iPhone 4s Battery Life?

Did you restore from your 3g? If so you may want to restore the iPhone fresh and NOT restore your 3g backup. There has been several reports of restoring from an older unit 3G and even the 4 causing this issue. Also some of the older apps that you may have on the 3g are not optimized for iOS5 may cause it too. So I would try a restore, the sync with iTunes to get your contacts bookmarks whatever and see if that helps. Then maybe slowly install some of the apps you cant live without back on a few at a time AFTER you see if the iPhone 4s performs as it should out of box.

mightyannoyed wrote:

im in the same boat here. Upgaded from my 3G and i have actually noticed the battery life on my 4S to be worse than the 3G. Its really odd, because i can't even depend on my phone. As of right now im losing about 12-15% an hour. I charge the phone to 100%, take a shower and by the time i come out i lose 10%!! On Standby?? This is ridiculous....the IOS update didnt help/resetting my system preferences did not help/turning off location services etc etc etc and i got nothing. I always delete 'backround' running apps after use.

This is actually pretty disappointing, esp considering an upgrade from a 3G should have been a relief...not the frustration of carrying the USB charger everywhere I go.

@ sbailey4

I think you should read the specs again. I understand they are OR and not ALL. That is why I said 50% standby and 50% mixture of everything else.

And if you notice on the stats page, it says 200 hours battery life in standby mode with all settings default except a few. Now I have tried the exact same same settings (3G and WiFi on as it is on by DEFAULT) and everything else off and I still get only 100 hours of standby!!! That's nowhere near the 200 hour mark!!!

At this point in time 150 hours would be sufficient, but I only get 100 hours!!!

I understand, and you are somewhat correct. However it says Up To 200hrs. That means from 1 to 200hrs technically. Anyway Apple has acknowledged there are still some issues for some users and are working to address. So hopefully soon affected users will see further improvement!

Now with that said, enx23 will respond with a list of iOS stating there is and has been, and will forever will be an issue and it will never be fixed. Certainly that has never been the case with previous iOS 's which I understand all had battery issues at some point and were addressed with future updates. I will tell you 5.0.1 patch did in fact help some users, myself included as did the 9A406 build of 5.0.1 helped even more users. And only Apple knows 100% what iOS 5.1 is in fact addressing. Just the minimal release notes posted for developers is not the do all say all to what is and will be addressed by the final release. (figured I would go ahead and pre-respond)

Oh and just curious but is there a reason you must have 150hrs? I mean are you in an area with no electricity for 6 days?

owh786 wrote:

At this point in time 150 hours would be sufficient, but I only get 100 hours!!!

@ sbailey4

Good point about the technical 1-200 hours!!

Nope. I don't need 150 hours. I need 100 hours for 50% of my phone battery because I don't use it often.

I could get 3 days out of my iPhone 4, granted I didn't use it much, but then that's my personal preference of how I use the phone.

I would like the same with this iPhone.

On another note, I would like Apple to be at least 90% correct on their standby usage, the others don't matter as much to IMO.

Well to add to it I am not convinced the usage meter is correct anyway. I was showing 30 minutes usage the other day (slow day with phone) but I knew I was on actual phone calls longer that that. So I looked at call logs and sure enough I was on phone calls for 60 minutes that day. Had downloaded an app and played with it a few minutes and few txt and checked email a few times, yet it only showed 30 minutes usage and rest standby. Anyway at least that was good the other way around. Most say they don't use it and usage shows a lot. I really don't have any issue with the battery since 5.0.1 (the first release) but the meter is definitely misreporting. I am wondering too how much of this is feeding into these problems reported? I mean if I went by the meter and saw only 30 min used but dead battery I would be thinking something wrong too but in that case i knew I had used the phone more than was being reported.

owh786 wrote:

On another note, I would like Apple to be at least 90% correct on their standby usage, the others don't matter as much to IMO.

Have a same problem here with my 4s. I fully Charged it and went to sleep for only about 2 hrs, when I checked my phone it was 90%! what the heck! i made sure that everything was turned off before going to bed. almost all notifications, location services, 3g etc. was turned off, brightness is at 30%.. APPLE SHOULD QUICKLY FIX THIS BATTERY ISSUES!

sbailey4, we are dealing with batteries, the more you charge them, the sooner the battery dies, because they have a charge life cycle. If you don't need to charge it, you shouldn't. Although on the recommended tips to prolong battery life, they recommend atleast 1 time a month to do a full drain, then charge to full.

VIber. It's the culprit, may be one of them.

It is not enough to just close it. You have to remove it.

Try if it helps!

It has helped me.

Talk a lot on it do you? Grin.

I rather suspect that an idle data channel doesn't require continuous connection as a phone that needs to check for incoming calls. No hard data on that, just seems logical

I use my ipad as a comparison because when I buy apple products that are all designed to interoperate with each other I expect them to all do that, why must one device have such poor battery life and why must it require users to reset / restore and turn a bunch of features off just to get one full days use out of it. My ipad is the wifi+3g model and both radios are permanently on and I actually have to try hard to run its battery down.

