Q: iPhone 4s Battery Life?

Lawrence Finch wrote:

 

beel11 wrote:

 

This has got to be a problem with almost ALL 4S users. We're just the small fraction talking about it online. Half the people that own iPhones don't even notice or care or think the battery life they're getting is "bad."

It's trivially easy to disprove your statement. My 4S does not have a battery life problem; my battery life is better than my 3GS. You don't realize how tiny a fraction you are. There have been 5 million 4S phones sold. A tinyfraction, like 1%, would be 50,000.

I think I hit the jackpot, I got the yellow screen issue AND horrible battery life. I think it's time to take it back and try my luck with a return if iPhones with good battery life really exist.

Maybe coming from an old 3GS the battery life is better, but my 14 month old iPhone 4 had way better battery life, I never even thought about the battery with it. Now I am scared to use the 4S in fear of draining the battery before I get home each day.

Hey Scarface.,

There are actually more than a couple things that can significantly affect your battery life with the new iPhone 4S. One of the biggest changes between the iPhone 4S and the iPhone 3GS is the shear amount of location based tasks/apps/features. I would strongly reccomend taking a look at the apps you have enabled location permissions for in your settings menu. Simply check off the ones you don't think you'll need to be able to tell where you are. The big one with the iPhone 4S is the location based "Reminders." Even without a reminder set it's constantly tracking your position and can really hit your battery hard.

The battery life on the iPhone 4S should typically be around the same as your iPhone 4, however keep in mind your processor is now a dual core A5, your camera functions with a significantly higher resolution and your operating system is a bit more advanced. Here's another list of things that can really improve your battery life.

Turning Off

• Bluetooth when not in use
• iPod/Music equalizer
• Skype's (If Applicable) default setting to "Never Go Offline"
• Push based notifications for third party apps
• Location based services for apps that don't need them
• Push based email if not needed

Things to Monitor

• If you're browsing the web, use your WiFi! 3G if used for data can be quite battery intensive.
• If you're not browsing the web or checking emails, turn WiFi off! Leaving the network connections on can cause your phone to constantly search for networks that you "Could" connect to.
• Phone talk time, people don't realize how intense phone calls are on your battery. I don't think you should shorten your talk time, just keep in mind it's a pretty intense process for your phone to undertake.

If all that dosn't fix the issue, remember your Apple Care is provided to you free of charge for the first year. Battery longevity is certianly something that's covered under that agreement so long as you're actually having a battery problem and not just a heavy user. Your local Apple Store's all have technicians that have battery diagnostics on hand, so backup your iPhone, jump online and setup and appointment! Hope this helps!

A couple of observations related to two main threads of comments on this forum:

For those throwing fits about what a crappy product Apple has dared to release and a general sentiment of disgust with Apple and disappointment with the "defective" product with such a lousy battery:  In case you were not in the iPhone rhelm or did not immediately update when iOS 4.0 and the iPhone 4 were released; there were similiar problems with battery life.  It turned out to be a bug in the Push Notification Services.  Temporarily switching from Push to Fetch fixed the problem short-term.  Long-term; it took Apple about 3 weeks to release an update that fixed the issue entirely. The iPhone 4S actually has one of the largest and (when not effecteced by this unknown bug) one of the longest lasting cell battery's on the market.

For those who have performed a "New Phone" restore and only added a few apps at a time; only to discover the "one" offending app that is causing the problem - this is probably getting you close, but not all the way to the actual culprit.

Since the overall # of people with this problem is relatively small (compared to the over 6 million devices already sold and activated in under two weeks) and considering that individuals; such as myself, who have received replacement phones are still experiencing the same problems; it is relatively logical to conclude that this is a software related issue.  More specifically; it is related to some as-of-yet-unknown combination of applications with the new OS; which result in the hot handsets and pathetic battery life. 

For those who have identified Facebook or other apps as the "offenders"; keep in mind that the first app you find causing a problem may not be the only one that does so.  Many apps may be calling on the same core OS functions or combination of functions; in which case they would all have the same impact upon battery life. 

