Q: iPhone 4s Battery Life?

I'm quite happy since the update.  At this rate I should definitely get over 6 hours of usage.  Can't say that with other phones I've used. 

I agree with a lot of people - I have found that 5.1 has made a a massive difference to battery life on the 4S. I am down to 1% on the first full charge since the update on Wednesday night (it's now Friday late afternoon) and the figures for usage and standby are:

Usage: 7hrs  29 minutes

Standby 39hrs

I have used the phone for phone calls, email, apps, texts, camera, music, Siri and a bit of Youtube. I've had ICloud on for Contacts, Calendars and Reminders and photo stream has been on.

The main difference since the update seems to be very low battery usage when on standby.

I am on my 4th iphone 4S and it is a mess. I love this phone dearly but the battery life is doing my head in.

What I do with my phone:

- Twitter: a lot
- FB: a lot

- email: a lot (it is on pull every 15 minutes)

- music: on the train

- photos once in a while

I hardly make calls, location services are off, brightness is below 50%, bluetooth is off, and still I am lucky if i make it home with 10-20%, sometimes if not at 100% in the morning, it turns off when I leave work.

Any of you guys tried different sim cards? I am really starting to think it might be my carrier and the sim card.

Julymel, the batrtery meter is a bit misleading. It is not linear and does not drop an a constant level. So you were in fact using some percentage between 7:00and 10:30  ).05 per hr is the spec so basically you would have used 1.75% if nothing but standby round to 2  then .25/8=3% for talk. So there is right at 5%. Add in some display juice and other items that run in background. Anyway point is you may see 100% for a long time then all of a sudden it changes to 95-97% all at once. So dont sweat the battery meter too much. You can reboot the phone and the meter will change usually goes up several points. Clearly rebooting does not add power so the meter is a little flaky at best.

A good way to see where you are verses Apples spec is to do the basic math with your usage numbers. so standbytime/200 for stbby percentage used, talktime usage/8 for talk time used, internettime/6 or 9 (3g is 6 wifi is 9 average of the two use 7.5)  then add those and subtract from 100% to see what remaining time should be. Its a close estimate (not 100% but real close)

example 12hr/200= 6% standby,  1hr/8=12.5% talk  so 100%-(6+12.5)=18.5% remaining (should be close to battery meter)

Again the meter is not completely accurate its just to give you an idea.

Julymel wrote:

 

ok guys...phone was doing well..woke up at 7 and unplugged it and was at 100% until around 10.30am.  didn't really use the phone until a phone call for 15 minutes, and battery dropped 8%.  I DONT GET IT!

The best option for you is to downgrade to the 4, not the 4S.

The S just chomps battery power, I don't care what you're doing with it, it always eats the battery away piece by piece.

I've been watching this thread from a distance since it started, laughing my butt off at all these fools who think they're going to "fix" the 4S, and they do all kinds of asinine things like turning EVERYTHING off on their phones so it's less than what a iPhone 4 is at it's worst. I kept telling them from day 1 that nobody would be able to fix it, and I was trolled to death by some of them.

I kept laughing at them and I said, OK, I'll see you here are page 1000 and you'll still be talking about not having a "fix" and we're darned close to that now.

It's sad, it's akin to watching a kidnapping victim fight for their lives before they die, completely futile.

To those who are spending their lives on here, bricking their phones, waiting for a fix and wasting your time:

THERE IS NO FIX, BECAUSE IT'S NOT BROKEN! The 4S CHOMPS BATTERY POWER, THAT'S JUST THE WAY IT IS! STOP USING THE 4S AND DOWNGRADE TO THE 4!

I know, I know, you WANT the latest and greatest, well guess what, then shut up and pay the price, you want the fastest and best? Then expect it to eat battery life fast because to be the fastest it requires more computing power, which results in more battery consumption! My god, quit being spoiled babies! Use some critical thinking for once in your lives!

Again, the answer is to stop using the 4S and downgrade to the 4. I know it's not what people want to hear, but that's just the reality of the situation.

Well it appears you are using all the apps that are known battery hogs. FB is horrible on battery. Also can you get by with manually checking e-mail? I mean typically there is no reason for e-mail to come in every 15 min if you are only looking at it hourly for example. So setting to manual, then when you open the mail app to actually read e-mail it comes in within seconds. That stops the constant traffic/battery use. Unless you pick up and read the emails every fifteen minutes that would be a better option. Even if you do it may still be in case one time you miss and only check in 30 minutes   Mail comes in fast so no real reason to have it all sitting there for when you are ready to read and respond.

FB well a whole other issue. Maybe turn off some of the notifications for every time one of your friends gets a new cup of coffee and it comes across as a notification. Again, perhaps a better strategy is to just check FB when you have time to look at it and respond and forego all the activity constantly coming in,firing up the display (thus using even more battery). Anyway these types of items are proven to assist with battery life so take a look at things like this,make some adjustments and see if you aren't surprised at the difference.

QueeeeenY wrote:

 

I am on my 4th iphone 4S and it is a mess. I love this phone dearly but the battery life is doing my head in.

