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 11:28 AM in response to Scarface.

Hi all,


here it is my experience:


Iphone 4S 64GB Black, bought in France on the 14th October, I upgraded it to iOS 5.0.1with OTA and found no difference with the 5.0.0

Do a full charge every 2 or 1 days depending on usage.


Disabled ITunes WiFI Sync, Bluetooth and 3G cellular data (only 3 bars on strength signal phone was under WiFi connection however) but locations services are on.


1 hour of standby dropp down 4% of the battery.


User uploaded file

Nov 14, 2011 11:43 AM in response to Scarface.

After reset web data and reset all configurations my configuration is



Wifi: off


PersonalAcess: off


Notifications: manual

Notifications Central: None


LocationServices: On

System Services: off


Web 3g: On


CelularData: On


Bluetooh:Off


Restrictions:

Ping: Off

Game Center: Both options Off


Icloud: Off(with no name on login)


Mail: (onlyone account – gmail)

New Data : Push Off

Obtain Manualy

Advanced: Manualy


Twitter:Not installed and with no name on login


Imessage:Off


Video: With no name on login


Store:Loged off


All other data obtain: Off


Only after the battery is empty till device turn off andrecharge to 100% 2 times, it seems to be normal (1% about 4 hours) for a while. But…

DO NOT PUT ANYTING on notifications central, not at all or the battery drain restarts. Ifyou need to remember something, use the standard alarm clock

I hope this helps someone till Apple solve the problem with ios 5.0.

Till there I will not update my system


Iphone 3gs ios 5.0

Nov 14, 2011 11:38 AM in response to Jatobs

Well, shutting down all the Apps did not work. In 2.5 hours on standby, the battery lost 10%. And we are suppose to get 200 hours of standby? Talk about false advertising!

Nov 14, 2011 11:41 AM in response to Jatobs

I know that all these resets and restores and drainings are working for some people, but I have done everything twice and still have a huge problem. That's what I don't understand. Also, I am not a tech expert by any means and I don't think I should have to fix this. Apple should fix it. I am worried about doing more damage to my phone by something I may inadvertently do during a so-called "fix". I think the only thing to do now is wait a couple of weeks and see if Apple speaks on this. If not, then I will have to bring the phone back, as I can't have a phone that goes dead after 4 hours. But I still love Apple. 😟

Nov 14, 2011 12:05 PM in response to Scarface.

My issue still exits after the update to 5.0.1 on a 64GB AT&T 4s. My issue seems to mainly be the amount of "usage" that the phone uses while I am not actually using the phone on 3G.


Last night, while I was asleep for 8 hours, with Wi-Fi turned on and connected to my home network, the phone reported 20 minutes of usage and the battery dropped from 84% to 79%.


Two nights ago, while I was asleep for 8 hours, with Wi-Fi turned off and a 4 bar 3G connection, the phone reported 2 hours of usage and the battery dropped from 74% to 55%.


I have push email setup for Gmail as an Exchange account and 3 other email accounts setup to fetch every 15 minutes, most location services are off, a few are still on. It seems that it takes alot more usage time for the phone to check these accounts over 3G than it does over Wi-Fi. This makes some sense since my Wi-Fi is faster than 3G, but the actual difference in usage time between 3G and Wi-Fi seems to be alot greater than what I expect.

Nov 14, 2011 12:07 PM in response to Scarface.

Hello everybody.


In my personal opinion, the battery drain issue on the iPhone 4s is a HARDWARE issue for some of the users reporting problems. There are certainly software issues, like the location-services-associated battery drain, however there is a HARDWARE issue as well.


Want proof? Here's my experience.


Me and my girlfriend both bought an iPhone 4s. I got a black 32 GG, she got a white 16GB phone.

We each had an iPhone 3GS before that, upgraded to IOS 5.0 with iCloud on.


Day 1-5:

I shut down both 3GS, removed the sim cards, put them into the two new 4s and "transferred" all of our settings through iCloud to the new phones.

Result: Both phones' batteries sucked. I read the various forum posts, played around with the settings, deleted icloud, deactivated push, changed the location services, etc. This all brought some help and in the end my black 4s had better battery life than the one of my girlfriend. I changed all settings ob BOTH phones at the same time, in the same way. We both have the same apps installed (actually I have a couple more than my girlfriend has, but she does not have any, that I don't have).


Day 6-9:

The IOS 5.0.1 update arrived. This made battery life marginally better for both phones.

