iPhone 4s Battery Life?

My iPhone 4s battery seems terrible! Almost equivalent to my 3GS and it's terrible battery life. When I got my iPhone yesterday and restored from backup I noticed nothing really changed with minimal usage and standby! Is this normal or should I consider setting it up as a new phone because maybe something is running in the background that's causing it to drop a percentage every few minutes under light usage? Input would be great!

Posted on Oct 15, 2011 7:14 AM

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12,787 replies

Nov 14, 2011 9:07 AM in response to Scarface.

I have had my phone since it came out. I have charged it all the right ways and I have also updated to the iOS 5.0.1. The battery life is still horrible. I have been reading news and searching the web for answers to this battery issue all on wifi and it has drained from 100% to 88% in about 40 mins. This is just rediculous. Anyone have ny helpful hints? Or having the same issue after the update?

Nov 14, 2011 9:26 AM in response to Scarface.

Yesterday when i woke up my phone battery went from 100 to 68% in just 10 hours and that was all standby wifi was on fetching emails every 15 minutes should not take 32% as my old iphone 4 use to be at 95% when i woke up and that was with push email.


I have been currenty draining my battery last night i turned off Wifi and switched on 3G when i woke up today in 9 hours the battery had only drained 14% on with 3G. same configuration


I am confused how can 3G be eating up less battery on standby then wifi.

Nov 14, 2011 9:28 AM in response to Scarface.

I have a issue with all the so called fixes. I pay good money for something that should work. I buy a phone for the features. Should not have to turn them off. Because if everyone here is correct themn Apple tested this with all the features turned off. If not then they released a garbage phone.The battery life on 4s in horrible. Apple already had antenna gate now it seems they have battery gate. I would assume this is killing some sales. My experience on 4s and 5,0,1:


1) Charge over night battery indicates 93% charged on 4s on 4 100%.

2) Unplugged my 4s and 4 at the same time 7;30am. Both running 5.0.1. Current state with using Siri twice to add a reminder and taking two phone calls that lasted two minutes each. On my other phone a 4, have checked mail several times taken 2 calls that lasted 20 minutes each, surfed the NET. 4s shows 73% battery life and 4 shows 91%.

3) Have seen not impact on my or my wifes iPads. Seems to be about the same.


I still think this is a issue with Siri since I can watch the battery go down about 5% after using Siri briefly. I refuse to turn off services since this is the reason I bought the phone.

Nov 14, 2011 9:34 AM in response to CalvinD14

Here's mine. Wifi is off, BT is off,, brightness is about medium. Have made maybe 5 text messages, 3 words on words with friends, 6 pictures, NO phone calls, a few articles on 3 news apps, and 3 rounds on Machinegun Jetpack. Looking at about 4.5 hours of battery life with light usage.


I'm on 5.0.1, had similar issues with battery before the update, but I think it's a little worse. This is disgusting. A big reason I left Android was for better battery life without needing a massive extra battery, but this is about 1 less hour of usage time than my old Samsung Fascinate.


If any admins/moderators/Apple engineers are looking at this, I'm willing to test anything for you, I'll try annything to get this battery life at least acceptable.

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Nov 14, 2011 9:44 AM in response to Scarface.

My iPhone 4S baterry is the worst iPhone battery I have ever experienced. Yesterday I charged it fully at 100% at 6:43pm, at 1:49am it was almost completely drained at 3%. So it lasted full 7 hours!! WOW! Out of that it shows the usage of 4 hours and 53 minutes which I'm not sure if it's correct or not, but I played with it all day on purpose to see how fast I can drain the battery. I texted, checked email, facebook, watched a few you tube videos, made a few calls, etc.


What's interesting though is that the usage shows 4 hours and 53 minutes and standby 7 hours and 14 minutes. I am not sure how this adds up to a total of 7 hours and 5 minutes since the actual 100% charge.


User uploaded file



More info about the phone, it's a 16GB iPhone 4S. Restored from backup when originally purchased from Apple. Updated to 5.0.1.


Notifications - mostly all on

Location Services - all on

iCloud - on for contacts, calendar, reminders, bookmarks.

Mail - six accounts, push is on.

Bluetooth off

iTunes WiFi sync - off

Siri raise to speak - off

Settings > General > About > Diagnostics and Usage - Don't Send


These are the same settings I had on my iPhone 4 which seemed to have had an amazing baterry life compared to this piece of ****.


I am thinking about wiping the phone clean and setting it up as a new phone and see if that fixes anything. At this point I am just frusturated that I have to waste my time dealing with this crap.