Just as most new users with virtually no outside apps installed seem to be immune to this problem (based upon what I have seen on the forum and personal observations of multiple friends / family new to the iPhone without any problems whatsoever) it also makes perfect sense that spouses or family members who made siultaneous upgrades would all experience the same problems (if any); since they are probably sharing the same Apple ID and installed base of applications.

I see where several individuals moving from the Blackberry / Android world are having problems; which might seem to contradict the theory of impact mainly upon users with a large base of installed apps; however, I've noticed a trend where ONE commonality among many of these users is Exchange Based email.  This could be ONE of the areas causing the problem, or it could be that something in the way that Exchange Based email is processed, also hapens to access a part of the OS that other "Offending" applications are using.  (I don't use Exchange email; but I've had this problem with two separate devices since the initial day of launch.)  I do; however, have a large base of about 200 apps installed on my phone.  I do not use all of them on a regular basis; however any one (or multiple) could be unintentional culprits.

Like others on this forum; I was contacted by Apple Tech Support and asked to install a provisioning profile; which created an extremely detailed log of my phones usage and running apps throughout the day.  With my file, in combination with those of other users (potentially a combination of individuals both with and without battery life issues)  Apple should be able to narrow down the list of candidates related to this issue.  Once that has been accomplished; they can then search for common or similiar calls to the OS that most or all of these applications are making.  With luck; this will finally allow Apple Techs to figure out exactly why the battery is draining so fast and to issue a software patch (OS Update) that gets around the problem.

It's not likely to happen overnight, but I wouldn't expect it to take more than a couple more weeks either.  Now that Apple is clued into the problem and actively working to solve the problem (despite claims of several posters that Apple is completely ignoring the problem) it should not take an innordinate amount of time to narrow down the likely culprit. 

Also; please keep in mind that even after they determine what is believed to be the culprit and design a patch; they probably will not release it to the public immediately.  Any intelligent software engineer should have enough common sense to try testing the patched code to the greatest extent possible, before releasing it out to the "wild."  The one thing that they want to avoid is the potential of intruducing a new unanticipated bug, in the process of fixing the first one.  The code will be heavily tested internally (with testers setting up their iPhones with all of the suspected offending apps / configuration settings) to verify that the problem is fixed and make sure that they don't observe any new issues.

It's not a simple process, but it is a tried and true method for fixing such problems.  Rageing at Apple Employees or the company at large really doesn't accomplish much; ouside of raising the blood pressure of everyone envolved and making the lives of a lot of innocent individuals far more stressful than they need to be. 

If you can live with having a charger nearby for a couple more weeks; the problem will probably be fixed by an iOS update.  If you can't do this and must have access to the phone most of the  day; then try a "New Phone" restore and only install the applications that you absolutely can not live without.  As long as one of those is not one of the culprits; you should be able to get by until the fix is posted.  Please just don't gripe about how you purchased this phone for all of its anvanced features and it's completely unacceptable for you to not be able to use them.  I purchased the phone for all of the features; but I know enough about how technology works to give the people at Apple a chance to actually figure this out.

For those who have posted complaints about how Apple failed to deliver on most of the promised improvements in the newly released phone; keep in mind that Apple NEVER publicly disclosed any specificatons or capabilities of the 4S; prior to its official announcement.  Just because a buch of bloggers speculated on what revolutonary changes might be coming and provided their ultimate wish-lists as upcoming features (with absolutely no basis in reality), you can't blame Apple for not releasing a product that they never intended to produce, or (potentially) features that they are still testing with the hopes of incorporating it into a future device - after they can work out the kinks and make certain that they can produce it in a cost-effective manner.  Blogs are looking for eyeballs; so they will get your hopes up with whatever they think you might believe, in order to bring you to their site.  Some times they get it right; often they do not.

chr0m wrote:

 

Usage: 40m

Standby: 50m

84%

 

All I did was browsed web on 3G for about 25 mins and played Where's My Water for 15.

