Q: iPhone 4s Battery Life?

This seemingly did very little for me, although it possibly stopped the battery draining as much when in standby. It did nothing to affect the way my iPhone absolutely chews through battery if being used on 3G for tasks as simple as browsing and WOW does it get hot!

EXACTLY! The phone starts getting hot whenever I enable 3G Data. I am ****** off because this problem started on my phone all of a sudden, it wasnt there earlier. But now I get paranoid whenever the phone gets even a little warm. Also, I've noticed the battery drains like CRAZY when 3G is on.

However, as suggested by dkalchev and sbailey4, I will update to 9A406 over the weekend. Setup the phone as New, import contacts via Gmail.

I also plan on getting a brand new micro sim for the phone, since the sim I am currently using is a Cut normal sim.

I am hoping and praying that this process will fix the battery and heat issue!

MattyEss wrote:

 

rphunte42 wrote:

 

DKay wrote:

 

I've been following this thread since October and it appears to be largely an exercise in futility with thousands upon thousands of recommendations that don't ultimately work for most complainers. Apple aught to bite the bullet financially, admit they have a problem they don't have a work around or solution to, and offer a free upgrade from this model to the 5 when it comes available. I'd recommend sticking to earlier models and getting refunds where possible

Actually, a lot of users have been helped.  Most of them seem to just leave, and not report that something helped.

 

I just wanted to say, I did leave, but my problem hasn't. This forum has probably helped users with very little iPhone knowledge how to turn off excess features (ie. location services, push notifications, bluetooth etc) or do a fresh install without copying across problems from their old back-ups. It may have also helped a very very small percentage that had that very weird issue with the Siri sensor getting stuck on.

But for the majority of users I'd say it has done nothing else but provide a place to vent and to feel better thanks to reading that we are not alone. I, like most users have just learnt to live with poor battery performance and a phone that heats up so much that it makes palms sweat.

iPhone 4s has miserable battery life compared to iPhone 4. Also the battery life issue of iPhone 4s and static noise issue are hardware and the vast majority of iPhone 4s are affected by it. There have been plenty (>8) of iOS updates/releases/betas which did not fix the battery life issue of iPhone 4s or and static noise issue. Also there are plenty of reports of store which have boxes full of returned iPhone 4s. The battery life issues (and/or static noise issue) appear when one is using the 3G network and Cellular Data (it does not appear if one keeps the Cellular Data off or is on 2G network).

I have to say that also lately there are reports that the newly manufactured iPhone 4s which people get in the last 2 weeks look like do not have the battery life issue. Anyway I guess that some more time should pass before one can be sure about this.

I strongly suggest that if one has battery life issue and/or static noise issue then he/she should go to the Apple store and return/exchange the iPhone 4s or get a refund!

But for the majority of users I'd say it has done nothing else but provide a place to vent and to feel better thanks to reading that we are not alone. I, like most users have just learnt to live with poor battery performance and a phone that heats up so much that it makes palms sweat.

 

I agree with you! This forum just helped people to vent their fury and also get used with the miserable battery life of iPhone 4S.

 

I'm just very disappointed and annoyed at the lack of response to the issue by Apple. After 5.01 was released it was "there I fixed it" and nothing more to add. This also went a long way to selling more iPhone 4s units, when the customer says "I heard there were issues with battery life" the sales person can reply "oh, there was an update to fix that".

I am very very disappointed by Apple. This is my last phone that I buy from Apple. Apple got slaped with a huge fine in Italy for bad customer practices so I guess that this will happen again looking to how the things are going on right now. Clearly the iOS 5.0.1 has not fixed the battery life issue and/or the static noise of iPhone 4s!!! This is common knowledge. iOS 5.0.1 fixes only the SIM card issues and that's it!

 

But I must say I'm not surprised. Apple certainly aren't going to do anything mental like recall it or anything else that costs them money.

 

Yes, Apple should recall all the iPhone 4s but it does not do it. The vast majority of iPhone 4s are affected by the battery life issue and static noise issue and Apple knows it and also knows that these cannot be fixed with software updates! It looks to me like the customers for Apple are in the same box (i.e. "don't care" box) like its subcontracted workers outside USA.

@Gooner90

I suggest that you get your iPhone 4s replaced with a new one or get a refund! The issues which you state cannot be fixed by software!

@dkalchev

 

 

This is quite apparent: if the device gets hot, then it is doing somehting!

and the sky is blue!

 

The real issue with iPhone 4S and iOS 5.0 was that the phone would consume lots of power while 'idle'. This is both because of poorly designed applications (made to run while in the background) and because the OS didn't properly shutdown everything not in use. The later is apparently fixed in 5.0.1.

