. Some mornings I wake up and the phone is piping hot. Other mornings I wake up (with having it plugged in all night) and it never charges above 96% unless I unplug and re-plugin.

Hope to hear from Apple soon about this issue.  The battery on my 4S 32GB drains before my eyes. Got rid of my 4 which never had any issues...wondering why I made the change!  Hoping that there is a software update or SOMETHING to fix this problem.  I, like everyone else, has tried all the various "fixes" but nothing seems to work.  Come on Apple, acknowledge the problem and FIX IT!  I love the phone and want to keep it but hey, not always near a power supply.

I've noticed that mine will drop quite a bit just in txt messaging someone, while typing the txt message the battery percentage starts dropping, usually it seems like 1-2% just within the time I'm typing it out. And that goes for every txt message. I've drained the battery then charged it back up, I keep it on the charger at night when I go to bed, I can't get through a full day of work on a full charge, unless I don't use it at all.

I have been experiencing terrible battery life on my 64GB iPhone 4S with AT&T.  I have obviously, by the amount of people that have posted the exact same thing, noticed the severity of the issue. My battery will go down apprx. 5 percent an hour, which calculates to a roughly 24 hour standby time, nearly ten percent of the said 200 hours. I love the 4S, considering I had the obsolete 3GS before. Apple, if your reading this, I would HATE to return this phone for something as silly as a bad battery.  PLEASE do something about this!! Recall it! Update it! Something other than another "bumper", all of us first few 4S owners would greatly appreciate it.

Same here. Awful battery life. I will lose about 20% over night (less than 8 hours). Also, I have a list of ~80-100 Diagnostic and Usage items in my Diagnostic & Usage Data section. I hope there's a fix soon.

After the iOS5 update, even my 3GS was draining faster.  But my 4S is draining even faster.  I'm sure it has something to do with the extra notifications that I added.  I keep mine pretty restricted when it comes to notifications and things of that nature. 

I just turned off contacts syncing to icloud, but I don't want to turn icloud off altogether.  Doesn't that defeat the purpose of icloud? 

To me it seems like a iOS5 programming issue since my 3GS performed perfectly fine under iOS4 and only experienced the draining after updating. 

What is so disturbing is that the battery drain is so rapid without any usage - no phone calls, no browsing, no downloads....  Not a very "mobile" phone if we have to plug in every 12 hours...

I have expereince 10% loss of battery per hour, without out any active applications, while the phone is in Standy By mode. This is definatlly a bug in battery managment. I hope apple can get a fix out soon.

lol, the 3gs is by no means obsolete when it still supports ios5, you did know that did you??

I suggest you guys do what I did, and return the iPhone.  If this is ultimately a software issue that can be fixed with a patch, I'll buy it back.  Otherwise, this could be an unfixable hardware issue with the new dual-antenna guzzling the battery every time it tries to connect with a network tower.

Just a ditto that I am disappointed in my battery life and yes its ATT, 64GB IOS5 iphone 4S. Location services, calendring, just lots of emails EAT the battery! I want a replacement!

I am experiencing strange charging issues, I have had several occasions where left plugged in all night the battery icon is at 100% then as soon as i unplug it drops to 97%, this morning it dropped to 99% just by unplugging. I have also had charge all night, but find it has only charged to 95-97%. Once it has been plugged back in it goes up to 100%.

Battery life on my 4s 32gb is sooo poor. Today, full charge I have had 2h 35min usage, 14h 3 mins standby. currently ticking down at 44%. This might not seem to bad compared to some, but I have everything turned off, everything that you can do to conserve battery I have done. What is the point in having this new amazing speed and technology when we have to turn it all off???

I have been totally disappointed with this issue, and has ruined my experience of the new phone. I hope that apple can find a solution to this issue ASAP.

Apart from that the phone is truely amazing, super fast, good reception where previously very poor with my 3gs. siri has proved pretty useless so far, but amusing for a while.

please, please, please apple fix this issue!!!!

same thing here.  not as fast as some on this board, but I lose about 5 - 10% an hour with fairly limited usage, no calls, a few text messages, maybe a few e-mails.