 

Interactive games are the heaviest CPU users. The rated battery life for 3G is 6 hours (360 minutes). While there is no spec for games, it is if anything heavier, but lets call it the same. 40 minutes/360 minutes = 11%, so you should be at 89%, instead of 84% if your 3G signal was 5 bars. If it was lower than 5 bars the phone will use more energy because it has to raise the transmitter power. A lot. With 5 bars the transmitter power is 50 mw. At 1 bar it is 10 times that. in between is logarithmically proportional. If all of your data was at 1 bar your battery life would be under 3 hours. (That's why the specs say "up to 6 hours" rather than "6 hours.")

But your sample is too small to judge by. You need several days of usage data to make any sort of judgement. The people with REAL battery problems would be at 50% with your usage.

It is trivially easy to disprove your statement. Your 4S does not have a battery life problem; your battery life is better than your 3GS.  You dont realize how tiny a fraction you are.  There have been 5 million 4S phones sold.  A tinyfraction like 1 in 5,000,000 is 0.00002%.

chr0m wrote:

 

I think I hit the jackpot, I got the yellow screen issue AND horrible battery life. I think it's time to take it back and try my luck with a return if iPhones with good battery life really exist.

 

Definitely take it back for the screen problem. If you restore you backup on the replacement you will probably have the same battery life problem, however,

Yellow screen means NOTHING.  It has already been seen from previous iPhone releases that the yellow screen is actually related to adhesives used in laminating layers of glass  together for the LCD.  For a brief period of time after being manufactured; the glue is not fully cured and will show a yellow tint.  After a few more weeks; this should have faded; and you will have a nice clear screen.  This same issue was reported with both the 3GS and 4 and people quickly forgot about the problem.  The reason why it appears to be far more noticeable now is that sales are so brisk that the devices are making it into the hands of end-users with virtually no time on the shelf.  As the supplies begin to meet demand, phones will have a little more time to sit after being manufactured; so the yellow tinted glue will have time to fully cure before ever making it into an end-users hands.

chasefromhonolulu wrote:

 

It is trivially easy to disprove your statement. Your 4S does not have a battery life problem; your battery life is better than your 3GS.  You dont realize how tiny a fraction you are.  There have been 5 million 4S phones sold.  A tinyfraction like 1 in 5,000,000 is 0.00002%.

You missed the point. If 99% of 5 million phones had a problem, and only 1% bothered to complain, that would still be 50,000 complaints. There are nowhere near that number. And just reading this thread and others you will find hundreds of users who resolved their battery problem rather than whining about it.

So unlike most, I did not get rid of my 4 before getting the 4S.  However, the switch required my SIM card (AT&T) to be used in one or the other.  So after a horrible experience with the 4S with battery life, I switched back over to my 4.  I write this to say, with the sim card out of the 4S and all settings tweaked to the "optimal" battery life performance, my 4S decreased 10% in battery life in a 7 hour period.  During this period, it was never used.

Lawrence Finch wrote:

 

Yes, true, but you cannot remove them by tuning off the phone, which is what the previous poster wanted to do.

Unless I am deeply mistaken, that's exactly what used to happen under iOS 4 on my iPad (the only device I had that was capable of running either iOS 4 or 5) - that cycling the power would in fact kill all running processes.

You certainly can remove apps from the task bar by pressing on the icon until they jiggle and then clicking on the red minus button. They nearly all (some of the native Apple apps excluded) disappear from the list of running processes shown in System Activity Monitor.

Finally, and I realize some know quite a bit more than others, I have been told by several Apple employees that removing items from the task bar frees up memory by closing out the application. Since I've seen a number of low memory indications in the log files, this seemed like a prudent thing to do.

Again, I may be completely wrong, but the exhibited behavior of the phone certainly did not match the behavior that I had anticipated.

No point was missed.  I understand what you are trying for but I was highlighting you gap in logic.  You ASSUME that if people have battery problems they WILL come to this thread.  Zero logic behind that reasoning.  And to note there have been ~80,000 views of this thread.  All of what you said is guessing or assuming and neither of which provide a sound argument.  Troll on

So when I replaced my phone, for the 2nd time.... being my 3rd phone.. its finally better.