I kept tricking around with the settings more, setting up the phones as new ones twice (and manually adapting all settings, no syncing!), performing a dozen or so "hard" resets, a couple complete battery recharges. This only helped my 4s, my girlfriend's iPhone kept running low on battery very quickly.


Day 10:

Today my black 32 GB iPhone 4s had 30% battery left when I left work in the evening. Its battery had been recharged 50 hours ago for the last time. Wifi&3G were on for over 40 hours during those 50 hours (the other 10 it was on airplane mode). I had used it to surf the net on several occasions, type iMessages, e-mail, facetime and call people 4 times. Push E-mail through Google was on during all that time.

2 days of "normal" use and standby at nights led to 30% of battery left. That's good for me.

My girlfriend's phone had to be recharged overnight yesterday, after having shut itself down because of low battery. I took it off the charger today at 8:00 AM, it had 100% battery left at that point. She called me at work 7 hours later. Her iPhone had 60% battery left. In these 7 hours, she only wrote two short e-mails, the rest of the time the phone was on standby.

She returned it to the mobile company's store today and will get a new one within the next week.


Both iPhones have identical settings, identical apps. We both sync mail from 2 E-mail-Accounts: one ISP-POP3-Server and Google-Mail. Our contacts and calenders are synced through google. I actually use Facebook too with Push on, my girlfriend had't had the opportunity to initiate the app in the past weeks.

I performed all resets, erased the phones, set them up as new ones one after the other. No setting is different on the one phone, than on the other.

And still: One phone has about 3 times more battery life than the other.


For me, this can only mean one: a HARDWARE problem. Are we the only ones experiencing this? Perhaps.

I think however, that some of the users, who have tried EVERYTHING and still didn't see any improvement, may actually have the same problem like us.

Nov 14, 2011 12:19 PM in response to Scarface.

Here are my stats on 4S with iOS 5 (Ihaven’t noticed any change since the upgrade to 5.0.1):

User uploaded file


And this is how I came to this:

  1. Settings -> General -> Reset -> Reset All Settings
  2. Setup as a new phone
  3. Notifications: phone, messages, reminders, calendar, mail, FB, BatteryDoctor, IM+, Skype on
  4. iCloud: everything on except Photo Stream
  5. Email: one iCloud plus 2 Gmail accounts (via MS Exchange) set to push
  6. Autolock set to 1 minute
  7. Location Services: Siri and Find my iPhone are on
  8. System Services: Cell Network Search and Traffic are on
  9. WiFi on but “Ask to Join Networks” off (have only home wifi set up)
  10. Auto Brightness set to 50%


As for the battery maintenance here’s what I did:

  1. Let it drain completely and then fully recharged with power cord using BatteryDoctor (first time with 10 mins and second time 60 mins Tricle Charge).
  2. Most of the time I charge my phone when it drops below 10% or even shuts down completely after running out of juice.
  3. I switch the phone off every second full charge in case there are some background processes running and draining my battery.


Now regarding the phone usage. During the “test”period I:

  • Made/received few phone calls with total up to 20 mins
  • Sent 6 iMessages
  • Browsed the net via 3G for about 45 mins
  • Browsed my photos for about 30 mins
  • Took 5 photos
  • Got about 15 notifications (mainly from Gmail and FB)
  • Sent about 10 short emails
  • Simply played with the phone for 1 hour
  • Always had at least 10 apps running


As I’m still not fully satisfied with the stats I think investigating the battery drain further won’t bring anything good to my current standby/usage figures. I just hope Apple will fix the software issues asap so I don’t have to control myself when using my phone all the time (otherwise what’s the point of having an iphone if you need to carry power cord all along or switch of most of its features that actually make it a smartphone??).

Nov 14, 2011 12:26 PM in response to Palex80

I've read a good 50% of these threads. I too have the problems, with two phones, and none of the magic "settings" or restores work. I've tried them all, over and over.


I think what's overlooked (but has been mentioned a number of times) is the problem with a weak 3G signal dramatically affecting the battery life as the phone searches or compensates for a degraded signal. I'm not an antenna engineer, just my suspicion.


Then, way out there....I'm wondering if WORDS WITH FRIENDS is wreaking havoc on the software bug in IOS 5 that keeps processes running and drains battery. It's a historically bad app in terms of it's programming. If there is a weakness in iOS 5 that can be unitentionally exploited by a poorly programmed app - then Words is the #1 candidate! And, zillions of people of have Words, and many of them keep that app open all the time in memory. And no, I'm not bashing Words with Friends. I play it every day and love it. But the programming and testing of that app is horrifiic.

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iPhone 4s Battery Life?

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