IOS 4.3.3 battery life has been significantly reduced

Since IOS 4.3, battery life on my 3GS has dropped from 6 to 2 days (I use a company SIM card with disabled internet access).

I turned off every feature like Ping, iTunes Store etc. and updated to 4.3.1, 4.3.2 and 4.3.3, without success.

I found the solution yesterday, cellular data must be turned on (while virtually all other network features have been turned off):

Settings -> General -> Network -> Cellular Data : ON

Wondering if this helps others as well. I'm also wondering if this applies only to SIM cards with disabled internet access (data transfer).

giulia spy wrote:

hi everybody...i've read all 10 pages...well

i have the same problem after 4.3.3 installed and tried to find a way, putting off

localization, push, wifi, bt...boring having an half-phone and no solution again

then searching on the web i 've read that many people found this solution great:

just turn off the applestore account on your iphone

and turn on all you need ...

after 5 hours ALL TURNED ON

only -2%

just remember that after a syncro with itunes

you will have to torn off again applestore account on the iphone

please try this way and let me know if it works for you too

love from italy

it works. thanks.

this is a joke. just to echo everone's comments on her, battery life has significantly reduced and the phone is very hot.

battery was on average on standby for at least 2 days, usage 5-6 hours. now leaving the house to go to work in the morning with battery at 100% im having to charge it again when i get home. listening to my music on the way home yesterday, battery levels dropped by 40% in 30 mins, with the phone burning a hole in my pocket.

the so called genius' dont have a clue, why is it so difficult to explain. they give me all the chat about turning apps off when not in use, turn off 3g etc but i already did this any way! there is something fundamentally wrong here. i support the idea that its the latest update as i updated recently, but werent people complaining about battery life in the last update? there doesnt seem to be any logic here.

i really dont want to do a wipe, but really dont know what to do. followed all other steps and still the same. by the way, battery drain slowed down when in flight mode (so suggest it could be a connection thing), disables email account, charging using both mains plug and USB is painfully slower than before.

sick of it to be honest. feel sorry for people who arent technically minded and wont have a clue whats going on. very poor performance from apple

It's really hard to understand what's going on at Apple. In my case, I had simply to turn on this setting:

Settings -> General -> Network -> Cellular Data : ON

It's definitively related to the cell function. I also took the SIM card out for a day (before I changed this setting), and the battery lost only a few percents.

After 4 days, I can confirm battery life is back to normal. Really a shame, that this bug needs months!!! to be fixed.

MONTHS?!!! This bug has been around for THREE YEARS.

Interesting.

But why do I have this problem since 4.3 and not before ?

Or do you think other settings I might have changed after the update to 4.3 have actually resolved the 4.3.x problem (whatever it was) and this is just another bug I ran into ?

Because I never had a battery life problem before updating to 4.3.

After every update some phones have this problem regardless of version. So it's likely that data in the phone gets corrupted in the update process, rather than a specific problem with the release version. It's also a symptom, not the root cause, because different solutions work for different users. Your solution is one that has only worked recently; I suspect in your case there was data to be sent just before the update that was already queued to the cellular network that the update interrupted. After the update the phone kept trying to send the data, but since cellular data was off it couldn't. When you turned it back on the backlog of queued data was sent. A guess, of course, but it's the only explanation I can think of.

I restored my iPhone4 replacement to 4.3.1 with no luck. I updated to 4.3.3 with no luck.

This phone was DFU'd when the Apple Store gave it to me. The only setting that has "fixed" the battery drain is to change my emails settings from PUSH to FETCH. (Which I did with the "Virgin" replacement initially to verify)

The battery drain has gone down from 10% battery consumption per hour with PUSH to 1% per hour with FETCH.

I wonder what the ramifications will be to users without this issue when iCloud goes live in Fall. (That is providing they do the iOS 5 update.)

I have given up trying to resolve my issue. Whether the phone pushes the mail accounts every 15 minutes or active syncs (PUSH) it every 15 minutes shouldn't make a difference. It is just mind boggling.

Lawrence, thanks for the information. if the process of the update is the issue rather than the update itself, does that meant that when you install the next update the bugs will be cleared? or does this mean that im just stuck with the problem? given that im still within my warrenty period, would swapping it for a new handset and not installing the latest update solve the problem?

Probably not. I have AppleCare and got a replacement phone which already had 4.3.3 on it. I tried it with syncing for a few days and had the issue. I then restored it to 4.3.1 from one of my backups when I wasn't having the issue. My problem still remains. Turning mail settings from push to fetch is the only setting by itself that has resolved my problem but if you read this entire thread you will find many different solutions resolved problems for the forum participants here. None of their suggestions worked for me and I spent weeks trying. Good luck!

Correction. I tried the new phone without syncing it for a fee days

The next update may or may not fix it, and downgrading (which is possible, but not supported by Apple) may or may not. The best thing to do is to try to find the app that is misbehaving and deleting, then reinstalling it (if it's 2rd party) or resetting it. If you have Exchange email try deleting the account, rebooting, and adding it back. Turn off the ping app, store, and game center. Reset network settings. There's a whole list in this thread, and one of them is likely (but not guaranteed) to fix it. What works for most is to restore the phone as new without reloading your backup. If this fixes it then add stuff back gradually.

If it doesn't fix it you may have a hardware problem that appeared coincidently with the update, or the update triggered a hardware failure. I know it sounds unlikely, but out of 200 million iOS devices it's going to happen to someone.

thanks very much Lawrence. i have tried the easiest of the things in this thread but to no avail. sounds like it's worth stepping things up a bit!

just another point regarding email, i have deleted and tried to re-add my account but get 2 error messages, one about cannot connect to pop3.live.com and then one about cannot connect with SSL. tried to figure out through other threads what they mean and i will continue to do so but could this have something to do with the battery drain? could it be that it's trying to connect all the time? however its still hot and battery is rubbish after email account deleted.

im gonna try and do a restore from new etc and maybe delete the last apps it bought, will let you know what happens.

Not being able to connect because the settings are wrong could cause battery drain, but I'm not really sure. I don't think it keeps trying. Here are some instructions for Live: http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=526284

I don't use it, though, so I can't confirm. It looks like the ports are non-standard, and SSL is required.

Well I just did a restore and only setup my Exchange account, setup my work WiFi connection, and turned off auto-brightness. If I still have battery issues, I'm off to the Apple Store, again.

On a side note, anyone else notice that if you reboot the phone your battery percentage jumps around? Just before going this restore, my battery was at 95%. I rebooted and right afterwards it showed 86%, screen went black, and when I turned on the lock screen again it showed 93%. Strange.