Indeed bugs in iOS 5.x.x and poorly designed apps are a part of the batter life issue but they represent only ~10% of the problem. The battery life issue and/or static noise issue of iPhone 4s are hardware issues which cannot be fixed by software. The proof is that there has been already over eigth updates/realeases/betas of iOS 5.x.x which did not fix the battery life issue and/or static noise issue! How many releases/updates/betas iOS 5.x.x do you want to see more until one realises that software updates/tricks do not help? 20? 200?

 

I believe the Apple attitude is correct --

Do you mean that is right for one to sell phones which do not perform as written in the specifications? I get ~18% of battery life from what is stated in specification. I would sell a such product I would end up in jail in less than a week. Somehow because Apple does one should fall on its back and be happy. Right?

users have the right to have good product, those products have become increasingly complex and difficult to optimize. It takes time to collect enough statistics to have some basis for optimization.

If the products are becoming increasingly complex and Apple cannot make a phone because its increasingly complex then it should not be in bussines of selling phones! Apple's customers are not guinea pigs! I have paid a lot of money on my iPhone 4s which is supposed to work as it is in in the specification. Do you mean that Apple cannot make a phone which works as describe in its specification?

 

New software does not neccesarily require more resources. On the contrary, new software is written with the better knowledge of the platform and with a lot of experience. So new software typically runs better on an old platform --- of course it brings about new features that might require more processing power -- but if you not use that new features (remember, your old software didn't have them) the new version will actually work much better.

This a very lame excuse for Apple for selling phones with miserable battery life! Just because is software related problem, should one forgive Apple for selling phone with miserable life?

 

Going out and buying Samsung won't help your iPhone 4S any way. It will only support one copycat company to do it's things longer.

Apple didn't invent the phone so I suggest that if one does not like copycats companies then one should:

- buy a phone from the company who invented the phone,

- buy a car from the company who invented the car.

1AppleADayNoWay wrote:

 

ramon27 wrote:

 

8-9hours of sleep hours. Just saying what my battery does. If you're not satisfied in your battery life.. Buy other brand of smartphone. Dont waste your life trolling in this thread. LMFAO.

I think my battery is bigger and (lasts) longer than yours buddy.  But my point was really that after 8-9 hours of sleep you should wake up from your dream. The phone is listed as a 200hrs standby device - under the best of the best circumstances, which means 0.5% per hour. If your battery used 2% during 8 hours, you would have 400 standby hours... that's 16 days. Who cares what your battery does during the night. Maths always defeats enthusiasm. What's important is the usage stats you get when your phone shuts down. And that's when you'll hear the wake up call...

You already hve smartphone then why you wasting your time here or you dont hve a life? I always saw your name in hundred of pages here,..  I will post tomorow the screen shot of my battery for you, so you can move on to your life.

dkalchev wrote:

 

The latest available firmware for iPhone 4S is 5.0.1(9A406). If your device shows 5.0.1(9A405) then the only way to update is via iTunes Restore. You may use the opportunity to get rid of old cruft in the phone (but make sure you save your photos/movies etc).

I wasn't talking about firmware, I was talking about marketing... or you just beat me at my own sarcasm.

As far as your recent comments are concerned, I believe competition is a good thing. Less that we might all end up working and living in glass donuts looking at apricot trees through windows that can't open. For the consumer, the goal is value, not "helping Apple"... Finally, I hope when Apple release their TV sets that you won't be encouraging the copying of the 16:9 aspect ratio or the "rectangle" shape.

Gooner90 wrote:

 

I also plan on getting a brand new micro sim for the phone, since the sim I am currently using is a Cut normal sim.

Please do share your experience, especially the SIM replacement. I am using a new SIM at the moment but wondered if I would cut my old 3G SIM and use it instead which will save me from having to run VoIP and 3G all the time. But please do these experiments separately..

Don't rule out your network provider as a source of battery drain and your phone getting hot.

I live an area where I sit between 3 towers. One is 7km from me, One is 4 km from me and the Other is about 12 km from me. Inside my house I have boosters for 3G and 2G all provided by the network. These antennas all face to the tower with 3G/HSDPA and the best 2G/EDGE, this is the tower that's 7km from me. So when I am in my house I have full strength 3G and 2G/Edge.

When I go outside my phone hops constantly between the 3 towers, which drains battery fast because it has a different power draw from each tower depending on the distance. No matter what phone you have it will drain the battery and also cause the phone to start warming up. It even did this on my blackberry.

