Q: iPhone 4s Battery Life?

Li-ion batteries need several charge cycles to achieve their rated capacity. As 'new', the battery can never hold it's rated capacity.

It is true however, that Li-ion batteries are best used when charged while not 'completely' empty.

By the way, it is not possible to discharge completely an li-ion battery, because they all contain a circuit that shuts down the output when the battery capacity goes below around 10%. This is because otherwise the battery's chemistry will be destroyed.

It is also not possible to completely (100%) charge the battery, because if the temerature goes a bit higher after such charge, the battery chemistry will be destroyed, again. Because of this, the charging circuit never ever charges the battery to 100% (no matter what the 'meter' displays).

There are indeed many myths about batteries.

Chris CA wrote:

 

J Soap wrote:

 

The more exercise the battery gets the stronger it will become. Take the battery to the limit, in charging and draining, when you can. Avoid top ups, where possible.

This is completely incorrect.

Litium ion batteries are not deep cycle and should not be regularly fully discharged and recharged. The will shorten the usable life of the battery.

 

Use them and top them up regularly.

Well chris PART of what Soap said is correct !

Lipos do need a routine full cycle in order to keep full usable capacity(conditioning- this keeps electrons active throughout the entire pack) And yes they are a deep cycle class battery. You will never FULLY discharge the Lipo EVER ! in the phone do to the fact of the built in discharge threshold limiter. This is when it Fully shuts down (3.3v/cell). For the Iphone or any phone, just use it and charge it when needed according to your daily usage. And do Fully cycle at least once a month.

Heavy usage usually takes care of the almost Fully cycle.

(ie. Trex Heli Pilot)

3dmac wrote:
Lipos do need a routine full cycle in order to keep full usable capacity(conditioning- this keeps electrons active throughout the entire

No, lithium batteries do not need a routine full cycle to keep full usable capacity. Lithium batteries do not have the "memory" effect that alkiline batteries do.

Simply using the battery any amount then charging it cycles it enough.

The ONLY reason to do full disharge followed by a full charge is to keep the system calibrated so it knows how much battery it has.

From -> Battery University

"Similar to a mechanical device that wears out faster with heavy use, so also does the depth of discharge (DoD) determine the cycle count. The smaller the depth of discharge, the longer the battery will last. If at all possible, avoid frequent full discharges and charge more often between uses. If full discharges cannot be avoided, try utilizing a larger battery. Partial discharge on Li-ion is fine; there is no memory and the battery does not need periodic full discharge cycles other than to calibrate the fuel gauge on a smart battery."

Yeah....I have around 220 to 235 hrs of standby...With everything turned off and without airplane mode....

But I have observed one peculiar problem...If I top up my battery before it drains out and shuts the phone off, I will not be getting 200 hrs standby....The standby falls down to 100 to 120 hrs....This will rectify if I do the soft reset (home and power button together) and when I top the battery up again, the same problem....I need to do the soft reset to start getting 200 above standby....

But if I drain the battery until the phone shuts off and recharge it fully, I get more than 200 hrs of standby...and the next time I top it up before it drains completely, the above problem starts again....

Usage generally ranges between 6 to 9 hrs no matter what the stanby time is....

wow, how did you get such amazing battery life? seems excellent for 4s! what are your settings? Did you turn everything off?

Leonard1818 wrote:

 

 

FWIW, just got the following stats the other day on my 4S:

 

55% remaining

Usage 6hours 4minutes

Standby 1day 2hours

 

Still have yet to see ANYONE EVER get 200 hours standby (without airplane mode of course).  That's asinine.

When will you think apple is going to release IOS 5.1 to address the batterey issue?

Thanks

After full charge 7 hours of night sleep with wifi on 55 min phantom usage, battery dropped %100 percent to %89

Mintoff wrote:

 

When will you think apple is going to release IOS 5.1 to address the batterey issue?

 

Thanks

No one knows if/when Apple will release any further update. Several 5.1 betas were/are being tested.

And even if one of the betas that's been tested is released, there's no mention of it addressing the battery issue. Because they haven't acknowledged there is one.

