iPhone 4s Battery Life?

First, it's not fair to compare standby times between a 'feature phone', and ANY smartphone. They are different kinds of hardware.

Second, if I were you, I would take the one you have back, and if they offer you a replacement, insist on a short period to see if it has the same problem, and if they won't do that, get a refund, and either wait until some correction has taken place, or you find something that suits your needs better.

{Jackol} wrote:

Hi there (from Czech Rep). I bought my first iPhone about 10 days ago. I noticed the very short battery life at the very first day. I hoped it would increase after a few full chargings and dischargins. I was wrong though. I tried to modify all the setting mentioned, but nothing helped. I have read almost all available forums on the net and I really do not think it is a problem of software. I am so disapointed. My ooold retro Nokia worked five days without any problems :-(. I have just a few days left to return iPhone to get my money back (within 14 days of purchase). What would you do in my shoes? Would you return it and wait for a new version without this bug? Do you have an experience how often Apple releases a new/modified/improved hardware version of iPhone? I really want to have this phone, but not for all costs. However, I do not want to wait for years. Thanks for any reply, Jan

rphunte42 wrote:

She spends a LOT of time using her phone for talking (3G), and playing games, taking photos, and using iMessage to send text and photos, and still gets through the day on a charge. The 3GS has a pretty small battery, and you can probably turn off some features you don't need and save a LOT of battery power. Or you may have a battery issue. How old is the 3GS?

@rphunte42 - i ask you again to be serious. You always accent you are an IT expert, so take a look at this and answer like a professional:

What is a LOT of time? What is the usage?

What is a pretty small battery? You know the term of capacity?

What should do the user if he can't turn off features he needs?

What is a LOT of battery power saving? (if the user turns off features)

Which battery issue can have the phone from Dev1254...? You know some? Which of them? Too much usage? Software bug? Battery has too much load cycles? Antenna or charger is damaged?

Tamarillo wrote:

rphunte42 wrote:

She spends a LOT of time using her phone for talking (3G), and playing games, taking photos, and using iMessage to send text and photos, and still gets through the day on a charge. The 3GS has a pretty small battery, and you can probably turn off some features you don't need and save a LOT of battery power. Or you may have a battery issue. How old is the 3GS?

@rphunte42 - i ask you again to be serious. You always accent you are an IT expert, so take a look at this and answer like a professional:

What is a LOT of time? What is the usage?

What is a pretty small battery? You know the term of capacity?

What should do the user if he can't turn off features he needs?

What is a LOT of battery power saving? (if the user turns off features)

Which battery issue can have the phone from Dev1254...? You know some? Which of them? Too much usage? Software bug? Battery has too much load cycles? Antenna or charger is damaged?

Well, age of the phone would have a major effect on the possibility that his battery has reduced capacity.

Apple doesnt' publish the 3GS battery specs, but it is physically much smaller than that in the 4S. What is a LOT of time? I don't check her usage times since she so seldom lays the phone down that I would have to talk her into giving it to me. Does that tell you anything? When she is in the car with me, she is on the phone from the time we get in, until we get where we are going. I may only talk 5 minutes a day, unless SHE calls.

If the user needs features he can't turn off, and turning off things he doesn't need doesn't help, then he would have a problem. When I loaded IOS5 on my wife's phone, the very next day she complained about short battery life, and I turned off some things that defaulted to on, such as time zone checking, and location services on things that really didn't need it, and push notifications on email, and she hasn't mentioned it again.

So I just bought a new iPhone . My old 3G model was with me too . Started both at 100% . 12 hours later the 3G is at 46 % and the new one is at 6 % ! And I'm using the old one to text this message cause I don't think the new one would survive . It's pathetic .

This was your professional answer - i'm glad that you are retired and don't work anymore.

FYI Battery capacity:

3G 1150 mAh

3GS 1219 mAh

4 1420mAh

4s 1432 mAh

You are an IT expert - explain here how to fix software with more functions to get a good/longer usage time with a more powerfull processor and a nearby same battery capacity?

Do you agree, this is a good technical design? Is this the most amazing iphone yet?

In Germany, there is a saying: the consumer has to accept that at apple work more designers than engineers.

@Tamarillo

Please, do not feed the troll (i.e. rphunte42)!

I have just read that Apple has cancelled the sales of iPhone 4S at most of its stores in China (and the things got really ugly there)!

http://www.pcworld.com/article/248130/beijings_iphone_4s_turmoil_a_lesson_to_app le_say_analysts.html

Maybe this might be the trigger for the recall of iPhone 4S (because of battery life issue, static issue, audio issue, SIMM issues, etc.)!

owh786, What Siri IR big are you referring to?

owh786 wrote:

Nope. And the Siri IR bug hasn't been fixed!!

And if I have 2G data on, when I reboot the phone, it automatically enables 3G data!!!

Battery is good on 2G though

Did you even read the article? Things got ugly because they can't meet the wild demand for the 4s in China and people were lined up for hours. How will that trigger a recall?

enx23 wrote:

@Tamarillo

Please, do not feed the troll (i.e. rphunte42)!

I have just read that Apple has cancelled the sales of iPhone 4S at most of its stores in China (and the things got really ugly there)!

http://www.pcworld.com/article/248130/beijings_iphone_4s_turmoil_a_lesson_to_app le_say_analysts.html

Maybe this might be the trigger for the recall of iPhone 4S (because of battery life issue, static issue, audio issue, SIMM issues, etc.)!