I charged my phone for the first time by my laptop.. have not attempted to charge it by A/C adapter because I was afraid it would do something to the battery life.

I also kept iCloud off the entire time I have had it.

I also noticed that the installation of an App called Wave, navigation app... was causing my phone to drain..

I think that iOS5 has issues with applications because it keeps them running in the background due to incapabilities to keep it in the background etc... Not sure about this though..

I don't know if its the cloud, because I have tried turning it off before.. and I saw no change on previous phones..

However this is a new phone and one that seems to be working decently well.. I will just have to wait to make sure it continues to do so...

I removed most of the location settings in the system locations area..

I also turned off Notications I did not need..

I have very little apps.. and the ones I do add I make sure run properly on the phone first and don't drain my battery..

I hope they release a update soon. Would really appreciate it

I want to add here that people are getting a little over the top.

The issue is the iPhone 4S does not get the advertised battery life. Never in the history of the iPhone did you have to disable 80% of your location services, and pretty much anything else just to try to make it to mid afternoon before your phone ends up dead.

One of my co-workers has an AT&T iPhone 4S. Yesterday I turned off nearly every location service, made sure nothing was push, turned his brightness to around 40%, and even turned off his notifications. Still from 11am to 3pm he went from 83% to 32%. Granted he said he did use it for about 90 minutes listening to his local music library. At 3pm his total use time was 3 hours 42 minutes for the day. Thats no where near 8 hours... I've read online some apple stores are suggesting you reset your settings, but I dont know if he has tried this yet.

Another co-worker has the iPhone 4S with Sprint. Same exact problem. We made all the same tweaks to his phone and it may be doing slightly better than the AT&T one but its not a controled enough test to know for sure.

Where as you compare both to my Verizon iPhone 4 and I get nearly double the battery performance. Mind you however all of my location services are on, my notifications are all on, my brightness is about the same, and my battery is 8 months older than theirs. (more charge / discharge cycles)

So sure, your iPhone 4S may be getting BETTER battery life than your 3GS (which my wife has and which my iPhone 4 puts to shame) but thats expected. Unless you have a brand new battery in that phone its probably got several hundred charge discharge cycles from being 2+ years old. However the iPhone 4S is supposed to be able to have 1 hour of additional usage time than the iPhone 4, and that certainly does not proove to be the case.

All three phone are running iOS 5 as well. Obviously the iPhone 4 is missing Siri.

Finally the strangest thing in this whole mess, is that my co-worker with AT&T's phone somehow says the cellular radio lifetime timer is 14 days 19 hours (as of yesterday). This is totally impossible as the phone hasnt even been in his hands that long, plus that would mean hes been on the phone 23 hours a day since hes gotten it.

bwulfe wrote:

 

I've noticed a trend where ONE commonality among many of these users is Exchange Based email.  This could be ONE of the areas causing the problem, or it could be that something in the way that Exchange Based email is processed, also hapens to access a part of the OS that other "Offending" applications are using

IMO, iOS 5 is a very persistent at attempting to accomplish tasks. If it can't complete the task, it doesn't like giving up ... be that Exchange, iCloud, connecting to the network or utilizing location services.

I think that's why we see some commonality, but no "smoking gun" so to speak.

For a significant number of people, something is happening in the background duirng periods where we anticipate nothing of significance should be transpiring. It's why I can wake my phone from sleep and find the processor spiking at above 40% with no visible processes functioning.

So, to me, the question is: what is the phone chewing away at?

As I mentioned before, I did all the necessary settings recommened for longer battery life.

I charged my phone last night and when I woke up the phone was at 100%. I unpluged it and it went down to 98%. Still can't figure out how this happens.

Anyway, here is my latest usuage. Can someone PLEASE tell me if if this is about normal or if you think I am loosing battery life faster then I should be.

Thank you.

Time since last full charge:

USAGE 4HOURS, 25MIN

STANDBY 9HOURS, 37 MIN.

I'm now at 33% battery life

I appreciate the feedback.