iPhone 4s Battery Life?

As I understand wifi syncing with iTunes, it will only run when connected to a charger......

Tom-Bo-Mac wrote:

Anyone tried the solution in this vid yet?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mwpRotYS78

I just realized that I did change one thing over the last week or so that might have been causing the sudden battery drain: I turned on WiFi syncing in iTunes.

Normally I wouldn't think that this would cause such a massive drain, but if the info on that video page is correct, it might be the iPhone continously trying to resolve DNS and failing with certain types of routers.

I turned WiFi syncing off for my iPhone and after I've given it a full charge I'll let it sit over night and see how things are tomorrow.

Add me up for the petition!

This thread has become my hobby. I've been checking it daily so I thought I'd chime in again to see if it may perhaps help somebody. I bought my 4S the day it was released, and I updated to the 5.0.1 (not the latest build, though). It seems this has to be a software issue. All my apps are updated. I've been closing out apps that run in the background, and I think this has made somewhat of a difference as well. I've never had terrible battery life as worse as some on this board, but perhaps my settings may show just for comparision. This is the best battery I've got right before it shut off :

What did that 4 hours of usage over the 4+ days consist of?

Even if it was in Sleep Mode its a SUPERB performance!!

I get 1 day and 6/7 hours with EVERYTHING off, 35minutes of calls, 2 or 3 text messages, 5minutes websurfing (3.5mb)...meaning: most of the time in Sleep Mode...

And i get the ridiculous usage time of 15/20hours, which stupid, since i've only used the phone for about 30-45minutes...

I'm hating my first experience with an iPhone...just hating it!!!! 😟

Jameson! wrote:

What did that 4 hours of usage over the 4+ days consist of?

The usage was mainly surfing, email, and text and some FB--all mostly via wifi. I think that as apps were updated, it had to have helped. I was really considering going to the Apple store to get a replacement handset, though, because I really thought it was a hardware issue because sometimes I had worse battery. I think using cellular data in bad areas and having other apps open would really suck the life out of the battery.

I had mine for 2 weeks and returned it. The battery life is horrible and mine with everything turned off would loose 20% per hour. I spoke with Apple numerous times and all they can say is we are going to try new software. Finally mine just quit working in mid call and could not find signal so I just returned it to AT&T. Got a refund and said NO WAY to another. Apple, AT&T, Verizon or any carrier selling 4s phones are knowingly selling a faulty product...If you or I did this we would end up in jail..In my last conversation with a supervisor from Apple I was told that it was a good phone anyway and the 5 would be out soon and they hope the problem will resolve with the new phone that as of now there is no real hope of fixing this battery problem ...If there was a class action suit against Apple for knowingly continuing to sell a faulty product maybe they would then care enough to fix them. I have a 4 as a work phone that is used all day for everything and it can go almost 4 days without recharging... Shame on Apple for this type of business practice..........

@enx23 it's almost a pity that the issue disappeared. I would have loved to remove my SIM, stay on wifi and watch what happens. Did anybody ever try that? Without SIM you can do everything with an iPhone except sms and calls. I would have tried it. But my issue has not come back.

@Vomgottsland

Vomgottsland wrote:

I had mine for 2 weeks and returned it. The battery life is horrible and mine with everything turned off would loose 20% per hour. I spoke with Apple numerous times and all they can say is we are going to try new software. Finally mine just quit working in mid call and could not find signal so I just returned it to AT&T. Got a refund and said NO WAY to another. Apple, AT&T, Verizon or any carrier selling 4s phones are knowingly selling a faulty product...If you or I did this we would end up in jail..In my last conversation with a supervisor from Apple I was told that it was a good phone anyway and the 5 would be out soon and they hope the problem will resolve with the new phone that as of now there is no real hope of fixing this battery problem ...If there was a class action suit against Apple for knowingly continuing to sell a faulty product maybe they would then care enough to fix them. I have a 4 as a work phone that is used all day for everything and it can go almost 4 days without recharging... Shame on Apple for this type of business practice..........

Thanks for sharing your experience with iPhone 4S. I will follow your footsteps shortly! It looks like I need to talk too to a Apple supervisor!

The only thing which intrigues me is how come that the big media does not bring this up?

......In my last conversation with a supervisor from Apple I was told that it was a good phone anyway and the 5 would be out soon and they hope the problem will resolve with the new phone that as of now there is no real hope of fixing this battery problem ....

If this is true (and I do not see why it wouldn't be true) then it is the first sign which indeed proves that the iPhone 4s problems are hardware problems which affect the battery life and Apple cannot fix the them with software or firmware updates and Apple hopes/wishes that people will get used with a miserable battery life! This is really really bad news!😢

just called apple care and on a 10 minute phone call lost 8 %..oh the irony

thembulldogs wrote:

just called apple care and on a 10 minute phone call lost 8 %..oh the irony

LOL ( laughing with you ! 😉 )

I did a little research on the ir sensor, especially when Siri is On and when Raise to Speak is Off. On my iphone 4s, when I turn Siri on, automatically Raise to Speak is On. I check the sensor with a digital camera and can see the little green light blinking. When I turn the Raise to Speak Off, I still see the ir sensor blinking away. What gives with that? And if I turn Siri Off just through the settings, the ir sensor continues to blink. Strange, guess I'll be making another trip to the Apple store to figure this out. If I do a hard reset, home and power button, then I get the ir sensor to extinguish. Any thoughts? How is anyone elses working? I know there have been threads on the some 573 pages here but I am tired of reading through them all. Thanks...

I don't know that your conclusion is supportable, yet. We shall see.

Some things I have learned from reading about the last 40 pages in this discussion.

First some people are having battery issues. Some are not. From the discussions here, some might get the idea that most 4s users are having this problem, but then most of the people HERE are having the problem, but look at all the other topics where users don't mention poor battery performance.

One observation is that most users with a battery problem manifest one of two symptoms.

1. static (which is probably internal arcing), and heat buildup in use, and charging. Hardware problem!

2. Unexplained 'usage' out of line with time the phone is being used (not asleep) by the user. Software? What does Apple define as 'usage'?

3. Problems relating to 3G signal strength (or quality), and failure to switch to 2G when it should. This impacts battery life, and more than likely something built into the Quallcom chip. It may be possible to mitigate this by software (I hope).

4. Some people are pretty hacked off about the whole thing, and Apple isn't doing themselves any good by remaining aloof, but then that is the way Apple IS.

Isn't this sensor the same one that tells the phone to turn off the display when you are talking to someone? If it turns off, that wouldn't work. Or maybe someone skipped a branch in the software.... Something for 5.1...

Might be worth a try.

I updated to 5.0.1 and have NO apps on the phone at the moment, aside from the stock ones. I ended up doing a DFU restore and set it up as a new phone (I couldn't get rid of the Settings app badge after the update when I attempted to restore from a backup-- thanks for another bug, Apple.). No email accounts set up. Just iCloud, a few notifications. Wifi on. Bluetooth / iAds / time zone / ping / etc, etc, etc as has been previously recommended are off. It is currently a 'dumb phone'.

I still have at least 3 times the advertized drop on standby and an hour of phantom use at the end of the work day. The phone tends to drain the battery at work where there is no wifi. I suspect it may die faster when the signal is bad (eg in the basement) at work. I need to test that theory out some more. At home on wifi, the drain is not so bad.

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