LOL Clearly not.

Tamarillo wrote:

This was your professional answer - i'm glad that you are retired and don't work anymore.

FYI Battery capacity:

3G 1150 mAh

3GS 1219 mAh

4 1420mAh

4s 1432 mAh

You are an IT expert - explain here how to fix software with more functions to get a good/longer usage time with a more powerfull processor and a nearby same battery capacity?

Do you agree, this is a good technical design? Is this the most amazing iphone yet?

In Germany, there is a saying: the consumer has to accept that at apple work more designers than engineers.

I went to Apple's website, and asked for specs on the 3GS. It doesn't supply the battery specs, only expected times (higly subjective).

It is possible to get better battery life with more powerful processor, and chips as newer chips usually are designed to reduce power drain. However, in a phone with the features of the 4S, a lot depends on how the user makes use of those functions, and which ones he uses, and how. And, in the case of 3G, where.

And yes, this IS the most amazing iPhone yet.

At the moment, I suspect that Apple has more lawyers than designers, and with the users on here, that's probably a good thing for Apple.

enx23 wrote:

@Tamarillo

Please, do not feed the troll (i.e. rphunte42)!

I have just read that Apple has cancelled the sales of iPhone 4S at most of its stores in China (and the things got really ugly there)!

http://www.pcworld.com/article/248130/beijings_iphone_4s_turmoil_a_lesson_to_app le_say_analysts.html

Maybe this might be the trigger for the recall of iPhone 4S (because of battery life issue, static issue, audio issue, SIMM issues, etc.)!

You know, if you are going to include a link, it might be a good idea to READ it first. You won't have so much egg on your face.

Hey guys. Just chiming in to add some tips and tricks as well.

I've got the 4S and the iPad 2; both running the latest iOS-build and version. Typically, I need to charge my battery every day or if I don't use either, every 2 days. However, that's a far cry from the promised 200 hours of stand-by and when I use either they drain quite fast. Sometimes, more so on the 4S, the battery will drain inexpeciably in a matter of hours, although less so now then with 5.0 it seems. In other words, my average battery performance is decent (beats my 5 previous Android-phones at least) but not good, and once or twice a week the battery just drains like crazy, even in stand-by, for no good reason at all.

Some things I've done that seems to mitiage this:

- The general stuff: use lower screen brightness, disabled automatic fetching of e-mails, disable WiFi when not using it

Makes small improvements in general but won't quite help those crazy-drain periods. However, having studied the crash logs; CPU and memory usage and the real-life performance day to day, I've tried a few other things that has had a lot more effect - especially for stand by, which is where it's more of a problem then when actively using the 4S. As follows.

- iCloud is set to "Push" by default. Change this to a regular scheduled synch; in my case an hour. I thought this would effectively break my iCloud-service but I haven't noticed any changes what so ever, except a slight delay for calendar updates etc. Thing is, the apps you run synch as you run them, so if you run say Reminders on 4S it will synch to iCloud; when you run Reminders on iPad it will do the same. Thus, unless something is really pressing, changing iCloud from "Push" to a synch schedule has made a real difference. Presumably, changing iCloud to synch daily instead of hourly is even better, but I haven't tried that just yet.

- Disable GPS for crash logs; timezone; iAd. There's a lot of crash logs generated and I like to send diagnostics to Apple so they can troubleshoot, but removing the GPS tag for these seems to make a big difference. Otherwise, every time there's a crash (even in the background, which you won't ever know about) will activate your GPS even in the background. As for timezone, it checks at least once a day and use the GPS to do so, and if you're not moving between countries, why have it on?

These things, and presumably others, will mainly effect how your battery drains in "sleep" or "locked" mode, as far as I can see, but that's also what matters to me. If I use the phone, a 1% drain every 2-3 minutes isn't that bad when you do the numbers.

Just wanted to share these tidbits.

Yes same here. I always have cellular data and Wi-Fi off, except when I went to check Twitter. This way I can conserve my battery but on the down side, I can't see my activity (DM, mentions, etc.) and the feed at all times. I regularly check Twitter.

Right now I'm at:
Usage: 10 Hours, 2 Minutes

Standby: 1 Day, 1 Hour

29% battery remaining

I clearly didn't use it for more than 3 hours. Actually, lets say 4 hours. Why does it give so much more usage time when on standby? Looks like I'm gonna exchange my 4S with a serial number starting with C3 as some people reported it doesn't have any hardware defect.

This is my first Smart Phone. And, I'm not a tech kinda guy. And I appreciate all the suggestions for making the batter life last longer. However, if I have to turn off or disable all the things that the phone does in order to be able to use it for a day, I don't see the point in having traded in my old Samsung Hue. I'll be turning the 4s into a regular phone.

When I first got the phone, the battery life was GREAT. The I left MO on a month-long trip. By the time I got to Houston I was losing about 5% of the charge every 30-45 minutes while using it sparingly while I drove. Yesterday I went to an Apple store in Houston and got the phone replaced. The new one is no better than the one I had. I hope Apple fixes this because otherwise they have sold me their last product. I'm glad I got the phone from Verizon using 3 different promotions and didn't have to pay much for it. I can only imagine how I'd feel if I'd shelled out $650 for the thing.

Is this a good battery life?