iPhone 4s Battery Life?

Battery life still ***** poor compared to my old iphone 4.

Apple get your act together and fix this battery issue!!!!

On a family plan with 3 new iPhone 4S's. One of us has to keep the phone in a locker all day during work... starts out with nearly a full charge and after an 8 hour shift has nearly 0% with no use. She is going to have to start shutting it off, and when she's done with her shift, turn it on and wait a while for missed calls, voicemail, text and email to load... a bummer since it takes a few minutes. I'm "lucky" though... I work at a computer and can keep it plugged into USB all day so I always have a full charge! I'm not complaining about the 4S otherwise... its beautifully crafted, Siri is great at the things she can do well and I'm sure Apple staff is working hard at improving it. Very nice to be able to drive home from work and have Siri read my text messages (or send one), play a song from iTunes or make a call without ever taking my eyes off the road. I just hope Apple gets us an update on this battery issue before all the Christmas travelling. If all these people are sitting around during the holidays with battery issues to complain about... these message boards are going to blow up.

Hello fellow 4S users!

What happened to be a fix for me was quite easy and simple:

Go to Settings ----> Location Services ----> System Services (on the bottom)

There you have to switch the Setting Time Zone to OFF and the Diagnostic & Usage to OFF (but just as a precaution) as well.

I've managed to keep the phone up for 3 days instead of 15 hours as before.

I hope that helps and keep me posted if you're successful

disregard my post about it being Twitter... It was calendar that I have sync'ec with exchange and google that fixed my batt issue

Just adding my 2 cents, the update was slight better for me. This battery is awful.

I should be able to use my phone and its features not turn things off.

Next iphone release I am waiting because I was glad I didn't jump on the iphone 4 with all the signal issues.

Now I am almost in regret to get rid of my 3GS that lasted almost a week on the battery.

Regardless of the all the settings, here is the one I use....cellular network off. My phone rings, and i can TXT. So regardless of all the settings, this setting should be king and I still get bad battery life.

I have had 3 phones. All 4s. First one battery was excellent! Second one battery was terrible and my 3rd one the battery is like the first but maybe not quite as good. I couldn't understand how people were saying the battery was bad until my 2nd one. That was horrible! seems like the luck of the draw with the battery. Sad to say. My boyfriends battery is great to and he uses it all day long without having to charge it.

iPhone 4s, 64Gb, Black. O2 UK. Official 02 Micro SIM. Bought 14th October 2011. iOS5.0.1; Itunes is latest ver.

• Have reset Settings before and AFTER installing 5.0.1.
• I used the 800Mb update.
  
• Have NOT reset as a clean handset: I am using a back-up created on a 3Gs. [Want my text messages so until I figure how to get these back I will hang on for an alternative fix or resort to this if I REALLY have to].
• I have had a diganostic test via Apple. [They send an email that automatically sends back basic data to the call centre agent while you talk to them]. My battery is shown as being physically fine.
  

Ok I've been doing some testing over night this last week.

Before I post my findings here's a run down on my settings:

• Location: OFFon all except Compass and Network. Selected Apps ON, little activity shown via little triangle.
• Siri: OFF
• WiFI Sync: OFF
• icloud: OFF
• Diagnostics: OFF
• Email: 3 accounts 2x POP 1x Exchange [Google, for calendar]
• Push/Fetch: Fetch ON [15mins]; Push OFF
• Bluetooth: OFF
• Notification Centre: ALL apps OFF.
• FaceTime: OFF
• iMessage: ON
• Not listed? Then it's OFF too...

My tests were to establish how much usage would be recorded when the phone was completely idle, under various settings for Airplane, WiFi and Mobile Data. Each night I would fully charge the phone, close all apps and shut-down then restart. I would then take a screen shot of my usage and go to sleep leaving phone on but locked. I did this in the same location at the same time each night. Basically I've tried to keep as many variables the same.

Note: My coverage was showing full bars and 3G was present [when allowed to be on].

So here's my results:

• Clearly the Airplane mode gives me the best stats and the kind of drain I would expect from this phone always, and is roughly as my 3Gs behaves when not in Airplane Mode.
• The control is behaving much as my phone does through my daytime use. It actually doesn't seem to matter if I use the phone a lot, for anything, or just keep in my pocket. I get the same average battery drain [4-7%hr]. It's interesting that this is pretty similar to when I leave it totally alone for 8 hours or so.

