iPhone 4s Battery Life?

My girlfriend just bought an iPhone 4S but her iPhone is still in "SOS" mode because her number hasn't been ported yet. It's constantly been connected to Wifi since we bought it and the battery has been perfect. Nothing to complain about.... Yet. I wonder if the cellular connection has something to do with the issue? I bet most people haven't had the phone not connected to a carrier network.

After I read a lot of info on the battery issue and because I was really unhappy with the battery life of my 4S, I tried all the recommended steps.

1) I turned off notifications completely, none of them are in the notification center.

2) I turned most of the location services off. The only one I left on are Cell Network Search in Location Services -> System Services. I only left that on because I had some severe trouble getting my o2 Germany sim card to work.

3) Brightness of the screen is under 50%

4) iCloud is off (again, due to problems with my O2 sim card, I was adviced by O2 to turn it off, but it might play a role in the battery life too)

But I have my mail on push and I check my phone a lot. Last night, I closed all running apps, but I had Twitter push and email push on and I received a bunch of tweets and mails and only lost 20% of battery. That seems very normal to me.

I have to add, my phone is still new, I only charged it fully once. So the battery hasn't reached its peak of performance yet.

I hope my suggestions help you guys!

In my Wifi-Router logs I see that my iPhone 4s connects and disconnects every second.

Our iPhone4 and iPad doesn´t do this.

All those workarounds changed anything for me.

My Battery ist draining fast

I've been an iPhone user since day one...and a BB, Treo, BlackJack and many other phones that should not be named 🙂 I've owned every iPhone sold.

In other words - I have pretty clear expectations...and yes - I know the iPhone 4S is not a basic flip phone. Thanks for clearing that up.

I don't even come close to making it through the day. Like I said - by noon I am out of power with very little usage. And I am talking about NO phone calls. This is just sitting at my desk receiving a few texts and a bunch of email. Not cool.

BTW - I don't care about Android issues. I care about iPhone issues - and this is an issue.

dmg

I finally got my battery life to get back to where it was with my 4 running iOS 5.

I did a Reset All Settings before setting all these options up, and it seems to have fixed whatever was screwed up! Try it out, can't hurt.

Here are my settings:

Notifications all running, nothing shut off or disabled

Location Services - every app on, only system service disabled is iAds

WiFi & Bluetooth always on

Brightness 85%

iCloud with everything but Photo Stream & Docs & Data on

iCloud Backup on

Siri fully on

Only my iCloud account on in Mail, Contacts & Calendar, set to Fetch Every 15 Minutes

Was out Saturday night, took a bunch of pics & a couple videos, texting, some ESPN score checking and a little Facebook posting. Battery did not drain quickly like before, and during 3 hours out with that activity only went down about 10% I believe. Overnight drain isn't there anymore either!

I just enabled my Exchange account, and will be tracking that. Since adding it about 10 minutes ago it's already dropped 4% just pulling down all my emails over WiFi, although I have all of my folders sync'd (about 35 with a few hundred emails). The mail app is open right now and the spinning data icon is still going so it may be getting stuck somewhere because all of my emails have now been downloaded. Dropped another percent just now lol.

I'll see how it goes and post back later on today. Seems like Exchange was the culprit for me and perhaps the iCloud Photo Stream & Docs/Data.

i've had the same problems and the issue worsened when using location based reminders (battery dead in 3 or 4 hours from 100%).

So i turned location based services off and it seemed to solve the problem.

Not ideal but until Apple figure the problem out i don't see any other option.

I've done everything listed here on my iPhone 4s (upgraded from iPhone 4) EXCEPT restoring from new (haven't had time). Resetting the settings (both network and all), has eliminated the phone getting hot all all the time and losing roughly 10% an hour in standby.

However, the problem persists that ANY use at all (reading a book in iBooks, web surfing over wifi, listening to music) drains the battery at a shockingly consistant rate of 1% every 3 minutes. Yesterday, for example, spending nearly all day in a strong cell coverage and wifi network and only talking on the phone for about 2 minutes, I racked up 1 hour and 58 minutes of "usage" and just over 14 hours of standby. At this point my battery was at 60%.

