Q: iPhone 4s Battery Life?

FiniteAffinity.

Many thanks for a long and helpful response. I'm on O2; as I understand it, O2 don't lock handsets in the way some providers do.

I'm glad you got your problem solved and I'd be a fool not to at least try this line of thought to see if it helps my situation. Hopefully bright raven is seeing this too; it could be good news for both of us.

As it goes I'm travelling soon and will have to get a local sim, so that will give me an opportunity to see if your situation and mine are similar, if you pardon the pun.

Apple's bug reporters informed me, after monitoring my phone's logs of battery and baseband, that with the TMobile SIM, the baseband was crashing every few mins, and restarting - this is what causes the battery drain and "phantom" usage.

I'm interested to know how you got that help; was it in-store or via their phone helpline? I'd like them to run that test for me...

If you can try another provider's SIM, and see if the problem goes away, this will verify your problem. If it is indeed a SIM problem you have, then the only solution at the moment seems to be to get your phone replaced (an apple store genius should do it, regardless of where you bought your phone).

I'm a little confused by this bit. You saw that the sim from your provider was the issue and that other providers' sims were ok, but Apple's response was to change the phone? Is that inferring that they know the readers are not robust and certain networks will have trouble with them? I'm baffled why Apple wouldn't just pass the buck on this one. Very strange. Again, I'm glad for your sake that they did, it seems to have worked in your favour.

One more thing - the serial number of the defective phone began with DNQG..., whilst the new working one begins C39G...

Mine starts DNPG.

Hope you get your problem sorted... I had mine for over a month, and I know how depressing it is having a practically unusable phone.

Thanks for your help.

It seems everyone is experiencing slightly different problems, some are close to others' experiences and others seem totally out-there compared to their own findings. Take this mini back-and-forth regarding sim cards that has cropped up recently. All those non-sim users across the pond will be reading this thinking we're nuts and that sim cards can't possibly be the problem. Who knows.

Excessive usage while idle seems to be the cause of battery drain but that in itself doesn't begin to establish the actual problem or problems.

I'm increasingly thinking that we are not linked in this thread by a common problem but merely a common symptom.

Hi zSkeptic

I have to admit that I have yet to do the full restore thing. I've seen mixed reviews here and as it cause me a big problem, I've avoided it so far.

I'm going to continue down a line of thought focusing on the sim card or its reader. If no improvement happens, I'll restore as new...

This is my first iphone 4S.... I never had smartphone before. I just got my phone 2 days ago. I noticed that the battery life is like really bad and reading from all those posts I am really concern about mine. I turn off everything like location, notification and etc. and let the phone died till 0% and charged full like 7hours ago.  Its been 7 hours for standby and 53min.usage after I charged full and the battery percentage is 83% right now. All I did was just checking my facebook and email and it drained 17% of battery. Is this normal?  and after I read post I checked serial number and it start with DNQG.. should I be concern?  or am I okay with my phone? I don't know what to do and am really confused.

KSnj wrote:

 

This is my first iphone 4S.... I never had smartphone before. I just got my phone 2 days ago. I noticed that the battery life is like really bad and reading from all those posts I am really concern about mine. I turn off everything like location, notification and etc. and let the phone died till 0% and charged full like 7hours ago.  Its been 7 hours for standby and 53min.usage after I charged full and the battery percentage is 83% right now. All I did was just checking my facebook and email and it drained 17% of battery. Is this normal?  and after I read post I checked serial number and it start with DNQG.. should I be concern?  or am I okay with my phone? I don't know what to do and am really confused.

Be sure to go through these steps to address the battery after updating to iOS 5.0.1:

1. Reset all settings (settings app-> general-> reset)

2. Go through initial setup steps (lang, wifi, siri, enable location, etc) and choose setup as new phone (don't worry your apps, data, contacts, mail will still be there). Do NOT restore from iCloud or iTunes (It can copy back corrupt settings)

3. Turn off system location services timezone and iAd

4. Fully discharge battery (until you get the spinning wheel and it shuts off)

5. Fully recharge battery (overnight if possible)

In my experience this improves the Standby battery drain issue significantly in most cases.  It reduces drain from 2-4% or more per hr to 0.5% or less. It has worked for many, many users now. If it does not work after a few try's you may have a real battery or hardware issue and should contact Apple.  Good Luck!

More details on my thread here if needed:https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3484755

I did all of that. Followed every step and I got 83% battery left after 7hour stanby and 53 min usage.

Apple please fix this problem and don't hide from it! And for those suggesting sim card problems, I have used Vodafone uk and three uk micro sims in my 4s and still have 5% drain every hour in standby. Have had my phone replaced in apple store already and no change! What a shame!

So I was able to resolve this issue for me this evening.  The root cause is an odd software problem, which was fairly simple to fix, but curious as to how (and why) it was occuring in the first place.

The telltale symptom is seeing the white location services icon appear on the lock screen or home screen.  If you see it persistently there, that's the cause of your problem.  To address:

- Visit "Settings" then "Location Services" on your device

- Next, Scroll and look for the purple arrow next to the "on/off" next to the app name.  Deselect the app showing purple.

- Go back to the home screen.  Note if the white location services arrow still appears.

- If gone, reboot the phone.  Swipe to unlock once rebooted.  Look for the location services arrrow to see if reappears once you unlock the phone and arrive on the home screen.