Nov 14, 2011 9:41 AM in response to Scarface.

For me, this whole battery problem is with Apple's new antenna system. It's now a world phone that uses both CDMA and GSM networks. When I put my 4S on airplane mode, the battery seems to not drop at ALL. Even using Wifi with the cellular connections turned off, I managed to watch 6 hours of movies, do an hour of web browsing, and play a game for another hour before the battery went into the red. It may sound silly, but I suggest trying the airplane mode solution to see if any of that works for you. Even with notifications off, location services off, and Bluetooth off, but my cellular service on, my phone was still draining it self within 8 hours of no use. Good luck to all!


Sorry for any re-posts and topics that have already been touched in this thread, I don't feel like reading 300+ pages of posts.

Nov 14, 2011 9:44 AM in response to javidfromlouisville

Well, your standby (non-usage time) is about 20 hours, which is 10% of the 200 they say you can get. So, 2 hours of usage time has decreased your battery by 34%. That's not very good. I'm about in the same boat, but mine is closer to 40% every 2 hours. My iPhone 4 on 4.2.10 lost only about 25% every 2 hours of usage time. I'm annoyed that I spent money on a new phone, and am getting about 30% worse battery life. I hope they fix it soon.

Nov 14, 2011 9:45 AM in response to Scarface.

Well, I was very excited about Apple's new update, thinking it would be a quick fix for the battery problem, but no go on that! My battery life still *****. I charged it to 100% last night before bed around Midnight and didn't touch it til this am. At 7am it was at 92%. Now I know that's not a big drain, but my last two phones only drained to about 98% in the morning. I barely use it all day long at work and now I'm always afraid it's going to drain completely before I can get to an outlet. I've been charging it up twice a day which is unacceptable. Once a day should be more than enough. I know everyone is shutting all their apps down, but we shouldn't have to do that. The phone was made to do many great things and the battery should hold up.

Nov 14, 2011 9:48 AM in response to Scarface.

We have had iphones since the 3G. We picked up our three 4s phones on Oct 14th. My son noticed the reduced battery life as compared to our old iphones immediately. After about a week my phone got really hot and shut off, wouldn't start for about a half hour, and the usage data was gone when it did start. I took it back to Best Buy, and they gave me a new 4s that seemed to work pretty good. I did not restore from a backup, and loaded apps to it one a day to pinpoint if it was an app causing my problem on my first phone. I could get two days between charges with light to moderate use. Then I updated it to 5.01 and my battery life went downhill fast. The day after I updated, the replacement phone got hot and shut itself off. In addition to this problem, Momma was having an intermittent problem with her 4s where she could not hear anything when she would make a call, it would connect, but she could not hear the other party. Well, enough was enough, We went back to best buy and traded our 4s phones for the Galaxy S2 Skyrocket. It's our first Android adventure, and it seems to be a different experience, more bells and whistles to mess with. I will continue to follow this issue, and if Apple does come up with a solution during our trade in period, we will consider going back to the iphones, but I couldn't take the chance of ending up with 3 phones that could not be counted on, as you never knew when the battery was going to go into rapid discharge mode. Good Luck to all, and I hope Apple takes care of you ...

Nov 14, 2011 9:55 AM in response to Scarface.


HiBuddys,

pleaselet me tell you something. We bought with my wife 2 iPhones 4s.

Inoticed in both phones the battery draining problem. Overnight there was a dropfrom 100% to approx. 70%. And this was by both phones. After the famous 5.0.1. updatefrom Apple was only worse. 1% drop per minute! I wanted to throw this sh* thrumy open window J

I couldn’tbelieve that such a company like Apple can do it to his customers, butanyway....

Then I’vemade a couple of adjustment etc. nothing has helped since I have made thereproducing of the iPhone system via iTunes. ( ~800MB download and install viaiTunes)

Afterthat I have adjust the time zone, cellular data and Wi-Fi when it is needed. Normallyoff and it is much better. My phone was in standby modus 28 hours / Usage wasabout 8 hours. I am quite sure that this action will help many users.

Afterthat I am still waiting for next Apple update. I pretty sure, that they work onit.

Best regards from Germany.

Nov 14, 2011 9:56 AM in response to vanja83

The way apple reports standby time is completely misleading. It should be labeled time since last full charge or something. The standby time is not the time the phone has been in standby, it's just the amount of time since unplugged from a charge. It's been like that since at least iOS 4, but I didn't have an iPhone previous to that so idk beyond 4.


And my iPhone 4 got almost twice the usage time than my 4S is getting.

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