iPhone 4s Battery Life?

Wow... I had heard about the "battery issues" with the 4S, but nothing like the horror stories I'm reading here... I just assumed it was "quicker draining battery" and not "absolutely abhorrent" stuff like this. That's ridiculous what I'm reading. I would be super p*ssed off; I feel for you all, that must suck.

I only have an iPhone 4, but I had no battery complaints or issues whatsoever until I upgraded to the 5.0.1 firmware the was supposed to improve battery life?! Destroyed mine. Nothing like some of you, I almost feel bad even mentioning mine but yeah, significant WORSENING of battery life from 5.0->5.0.1 somehow. Want to revert to 5.0 firmware but that would be too much trouble. I would say it drains at least 2x-3x faster than it did with the original 5.0 firmware. During most times (unless I need to use them) I have location services cut off, 3G/cellular data cut off, bluetooth off, mainly all I keep on is wi-fi. I never play games.

I'd like to keep location services on cause it's a pain to toggle, but I'm worried it might make things worse. I'm not sure how much it would affect things in reality, I just err on the side of caution. Notifications too, I keep any non-essential ones shut off completely. Oh, and my brightness stays at the absolute lowest level and auto adjust set to off unless it's sunny outside and I can't see the screen otherwise.

The two things I didn't consider were what was mentioned, I just read iTunes wifi sync... I thought it wasn't supposed to sync unless it was plugged into a power source and charging? Or maybe that was iCloud backup? I don't know but I get that stupid 0x80000007F error all the time cause of wifi sync, so I might as well turn that off. So much for the wireless way, huh?

Most times I am near wi-fi, so I can keep 3G off... unless I'm on the road... the only thing I hate about 3G is that you can do everything fine except send MMS messages! every time I want to send a picture or something over text, I've gotta go in there and cut that on -- irritating. That's the only thing I can tell will explicitly FAIL without 3G on (other than a bit less accurate GPS'ing).

Hopefully they find out what's wrong and soon, I can't believe this thread is nearly 500 pages!!! The sad truth is, that doesn't matter to Apple. There was some previous issue a few years back where people were claiming Apple was deleting threads about the subject, and even though the main one was like 1,000 pages... they still wouldn't admit to the problem! Typical of them. Very typical.

The flawed rationale is that this thread here... this is only 500 people out of a few million that own a 4S? that's but just 0.00001% of users. It's not a real problem. Asinine logic, right there. No, 500 people are smart enough to make their way onto these boards, bother to make an account (trouble for them to do), find the right thread, and actually post about it. Most people either aren't capable enough to do that, or simply figure Apple already knows about the issue and has a fix on the way STAT, so they aren't going to go through the trouble to get on here and go through all that if they feel the problem will be fixed soon.

Naive. Obviously not familiar with Apple and their "we'll fix things when we feel like it" or actually... after the problem becomes undeniable, then we'll take our time. The first step is always total denial of the issue, second is minimizing the scope of the issue, then after it starts hitting TV and major news sites regularly, then they don't want the bad press so they chip away at it for a few weeks/months (sometimes releasing more important patches like blocking competitors from being able to connect to itunes or whatever that crap was that one time?) -- anything threatening their vice grip on control is immediately stifled. Major issues... they're taken care of after those type of stupid things. It sickens me as much just to read all these troubles and know that they couldn't give a you know what, really... They're now a TRILLION dollar company. The first. They bust a nut on your feeble little iPhones. Just to profane them and laugh. Ahahaha. Clean it up, idiot! Evil empire.

bleepingApple, Sorry for the late response. My wife has an iPhone 4 running 4.3.3 (I have told her not to update it). Her Modem Firmware(which I believe is where the baseband communication runs) is at version 4.10.1 whereas on my iPhone 4s it is at 1.0.13. So obviously they have different modem hardware.

I don't know if this may have anything to do with it, but when I go to general settings - network - "personal hotspot" always seems to be searching for something.

Mines is set to off unless I need to use it that also goes with Bluetooth some apps when launched activate my Bluetooth do turned it off. If you don't use personal hotspot then just turn it off.

Hello i bought iphone 4s before 2 days and i let itt in charge till it weas 100% (to charge 100% was need 10h) maybe cause its first time and i went to sleep but when i get up in morning i cheked my battery it was 44% all the night 10hours of sleep it spend battery in stand by by 56%. What should i do to fix this problem my firmware is 5.0.1 plz help me how to fix this problem with battery life. And i Have anotyher question where can i unlock my iphone 4s in new york to make it sim free thnx.

I have to say in my experience, that O2 have been amazing and have swapped the phone three times now.... Sadly the latest one is the worst out of the three!! Ive done all the things mentioned on here and haven't yet upgraded the operating system to 5.01 but will do that today.... Think my final step is getting a new SIM and if it still drains so fast I'm going to ask O2 to take the phone back and revert to my old 3G.... A mobile phone that needs you to carry around a charger kind of defeats the object!!