NOW, when there's an actual network problem like a major transmission failure, this problem is amplified ten fold. I witness this on a regular basis because we tend to have major transmission failures at least once a month, we had one just last week which lasted for 5 hours. During such a major transmission failure I can literally sit and watch my battery drain in front of my eyes. In that 5 hours my phone drained from 80% to 5% without me doing a single thing but simply because the phone was drawing more and more power trying to get the signal up to where it should be.

In October 2011, our network provider did some major equipment upgrades to the towers in our area, this caused serious problems lasting for several weeks while they re-balanced everything. There was a period of about 3 days when their network was drawing so much power from my Blackberry that it was depleting the battery in 8 hours whereas before this the battery in my BB would last me 2 full days. For those 3 days the phone was also getting very hot. That phone (Bold 9780) died on me in early December and I then switched to another Bold 9780 which my Dad had. The second Bold 9780 died on me after 10 days. I have little doubt that network problems during that period which were drawing too much power from the phone caused internal damage. Both phones were replaced by the network free of charge, the repair slips did not mention what they fixed, they just replaced them. Both phones were well cared for, never dropped and worked perfectly until there was these network problems that started.

I am not here excusing the iPhone's short battery life because I have had my fair share of poor battery life BUT I can assure you not all of the problem sits with Apple alone and network providers are a big part of the problem too. You can probably test this by spending some time in a location with a full 3G signal, where it's not hopping between towers constantly and you will probably see your battery life drain at a normal rate.

To be honest I think there are so many factors affecting battery life that it's so hard to isolate them, that's why some people report great battery life and others not so much. Probably a reason why it takes so long for Apple to identify all these factors and try to address them as best they can.

ramon27 wrote:

 

You already hve smartphone then why you wasting your time here or you dont hve a life? I always saw your name in hundred of pages here,..  I will post tomorow the screen shot of my battery for you, so you can move on to your life.

Your screenshot will not undo basic maths, only Photoshop can... I don't want your screenshot, make a tshirt out of it or show it to your friends. I was simply concerned that your ignorant enthusiasm might create unrealistic expectations for other users. And that was the point I was making to bestco before your decided to join in the concert of people enjoying the unreliable battery indicator or suffering from unproper battery calibration and pondering the merits of the perpetual motion device.

enx23

I can't get it replaced since I bought the phone from the US and am using it in India

Damnn iPhone's limited warranty.

@MKZA

MKZA wrote:

 

Don't rule out your network provider as a source of battery drain and your phone getting hot.

This is he favourite excuse of Apple. Apple loves to blame the carriers! Most of the time the networks work fine with plenty of mobile phone types but not with iPhone 4s.

 

When I go outside my phone hops constantly between the 3 towers, which drains battery fast because it has a different power draw from each tower depending on the distance. No matter what phone you have it will drain the battery and also cause the phone to start warming up.

Indeed this is true that hoping between two masts (cell towers) drains a little bit more the battery of a cell phone. The thing is that some mobile phones are worse than the others at hopping between cell towers BUT the iPhone 4s is the worst from all mobile phones at switching between cell towers!!!

I wouldn't normally respond to such tone, but you may want to check your facts:

enx23 wrote:

 

@dkalchev

 

This is quite apparent: if the device gets hot, then it is doing somehting!

and the sky is blue!

Not always. It's gray for me today and it snows.

The real issue with iPhone 4S and iOS 5.0 was that the phone would consume lots of power while 'idle'. This is both because of poorly designed applications (made to run while in the background) and because the OS didn't properly shutdown everything not in use. The later is apparently fixed in 5.0.1.
Indeed bugs in iOS 5.x.x and poorly designed apps are a part of the batter life issue but they represent only ~10% of the problem.

If apps run in background your battery will drain very quickly, no matter what.

The battery life issue and/or static noise issue of iPhone 4s are hardware issues which cannot be fixed by software.

How do you know that? Are you aware of specific hardware design flaw in iPhone 4S to suggest any of this?

If your proof is "but those who replaced their phones are better" -- they just replaced their phones with others that have fresh, new and improved software. The iPhone tells a lot about its hardware/software configuration (and there are also tons of apps for this). One can easily see if the new iPhone has different chips in it etc. Especially interesting are "modem firmware" as this controls the apparently hungry 3G chips.

I believe the Apple attitude is correct -- 
Do you mean that is right for one to sell phones which do not perform as written in the specifications? 
I get ~18% of battery life from what is stated in specification.

Have you tested your iPhone? Apple, different from many other vendors actually publish information under what conditions the tests were performed. Do test your iPhone.