I can just sit and watch my iphone for 10 minutes and watch its battery drop without it doing much at all.

My Macbook Pro has great battery life, my ipad has great battery life ... my iphone .... well ... not so much.

I'm certainly no dummy and I can see with my own eyes that the ipad is 5 times the size of the iphone but as far as scaling goes the iphone should scale down almost exactly to what the ipad is. The screen is 1/5th or so of the size of the ipad and so is the battery. So while the ipad with its big screen requires a bigger battery, the iphone with its smaller screen is designed to run off it's much smaller battery.

I do feel duped that the 4s is not living up to what was advertised to me and I know something is wrong. Thankfully another user posted some steps here to reset / restore and run the phone down completely. Hopefully that might help BUT users who paid such a premium for a phone should not be expected to even follow such steps. We bought two iphones and they both have bad battery life right out of the box. Both have brand new micro-sims which we got the same day.

Jameson! wrote:

SERIOUSLY? You are truly asking that question?

Let's take a wild guess here.... iPad is 5X the size of the iPhone. Maybe the battery is bigger, too? :-/

MKZA wrote:

Finally why can my iPad last 3-4 days of some pretty heavy usage and the iPhone only 5-7 hours?

YES Seriously I AM using that comparison.

I'm certainly no dummy and I can see with my own eyes that the ipad is 5 times the size of the iphone but as far as scaling goes the iphone should scale down almost exactly to what the ipad is. The screen is 1/5th or so of the size of the ipad and so is the battery. So while the ipad with its big screen requires a bigger battery, the iphone with its smaller screen is designed to run off it's much smaller battery.

I use my ipad as a comparison because when I buy apple products that are all designed to interoperate with each other I expect them to all do that, why must one device have such poor battery life and why must it require users to reset / restore and turn a bunch of features off just to get one full days use out of it. My ipad is the wifi+3g model and both radios are permanently on and I actually have to try hard to run its battery down.

I can just sit and watch my iphone for 10 minutes and watch its battery drop without it doing much at all.

My Macbook Pro has great battery life, my ipad has great battery life ... my iphone .... well ... not so much. Why not be part of the solution here instead of spending time picking holes in what others say.

sbailey4 wrote:

MKZA, First of all you dont have to wait til any date to check for updates. You can press the check for updates any time you want and it will set the auto check to a time later after doing so. However the new 5.0.1 version will NOT come down this way since its a controlled release.

Now to get the 9A406, (which is the latest version not sure what you mean folks with lots higher versions) you have to select restore (within itunes). It will offer to backup, download the new version then offee to restore. Here is information if you want to take a look.

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS4148

Also if you perform the "reset all settings", process posted below it may help. That process has helped a LOT of folks acheive normal battery life.

[Credit to DavidCH]

Follow my steps below and in the exact order as specified... good luck!

1. Reset all settings (settings app-> general-> reset)

2 a. Go through initial setup steps (lang, wifi, siri, enable location, etc) and choose setup as new phone (don't worry your apps, data, contacts, mail will still be there). Do NOT restore from iCloud or iTunes (It can copy back corrupt settings)

2 b. If you do not get the complete new setup screen with language setup and setup as new phone or restore from iTune/iCloud backup, be sure to go back to #1 and reset all settings again (it should happen the second time)

3. Turn off system location services timezone and iAd (settings -> location services -> system services)

4. Fully discharge battery (until you get the spinning wheel and it shuts off)

5. Fully recharge battery (overnight if possible)

In my experience this improves the Standby battery drain issue significantly in most cases. It reduces drain from 2-4% or more per hr to 0.5% or less. It has worked for many, many users now. If it does not work after a few try's you may have a real battery or hardware issue and should contact Apple. Good Luck!

MKZA wrote:

What irritates me is some users who have 5.0.1 report improved battery life while others have very VERY poor battery life. Then I discovered there's different versions of ios5.0.1 each ending with a different firmware number, mine is 9A405 and I've seen users posting here with much higher firmware numbers but apple gives no way for us to download the later version of 5.0.1. Annoying yes, silly most certainly. Why not let ALL users have access to the latest firmware then we can actually compare apples with apples (excuse the pun)

I'm now also told I must wait until iTunes decides to check again, apparently on the 11th to see if apple will grace me and many others here with the latest firmware. It 's so annoying because this phone is not even 9 days old and performed like this since the iOS 5.0.1 update the day we setup the phones. I know this phone has the ability of good battery life but it seems there's buggy versions of firmware and others that fix it.

Thanks sbailey, I will give this a try and thank you for posting solutions here that have worked for you and others versus some others on here who just spend time picking holes in what people say. I hope this solves it and I will report back, although as I said in another post Apple should not be expecting users to do this, a phone should work out the box as advertised but in our case (2 iphone 4s') and both barely make it through a work day.

I'll report back once I've gone through your steps.

@sbailey4

sbailey4 wrote:

🙂 I am over this so this is the last post for me.

😉 Don't take it personally!

I was simply saying I COULD state those numbers based on 10 people like the10 you mentioned in the article.