Chris any comments on this,

Power loss through Protection Circuit 

Besides common aging, a Li-ion battery can also fail because of undercharge. This occurs if a Li-ion pack is stored in a discharged condition. Self-discharge gradually lowers the voltage of the already discharged battery and the protection circuit cuts off between 2.20 and 2.90V/cell. Some chargers and battery analyzers (including those from Cadex) provide a wake-up feature, or “boost,” to re-energize and recharge these seemingly dead Li-ion batteries.

I bought my phone 4th of feb. but production date was 45.week of 2011 "november"

Bittorrent wrote:

 

Chris any comments on this,

 

Power loss through Protection Circuit 

Besides common aging, a Li-ion battery can also fail because of undercharge. This occurs if a Li-ion pack is stored in a discharged condition. Self-discharge gradually lowers the voltage of the already discharged battery and the protection circuit cuts off between 2.20 and 2.90V/cell. Some chargers and battery analyzers (including those from Cadex) provide a wake-up feature, or “boost,” to re-energize and recharge these seemingly dead Li-ion batteries.

2-3 months of non-use shouldn't do anything. Seems most iPhones are shipped from factory with ~50%-75% charge. Also, doing this one time should not do much, if anything.

I bought my phone 4th of feb. but production date was 45.week of 2011 "november"

Really? That seems like a long time since everyone, including Apple, gets their stock replenished all the time. Just curious where you got it from?

My 4S is week 52 and I purchased it from AT&T retail store on 9 January.

Surely one of these tips in this article will help someone. It is a pretty comprehensive list that has helped a lot of my friends solve their battery issues.

Yes i was also suprised. I bought 5 phones for my family and friends  :=) all of them was 2012 models (between week 1 and 3), my phone was november. I bought them from Dubai while i was on a vacation trip, and only mine has the battery issue..
Btw i think my battery life is improving, i did 3 full charge and discharge standby time improved considreably but not as much as like in normal ranges and my phantom usage miraculously reduced 10 minutes per hour after my third reset all settings attempt.
My next question is how are listening music cause drain battery this much "nike+gps with every thing on only bluetooth off without music %9 per hour with music %13 per hour.

This evening i will do my final fullcycle and test the standby time next two days without touching her for games and gps, i hope she will see second day.

No offense intended, but what's the point of that test?   If it lasts two days sitting on your table, un-used, who cares?

Bittorrent wrote:

 

This evening i will do my final fullcycle and test the standby time next two days without touching her for games and gps, i hope she will see second day.

Hotphil wrote:

 

Yep, it's been covered every couple of pages for the last 700 or so. It's not a bad thing to close any apps that show in the most-recently-used list, but its not accurate to say they're all running. What state the app goes into in the background depends how the writer set it. There's details at

https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#DOCUMENTATION/iPhone/Conceptual/iPhoneO SProgrammingGuide/ManagingYourApplicationsFlow/ManagingYourApplicationsFlow.h

 

If you have apps that are actually running in the background and you'd rather it didn't, let the writer know if probably the best thing.

It also appears that some old apps can get 'hung', and don't really get shut down.  This can account for some of the 'phantom usage'.  Usually, if you see this happening, you can reset the phone and get rid of the offending app.

Lympero wrote:

 

Ok here is the problem. I have a iPhone 4s since launch. I used to have normal usage and standby times, like 5-6 hours usage and 1 day standby. Then my phone started losing like 10% per hour and my usage time nearly doubled!

 

[IMG]http://i713.photobucket.com/albums/ww136/glympe/b0810753.jpg[/IMG]

 

I did a hard reset, reset all settings and finally TWICE erase all setting and wipe phone, set up as new and my battery life got normal again.

 

Here is the strange part. Since then, Asa long as my pone is on, the battery life is fine. If I restart my phone, or battery dies or put airplane mode on, the phantom usage starts again and I have to erase phone and set up as new to fix it.

 

Now I'm on 7 dAys with my phone constant on and I have like 0.5 to 1% drain per hour which is nice.

 

Anyone can explain this bizzare bug?

This sounds like you have something that happens when you try to contact your service that never gets shut down, likely because it has some kind of error.  Call your service provider, and ask them to reprovision your phone.