If you are confident it is hardware, do yourself a favor and do this: save all your data, do restore to the latest iOS in iTunes, set up the phone and use it as described in http://www.apple.com/iphone/battery.html

Do all of us favor and do post back your observations.

You will most probably find that the iPhone is holding up to it's promise.

I would sell a such product I would end up in jail in less than a week.
 Somehow because Apple does one should fall on its back and be happy. Right?

See, Apple is such a significant and more importantly profitable company that anyone would sue them and put them out of business if only they could prove any of this. The mere fact that this has not yet happened is clear enough indicator that you are barking at the wrong tree.

New software does not neccesarily require more resources. On the contrary, new software is written with the better knowledge of the platform and with a lot of experience. So new software typically runs better on an old platform --- of course it brings about new features that might require more processing power -- but if you not use that new features (remember, your old software didn't have them) the new version will actually work much better.
This a very lame excuse for Apple for selling phones with miserable battery life!

If you can read, you will notice that I am not excusing Apple of anything. Just explaining that the "new software brings you bad experience on old devices" is pure nonsense.

 Just because is software related problem, should one forgive Apple for selling phone with miserable life?

Let's try it differently.. what applications do you have on your iPhone? Are all of your applications made by Apple? Do you get better battery life if you reinstall your iPhone and refrain from installing junk on it?

For most iPhone users, so far, the answer has been yes.

Which means it is not Apple to blame, but the clueless application vendors. Not all third party applications are bad, but some are notably bad for you battery life. Then, by installing and using certain application, you surely accept that it may shorten your battery life, or else you expect the iPhone to be Perpetuum Mobile.

Going out and buying Samsung won't help your iPhone 4S any way. It will only support one copycat company to do it's things longer.
Apple didn't invent the phone so I suggest that if one does not like copycats companies then one should:
- buy a phone from the company who invented the phone,
- buy a car from the company who invented the car.
 

I hope you are being just sarcastic and defensive here and did not mean what you suggested.

By the way, I too wish that the iPhone could last almost a week, just as my old Nokia smartphone did (on 2G and only as a phone/callendar). But... it turns out, that if I enable all the things on the Nokia, such as 3G, wifi etc, it ends up having even less battery life than the iPhone 4S! Go figure

@dkalchev

You wrote:

> How do you know that? Are you aware of specific hardware design flaw in iPhone 4S to suggest any of this?

Yes, the faulty component is the Qualcomm chipset MDM6610 which produces the arcing and also is responsible for the 3G network and GSM/UMTS/CDMA networks.

I have done restoring/resetting/updating, removind apps, installing apps, etc. Nothing fixes the batter life on my iPhone 4s! Also nothing fixes my static noise issue. Also the proof the the battery life issue is not software related is the length of this forum! Also Apple has tried with over eigth iOS updates/realeses/betas to fix the battery life issue and still could not do it!!!

By the way, have you checked your iPhone 4s for the static noise issue? I bet that you are affected by it and most likely is that you are not aware of it! Over 80% of iPhone 4s are affected by the static noise issue

TEST FOR STATIC NOISE ISSUE which affects >80% of iPhone 4s:

1) go in a quiet room,

2) turn off WIFI,

3) turn on the Cellular Data

4) load in Safari a large web-page (or do a speed test on your 3G network with SPEEDTEST app <http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/speedtest.net-mobile-speed/id300704847?mt=8>),

5) while you are loading the web-page or doing the Speedtest put your ear to the back of your iPhone 4s where is the Apple logo and listen carefully.

6) if you hear some noise then you are affected by the static noise issue

enx23 wrote:

 

@dkalchev

 

You wrote:

> How do you know that? Are you aware of specific hardware design flaw in iPhone 4S to suggest any of this?

 

Yes, the faulty component is the Qualcomm chipset MDM6610 which produces the arcing and also is responsible for the 3G network and GSM/UMTS/CDMA networks.

You suggest Apple has started replacing this faulty part with another in recently shipped iPhone 4S?

@dkalchev

dkalchev wrote:

 

enx23 wrote:

 

@dkalchev

 

You wrote:

> How do you know that? Are you aware of specific hardware design flaw in iPhone 4S to suggest any of this?

 

Yes, the faulty component is the Qualcomm chipset MDM6610 which produces the arcing and also is responsible for the 3G network and GSM/UMTS/CDMA networks.

 

You suggest Apple has started replacing this faulty part with another in recently shipped iPhone 4S?

YES! I suggest that. It looks that until 1-2 weeks ago over 80% of the iPhone 4s had the faulty part in it.