The one that surprised me was having Mobile Data AND WiFi off. I really expected that to be similar to Airplane mode, but as you can see it is far from it. What, then, does Airplane mode achieve beyond just preventing WiFi and Mobile Data? I guess it turns the phone into an iPod Touch.

It strikes me that the cause for me of heavy idle usage and therefore hefty battery drain has some root in the thing acting as, well, a phone. Data methods seem to make little enough difference in my case.

Does this give anyone anything to go on for their own situation? Can anyone shed any light on what's going on here?

Thanks...

I've tried all the "fixes", and even with Siri/location services off (whilst only checking email and light browsing) I'm still losing 20% per hour. Does this indicate that I have the battery issue? I'd like to know for I plan on going to the genius bar tomorrow.

Thanks!

• Email: 3 accounts 2x POP 1x Exchange [Google, for calendar]
• Push/Fetch: Fetch ON [15mins]; Push OFF

First, you have 3 accounts on your email. This may be unavoidable if you really need all 3.

Second, you have fetch every 15mins, thus the drain on your battery when fetching from 3 accounts a minimum of 4 times an hour (or even more). Try to make everything to push, which only uses power when an email arrives, unless you get a ton of emails - in which case set it to fetch every hour/manual.

Yes very true. I got my iphone 4S the day before Thanksgiving and it seems to dying very quickly compared to my Blackberry curve. I've turned a lot of the settings off to see what happens and same thing. This morning it was at 100% and now with just a few texts and browsing my contacts for about 10 minutes to clean up a few things it dropped to 70 %....... that's crazy.

All the other stuff if pretty okay, but now i will have to adjust and purchase another charger just for work. As I have one at home, and a car charger.

Thing is, you can't even mess with the phone will waiting someone for a long period of time without worrying about the battery dying.

A little frustrated here.

SHouldn't have to turn everything off to help save the battery when that's the whole purpose of buying the phone...(to use all the apps) . just saying.

bleepingApple, I concur with your findings. I have iPhone 4s 32GB on Vodafone Ireland network with offical Vodafone Micro SIM. I have been performing the exact same tests over the last few nights and it works out just as you say. On average I loose approx 3-4% an hour regardless of whether WIFI, 3G, Location Services, Automatic Date Time etc are ON or OFF. The usuage satistics always seems to be just over half the standby when I check it in the morning except when I put it in Airplane mode. I have tried 3 different Micro Sims (due to suggestions in earlier posts), numerous restores (as new phone, iCloud backup and iTunes backup) but nothing has changed. I'm even running now with no apps, no gmail configured and it is still as bad. I'm hoping iOS 5.1 makes a difference. I'll have to return it soon if this is not resolved. I have owned a 3GS and a 4 and never had any issue like this before. Grrr.!

I do observe the exact same behaviour on my phone like "bleepingApple". I tried various solutions but the differences were actually quite small. The only thing to prevent the heavy battery drain is to go into airplane mode. The deactivation of mobile data services does not make a difference.

This thread goes longer and longer. It would be TIME for Apple to release a statement like Google and Samsung did with their Volume Bug on the Galaxy Nexus. The problem seems to be in the sim-card/baseband firmware and even a device change does not solve the problem (at least only in some cases). I already exchanged my SIM and it does not make a difference.

Why do I have to pay more than 600€ from a very rich company, who does not see the requirement for a public statement. If it can be fixed with software, I can wait until an update. If it is a hardware bug, I want a new device.

Hi @K. Mark. Thanks for your thoughts.

Unfortunately my two POP email can only fetch and one is my main businness email [I'm self employed]. I did use Push until recently on the Exchange one and, as far as I can tell, it's made little difference using it or not.

I'll do some more tests these coming nights where I'll test your theory: I'll keep all the data systems constant and try turning both Push and Fetch on and off each night... Once done I'll pop back with any findings.

Thanks @Wiingman and @Bright Raven; it's interesting to hear that these findings are not isolated.

How can some people assume it is the SIM card when the Verizon models do not have a SIM card but are still having battery problems?

iOS 5.0.1 did nothing to my iPhone. The battery life is terrible. It cannot go through an entire day without having to charge my iPhone. I hope Apple fixes this soon.