iPhone 4s Battery Life?

I bought iPhone 4s at a premium price, because I like iOS much more than Android, and I would choose iPhone over Andorid anyday. I'm a bit disappointed in my first iPhone purchase, but I hope I get a working phone soon.

@guitardude7: I measured in the range between 100 and 94%. But for my 4S it isn't true that it takes much longer from 100 to 98. My drain was pretty linear.

@enx23: I hope you are wrong... I really do.

Ok so after a couple of recharge cycles and spending time with my iPhone 4S this is what I've concluded (firmly):

• The battery life with WiFi is fine. It will easily last a day and a half, maybe even two, with normal usage and constant connection to WiFi WITH email push notifications turned on.
• As soon as cellular data is turned on, the battery starts dropping 1% every 2-3 mins even in standby
• Basically, the battery life ***** with cellular data turned on

Being frustrated with not being able to use cellular data (I travel around a lot and don't have WiFi access all the time) I borrowed my friend's factory unlocked iPhone 4 running on iOS 5.0.1. What I saw shocked me.

The iPhone 4 with iOS 5.0.1 has the 3G data toggle switch in addition to the mobile data switch!!

In fact after borrowing my friend's iPhone 4 I actually borrowed another friend's iPhone 4 (who just upgraded her phone software to iOS 5.0.1 from 4.3.3) just to check whether I wasn't hallucinating. And voila, the 3G data toggle switch was present there as well!

So my question to Apple is this: Why on earth can't you give us poor souls who bought the iPhone 4S the 3G toggle switch as well? Please? I'm sure simply turning off the 3G radio is going to ensure I can stay connected to the internet for longer periods of time.

I turned off siri and restarted the phone. At first the sensor was off when restarted but went on automatically15 mins later.However the sensor indicator is not on while on standby? why would it still affect the battery life?. last night 6 hours on standby it drained 30%. Does anyone know when apple is going to release ios 5.1/5.2?

Purchased my new i-phone 4s 2 January 2012 (my first i-phone) in SA. Very impressed with the phone itself, but the battery life is definately not even close to what Apple shows on the website specs. Gotta be a solution to this!? Otherwise this is definately false advertising. Anyone got some ideas that work?

Check your usage stats (Settings/General/Usage). Does the 'usage' time seem inline with your real usage? it seems that most users with poor battery performance get hours and hours of usage reported while the phone is in standby...

My 4S's battery goes from full charge to auto shut-off in about a day without me even using it. I have all the radios (WiFi, Bluetooth, 3G) on, but with hardly any use it still shouldn't drain that fast. It used to last longer (2-3 days), but the last couple of days I've picked it up to use it and found it had shut off due to an empty battery even though I had fully charged it the day before.

I just checked my usage and it says 8h 39m since last full charge and 13+ hours of standby, which can't be true. I used the phone for maybe a total of 30 minutes during that time, so the phone is apparently constantly working on something in the background, even when I'm not using it. While that explains the quick draining of the battery, I don't see a way of finding out what exactly it is the phone is working on...

One thing I'm trying now is disabling Settings->Location Services->System Services->Setting Time Zone. An article on guardian.co.uk suggests that that might help.

@Tom-Bo-Mac - I disabled the Setting Time Zone when I got my phone back in October - didn't seem to make a blind bit of difference. Are you in the UK and if so what network are you on? Im now strongly suspecting that the problem is between the phone and the SIM, with the SIM causing 'phantom usage' while in standby: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3491623?start=0&tstart=0

How do you tell whether the sensor is on or off?

This is exactly the root of the battery drain problem. I have seen exactly the same things happening, right from release day one and through the 5.01 update. I have no doubts that IF Apple can address this 3G data management issue, the battery drain issues will be solved.

kj789 wrote:

Ok so after a couple of recharge cycles and spending time with my iPhone 4S this is what I've concluded (firmly):

• The battery life with WiFi is fine. It will easily last a day and a half, maybe even two, with normal usage and constant connection to WiFi WITH email push notifications turned on.
• As soon as cellular data is turned on, the battery starts dropping 1% every 2-3 mins even in standby
• Basically, the battery life ***** with cellular data turned on

Being frustrated with not being able to use cellular data (I travel around a lot and don't have WiFi access all the time) I borrowed my friend's factory unlocked iPhone 4 running on iOS 5.0.1. What I saw shocked me.

The iPhone 4 with iOS 5.0.1 has the 3G data toggle switch in addition to the mobile data switch!!

In fact after borrowing my friend's iPhone 4 I actually borrowed another friend's iPhone 4 (who just upgraded her phone software to iOS 5.0.1 from 4.3.3) just to check whether I wasn't hallucinating. And voila, the 3G data toggle switch was present there as well!

So my question to Apple is this: Why on earth can't you give us poor souls who bought the iPhone 4S the 3G toggle switch as well? Please? I'm sure simply turning off the 3G radio is going to ensure I can stay connected to the internet for longer periods of time.

How do you tell whether the sensor is on or off?

You might try the app 'cpu activity'. The write up indicates it will tell you what is running. If you see something suspicious, you can post and I will tell you if it is running on my 4S which does NOT have battery drain issues.

What we need is a definitive statement about what constitutes 'usage' to the iPhone 4S. It appears that those with excessive battery drain are doing SOMETHING, when in standby, and it is something that uses the battery at a moderate rate, but it seems to run most of the time. Again, if users who have this problem will look at their cpu activity and find anything suspicious, I would be glad to check it against my phone, which doesn't exhibit the problem. Also, remember to comment on whether you got a brand new SIM card or took one from an older phone. I suspect this may be related.

@Pete

Pete from Switzerland wrote:

@enx23: I hope you are wrong... I really do.

I hope that I am wrong too and I wish that your fix would a real fix!