Cross!

Hi bright raven; thanks.

It's a shame we can't roll back on iOS, then we could see if the 4 would start misbehaving on iOS5, reverting it if it made the battery life poor.

Ok, so I did another test overnight, this time with sim removed but WiFi on.

02:23 to 08:47 [6.5hrs]

Usage: 0:10 [10 mins]

Standby 6:23

Battery drain: 2%

Av battery drain per hour: 0.3%

[See my other tests here: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3391947?answerId=16890326022#16890326022]

So removing the sim makes as much difference as airplane mode. No massive surprise there, I guess, but having WiFi on did mean that the phone could do any activity that it wanted. I left email fetch as every 15 mins, so I think I can rule out fetch in my situation.

The big thing to notice, as far as I'm concerned, is the huge drop in usage time when either the sim is removed or airplane mode is employed. I'm struggling to see why there are hours of usage in 'normal' running and a fraction when the 'phone' bit is diabled. I can see why the aerials would draw power from the battery, of course but why do they create so much usage time?

Can anyone draw any conclusions from this?

@enx23:

@bleepingApple

Did you try to turn off the cellular data (wifi can stay on)? Does this make any difference?

Yes. I tried tests with one or the other off and with both off. The results are shown in a previous post if you follow the link above.

Regarding the hotspot always doing the spin wheel, I believe it only "looks" for anything while you're actually on that screen. Similar to when you have Bluetooth on, it will perpetually spin as long as it is on and you're on that screen. I am pretty sure that once you leave that screen, it stops the active searching.

I was in the Apple store in London yesterday and the guys said Apple are working on getting some new software updates out over the next few months to sort this battery issue out (well try to anyway!)

In the meantime, turning the screen brightness down is the single largest way to conserve battery apparently

@bleepingApple,

You and bright raven very much seem to have the problem I had, looking at your recent posts.

What network are you on? And is it possible to try a SIM from another network in your phone? (Is your phone unlocked?). This is how I found out my problem - my phone did not drain battery with an O2 or Three SIM installed, but it did with a TMobile SIM, even tried four different TMobile SIMs, they all exhibited the same drain.

Apple's bug reporters informed me, after monitoring my phone's logs of battery and baseband, that with the TMobile SIM, the baseband was crashing every few mins, and restarting - this is what causes the battery drain and "phantom" usage.

It seems that some batches are unaffected by this problem, because the replacement I got yesterday works PERFECTLY. Drains at 0.5% per hour approx. on standby.

If you can try another provider's SIM, and see if the problem goes away, this will verify your problem. If it is indeed a SIM problem you have, then the only solution at the moment seems to be to get your phone replaced (an apple store genius should do it, regardless of where you bought your phone).

One more thing - the serial number of the defective phone began with DNQG..., whilst the new working one begins C39G...

Don't know if this helps or not - could be related to batches, some of which seem to have problematic SIM readers, and others do not.

My working phone now also is fine with a SIM PIN, and the SIM Applications all work fine too. Those are telltale signs as to whether your phone likes your SIM or not.

Hope you get your problem sorted... I had mine for over a month, and I know how depressing it is having a practically unusable phone.

I was going to go london regent street to replace my iphone 4s regarding the double message tone but will wait until a new update comes first. I have my battery brightness left as default which is good enough all around. So it seems apple will need more than one update to fix the battery its ashame this has happen to the iphone 4s but I think with the new ios 5 with over 200 new features with also the introduction of icloud and itunes match something would have happen without full beta testing.

I also think apple should release a public beta of the software to thier public so they can gather enough bug report so they can be fixed quickly since its a known issue

I don't understand why they won't allow a downgrade to a 4. Seems like a simple solution to get some of these irate folks off their backs.

One thing I've learned is to NOT get on the bandwagon anymore when Apple releases new products or updates. Wait to see what issues arise as they obviously have poor Beta test policies.

I live with an Apple family--wife and kids all have ipads/iphones/macs--If the Android platforms keep improving while Apples detiorate (new features worthless if you can't use them)..it may be time to reconsider future purchases.

Yes, there is an iOS 5.1 beta 1 out for devs. No idea on release… you know Apple. Could be 2013… but that's what is in the works. Seems like a semi big version jump considering the last was 5.0.1 and this is 5.1 — I have no idea the fixes or features. You'd have to find someone who has tested it. :/

Ok, I feel like I should share my expiriences...

So far from the last full charge on my 4S with 5.0.1 I got 19 hrs of standby and 3.5 hrs of usage with 50 % battery left ... I figure thats 50 hrs of standby vs the 200 promised ... my old 3 year old iPhone 3G gets better milage, and we are talking about a brand new battery ...

Yep... Apple is definetly overwhelmed with the engeenering task of brinign one new bug free product a year...