I was not basing my numbers on 10 people from the article. My estimated statistics are based on my 9 friends plus the 10 people from article. Please, count also my friends in it!

Based on these I estimate that around 80% of iPhone 4S are affected by the static noise isue which is a hardware issue. Most of the people are not bothered with it because it most of the cases the noise is very low and one has to have really good hearing and also be in a quite room and also use 3G cellular data in the same time!

Unlike you I would not try and quote a total number of iPhones in the world that are good or bad based on 10 or 15 friends I know.

I respect your choice to not try to estimate the numbers of iPhone having the static noise issue!

So, here is my best estimate on partial data which I have. I estimte that 80% of iPhone 4s have the static noise issue!

Also only Apple has the capacity and knowledge to do so.

What is the point if Apple has the capacity and knowledge to do it if they will not realease the info to the public and probably they will never do it! Because we do not have that information from Apple we the people can still do our estimates and come up with pretty good numbers which are close to the real/correct ones!

That would not be an easy task even for them considering there are literly millions (multi-millions) of iPhones sold worldwide.

Do you mean that it is difficult for Apple to estimate how many iPhone 4S are affected by the static noise issue which is a hardware issue? Estimating the number of products which have quality issues is a science (and not an art) and it is using complex statistical methods. Any big company is using it when manufacturing products! Even when one mints coins this is done! I am pretty sure that Apple has the quality control process in place and they have a very good estimation of how many iPhone 4S have hardware issues.

There are other mobile phone manufacturers which sells more smart phones than Apple and they do not find difficult to estimate how many of their phones have hardware issues when is the case!

So you can believe what you want and I will believe what I want and we will just leave it at that.

I believe in statistics. I use statistics to find the best estimates! I use statistics in my work! I do not believe in sitting down and doing nothing and wait for "all mighty" Apple to have mercy and save us by releasing the numbers of how many iPhone 4S have hardware issues!

BTW I cant confirm how many 4s's have been sold but with 4million sold the first weekend I would guess a safe guess would be 10 million (probably way low) and I an assure you if 80% of 10 million iPhones had the problems you descibed I would bet there would be a bit more more about it going on and Apple would most likely stop delivering them them until it was resolved.

This is funny. One tries here to estimate/guess the numbers of iPhone 4S sold! When I am trying to estimate/guess the number of iPhone 4s with hardware issues is wrong! But when you try to estimate/guess the number of iPhone 4s sold is fine!

By the way, my estimation of sold iPhone 4S by now is around 50 millions! In US, UK, and Canada iPhone 4s is above expectations. In other parts of the world is selling below expectations!

... I would bet there would be a bit more more about it going on and Apple would most likely stop delivering them them until it was resolved.

When money are involved one would sell anything just to get even more money!

Also Apple didn't stop selling iPhone 4 when it had the antenna problems for three weeks!

Sorry to disappoint you, but i got the latest firmware ios 5, 5.0.1 9A406 and i still got no improvement on battery life. My phone is still draining with all major functions shut off. The funny thing is that it is still draining while its on standby aswell. Up to 25% in a night.

i have improved battery life considerably using the following workaround (yes, its not a fix because disabling every possible function on the 4S - apart from turning it off - to meet Apple's battery specifications isnt worth 699 EUROs) NOw, after full charge and normal use I currently have 15% capacity left with USAGE = 7h24 SB = 1day11hours. Not bad. Overnight, capacity dropped 5% after 8 hours of sleep with Mobile data enabled and wifi turned off.

First, when you are using pushmail and have the push schedule enabled, be advised that when you dont have Mobile data enabled, it will enable wifi to do push. I found out at home with Mobile data disabled, wifi is kept alive also after locking the 4S. check https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3391947?answerId=17234002022#17234002022 I'm not sure if this is build by design or a result of applications like Whats App or other message services requiring a connection. I'll troubleshoot this further this week.

Below is a post from buxbuster's on page 577. I've tested this on Windows.

Prior procedure below, i restored to 501, setup as new iPhone in iTunes and installed/configured everything from scratch, used it for a couple of days until i found buxbusters workaround. I worked for me!

1. Backup your iPhone using iTunes or iTunes in the cloud.

2. Remove the Apple Mobile Device Service :

On a PC : using Add/Remove software or Programs and Features, de-install the Apple Mobile Device service and de-install iTunes and re-install it again.

On a Mac : you can't un-install iTunes because it is part of the Operating System. You can re-install it though, but before you do that you need to remove a file at /System/Library/Extensions/AppleMobileDevice.kext . Apple describes how to do this here.

3. Connect your iphone to iTunes and it should sync properly and your battery problems should be over.

and yes, enable Mobile data when you use pushmail. This will prevent the wifi interface from staying alive. I reckon that the wifi interface will drain the battery more quickly as apposed to a mobile data connaection thats available all the time. Now, i'm not sure how other applications impact this wifi behaviour, but when you think about it, push needs a connection to function properly. it will use wifi when there's no alternative and this is supported by my findings when checking the logging of my routers access point and DNS queries from push applications.

John.