- If it does reappear, repeat the process to look for the offending app.

In my testing, I had to go through this cycle twice.  One you have found the bad apps, you can try reinstalling them to "fix them" -- but it does beg the question, how can relatively innocuous apps (the big offender on my phone was an app for a hotel chain) keep location services stuck to "on" in error -- perpetually no less -- when they don't fit into the class of apps that are allowed to run in the background?

Hope this helps,

Matt

there is nothing you can do.  it is what it is.  i lose 40 percent an hour.  and i have done EVERYTHING that all of the thousands of posts suggest, and more.  with two phones. the only thing left is to wipe clean, load as a new phone, and only synch three apps - twitter and some news to see if the problem exists.  my theory is huge comflict with IOS and apps.  not a firmware issue.

as to where is apple - GOOD QUESTION - you would think they would have the courtesy of stepping in here and saying something.  Silence is so rude, so poor customer service.  You can believe this is a HUGE issue - it would behoove them to issue a press release or DO SOMETHING, EVEN POST HERE SO WE KNOW THEY ARE ALIVE and care about customers

I have all location services disabled. I am still experiencing the rapid loss. My girlfriend has an iPhone 4. We fully charged both phones and set then down. After an hour of standby she was at 99% I was at 92%. Lost two percent typing this message.

This works for me, I delete Dropbox from my Iphone 4S and now the battery is 100% after about 5 hours in stanby. Before that I try everything. But my wife 4S have another problem, the phone is sending data to somwhere or receiving data and I already turn off everything  except the celular conection. The phone sends about 35 megs of  data some days  at about 12.30 Am. I already call few times to my celuar provider ( ATT ) and Apple and  we agree not to pay for the excess of data.

Thanks and sorry for my English

EJS

@ejscfp

Also my iPhone 4S sends data over 3G when in standby (during the night) even that it is connected to Wifi. For this I turned off every thing I thought that it might require constant sync, like for example Calendar updates, Mail updates, iCloud (even "Find my iPhone"), etc.

When the Celular Data (3G) is on I get around 1.0-1.5 % battery drain per hour in standby (with al lot of settings off, calendar -> manual, email -> manual, system location -> off, etc.). This means that in one day I get ~25% of battery drain just for keeping the phone "alive" with 3G even if I am all the time (95% of time) in area with very good Wifi coverage (home & work place)! This is too much for my liking.

BUT if I keep the Cellular Data (3G) off then I get less 0.5% battery drain per hour in standy!!! This drain is fine for me and this way I was able to get almost 4 days of battery life!

So now I am turning on the Cellular Data (3G) whenever I need it and turning it off after I am done with it (plus a hard reset) just to get a good battery life!!!

I really do not like that I have to tell to my _SMART_ phone when it should use 3G and when it should use Wifi instead of 3G.

I just came across a thread about people having excessive data charges on iOS5. I checked my own use and it went from under 200 MB per month on iOS4 (3GS) to over 700 mb in the past 21 days on my 4S.  This would be consistent with my  unexplained hour of usage while on standby for 10 hours at work (3G). This also would explain my excessive battery drain at work. I just can't figure out where the data is going. iCloud on/off doesn't seem to be it and I've turned off tons of recommended features.

Good thing I have an unlimited data plan.

That's exactly what I found out over the weekend.

But I can't tell which process or app is causing the 3G data connection even if im connected to wifi.

I did several things over the weekend to find a reason why battery drain has increased dratically, starting on week 47 last month.

I restored the phone with iTunes and set it up as a new phone with no success. What I noticed, even when the phone is connected to the WiFi network at home it is sending 3G data every few minutes (I can hear this in my computers speakers if the phone is near to them ;o) ) and that is exactly when the high battery drain starts.

By the way a backup of my iPhone 4s works great on my wifes iPhone 4 with a bettery drain of about 0,5% per hour.

Right now I disabled all iCloud services and set all mail account to "manual" after that i did a reset by holding down the power and home button for a few seconds. All other services such as notifications, GPS and 3G are turned on. Battery drain right now <1% per hour.

An hour ago I opend the calendar to force the google exchange account to sync my calendar - battery drain still below 1%.

Now I just opened my email to sync my google mail account. In about an hour we will see how that works.

Except "system activity monitor" I have not opend any other app since the restart yesterday evening.

I closed all apps that were on the multitasking bar BEFORE the restart!

I'll let you know if there are any news.

@DJ.Jan

Also I do not know which process or app is causing the 3G data connection. I even turned off the iMessage and "Find my iPhone" and still my iPhone prefers to connect to 3G over Wifi !

For those who want to see if they get 3G transferr during the night just go to General -> Usage -> Celular Usage and there one may see "Cellular Network Data" Sent/Received. I usually "Reset the statistics" in the evening and in the mornings I have in the best case at least ~70 KB/night transffer over 3G (in standby) even that all night long the iPhone was connected to my Wifi and all apps/processes (which I know of) were set to manual sync.

It really looks like "iPhone 4S" and/or "iOS 5" favours Cellular Data (3G) over WIFI even when connected to WIFI!

Hi FiniteAffinity,

             I am on Vodafone Ireland. My brother in law is on O2 ireland and his is perfect. Couldn't switch over SIMs because the phones are network locked. My Serial # begins with DNPG.. which is interesting since it is close to your original. Vodafone are picking it up the phone today so hopefully I will be issued with a new one that works.