So for me, I'm not hemmoraging battery life when in standby any more, but actual use time is still uncacceptable, as any kind of use is limited to roughly 5 hours (1% every 3 minutes, like clockwork). This morning, after reading a couple of emails and listening to music on the way to work I've used the phone for 29 minutes and am down to 91%. I've already turned off Time Zone in location services, Siri, iCloud and Bluetooth, but nothing seems to break the iron-clad 1% every 3 minutes rule.

I'd really appreciate it if Apple could fix this soon.

I see this thread is indeed alive. I'm going to barge in with my 2 cents.

Bought a brand you iphone 4s on friday, october 28. Everything works fine, EXCEPT for the battery.

To skip to the end, here's bottom line: iphone 4s drains 30-40% of battery overnight in standby mode.

Btw it never happened to my old iphone 4 running iOS 5.

All,

I have found the solution for the drain issue.

I have 2 exchange accounts, both of these accounts have calendars.

By disabling the calendar in notification center AND THEN RESTARTING THE PHONE has dramatically improved the battery drain. I would get through 10% in a hour with the calendar enabled in notification center, now, I have got through 2.5 hours and I'm still on 90%.

If this does not work, disable EVERYTHING in the notification center, restart your phone and then check.

Note: By disabling the calendar, you are not stopping all notifications. It will just mean they will not appear in the drop down menu.

This has been done in conjunction with the time zone location setting being disabled.

Happy to talk to anyone about this further.

**** it!

I'd switched off location crap, notification of calender and mail in notification centre, set mail to manual fetch and switch off Wi-fi when I'm not using it.

Its been great! Love it. Everything works but for me it seems to be an issue with 'Mobilemail' getting the phone stuck in some bizarre behind the scenes loop.

Dumb a*** here forgot to turn off Wifi plugged it into the mains, and blam... get a mobilemail fault. phone starts warming. unplug the phone and watch the battery percentage tick away.

ARRGGHHH. Oh well till Apple patch this buggy firmware I'm back to resetting this thing again! (6th time in 4 days)

I also tried everything I could to improve the battery life according to this thread.

Notthing helped. It improved, but still drops 20-30% overnight.

Even restored as new phone without anything setup... the battery drains.

And I help hoping for many that this is a software issue that will be solved soon.

But a friend of mine has the new 4s too, and it works like a charm.

So I took matters in my own hands, called Apple and they gave me a new iPhone immediately.

They send it priority to me now. (1-3 day delivery time) In the meanwhile I can keep using the old one.

Great service I would say.

Will let you know if this solved the problem.

Mine too. Having to shut down most of my location services to keep the phone running. Hoping for a fix soon.

Iphone 4S battery problem: Reading in one of the earlier discussions that someone's iPhone 4S is communicating with the wireless router every 1 second, I did a test and swithed off WiFi. With WiFi on and nothing running I lost 8% baterry per hour and Standby and Usage was always the same even though there was no usage. After swithing off WiFi I only lost 2% battery life in one hour and stanbby increased by one over the hour but usage by only 4 minutes. So the problem must be that the iPhone 4S is constantly quering through WiFi. I previously switched off Location services and notifications but that did not really made a difference. Switching off WiFi makes a big difference. I will test it to see if it constantly queries when on 3G.

My battery life was aweful from the beginning. My battery was drained before the day was out without having made a single call or being on the internet for more than a few minutes. I was relieved when i started hearing the reports that others were having the same problems and were coming up with solutions. I tried the fixes though and nothing worked. I pretty much turned everything off but no joy. The phone would run hot and continue to drain. Apple Support actually had the nerve to offer to open up my brand new $400+ phone and attempt to repair it. Of course I pushed back. I finally had to return my 4S for a replacement. The whole thing has been a hassle and a disappointment. Im back to my iPhone 3G. It's slow but it works! I hope my replacement will finally be everything I hoped for.

John, did you get a new one from Apple or the service provider. This is my first iphone and have no comparison. It goes down about 8% an hour on standby. My Blackberry runs for 3-4 days without recharge, but the iphone needs to be recharged everynight without much web usage. Should I press the case?