 

What I do with my phone:

- Twitter: a lot
- FB: a lot

- email: a lot (it is on pull every 15 minutes)

- music: on the train

- photos once in a while

 

I hardly make calls, location services are off, brightness is below 50%, bluetooth is off, and still I am lucky if i make it home with 10-20%, sometimes if not at 100% in the morning, it turns off when I leave work.

 

Any of you guys tried different sim cards? I am really starting to think it might be my carrier and the sim card.

Hmm clearly you have not read close enough. There are awesome results posted all over these pages after some of the tips were applied and certainly since iOS 5.1 was released. Maybe you need to go back and read a few more pages. OR not and enjoy your Andriod or whatever you choose to use. 

Perhaps the 4 is a little better on standby (per the specs) but of course my Motorola Razor was even better than that! I prefer to have the faster/snappier performance, and a few other features of the 4s verses my Razor, or Blackberry. Just sayin. BTW iOS 5.0 affected the iPhone 4 and 3G as well so it was not strictly hardware.

Oh and glad we could give you a laugh! Always good to laugh as often as you can.

SHADYZZ wrote:

 

The best option for you is to downgrade to the 4, not the 4S.

 

The S just chomps battery power, I don't care what you're doing with it, it always eats the battery away piece by piece.

 

I've been watching this thread from a distance since it started, laughing my butt off at all these fools who think they're going to "fix" the 4S, and they do all kinds of asinine things like turning EVERYTHING off on their phones so it's less than what a iPhone 4 is at it's worst. I kept telling them from day 1 that nobody would be able to fix it, and I was trolled to death by some of them.

 

I kept laughing at them and I said, OK, I'll see you here are page 1000 and you'll still be talking about not having a "fix" and we're darned close to that now.

 

It's sad, it's akin to watching a kidnapping victim fight for their lives before they die, completely futile.

 

To those who are spending their lives on here, bricking their phones, waiting for a fix and wasting your time:

 

THERE IS NO FIX, BECAUSE IT'S NOT BROKEN! The 4S CHOMPS BATTERY POWER, THAT'S JUST THE WAY IT IS! STOP USING THE 4S AND DOWNGRADE TO THE 4!

 

I know, I know, you WANT the latest and greatest, well guess what, then shut up and pay the price, you want the fastest and best? Then expect it to eat battery life fast because to be the fastest it requires more computing power, which results in more battery consumption! My god, quit being spoiled babies! Use some critical thinking for once in your lives!

 

Again, the answer is to stop using the 4S and downgrade to the 4. I know it's not what people want to hear, but that's just the reality of the situation.

I appreciate your view, however, the "There are awesome results posted all over these pages after some of the tips were applied and certainly since iOS 5.1 was released."

Doesn't really resolve anything, you're writing in terms of someone who feels they have been beaten down, OF COURSE any little improvement, even nominally, will be considered amazing by most when they've had complete trash. It's the way the human mind works.

If I had you in a cage and I'd give you only a cup of water and a banana a day, to the point where you're beaten down mentally, then I upped it to 2 cups a day and 2 bananas, you'll think you just received a 9-course meal from me and that it was the greatest thing on the planet.

Yeah, laugh all you want at that analogy, but this is the way that the human mind works, and I, having been an ad agency exec for 3 of the top ad firms in the world and owning my own now, I KNOW this is how the human mind works, and we use it ALL THE TIME when it comes to marketing, that's how we get idiots to accept sub-standard products and HORRID service while charging them more money for them. We even get people tp ;ay MORE money for equally garbage products in their hopes of fixing the first problem.

Pride, while dangerous to people is mutually beneficial to those who make money off of people's pride, et. al.: c orporations and advertising.

Deny it all you want in order to make yourself feel better, it's OK, we, and Apple too, is making money off of you for it wwith most of the products that you buy, yes, including the iPhone - made by kids in China and you paid how much for it? Come on! Haha

Thanks! Enjoy.

Not sure what boosting is, but I assume you are referring to plugging in between charges.  Nope not doing that.  I just didnt get a **** phone like some I guess.  Only use phone for calls, browsing, texting, and mail.  If this is light use to you, then so be it. 

are you using PUSH EMAIL ? If you do use PUSH - your figures seem to be a miracle !!!!!

sbailey4, thank you very much! I wasn't aware FB is such a problem. I do not really have many notifications coming in, but when I have time i check the news there and who is online. But I will see how it goes without notifications at all.

I'll try with manual pull of emails and less frequently refreshing twitter.

It is just frustrating because I did the exact same things on my iPhone 4 and it lasted longer. But thank you for all the tips, I hope they help, I am getting fed up.

I hope everyone here understands that with all of these ridiculous recommendations (Which I myself have tried, with 0 effect), we are no longer using the phone we purchased. The reality of the situation is that we all bought a phone, expecting certain spec's, and apple has failed to deliver on what they promised -- its really that simple. Why I should turn my iPhone into what is functionally a era 2000 phone with a fancy screen is totally beyond me. Apple needs to recall these devices, they are a total disgrace. It's quite evident that Jobs was really sick in the lead up to the iPhone 4S because the new leadership quite clearly is not religious about quality any longer. So be it, this is what happened to Microsoft too. Apple will fall from grace.

Further, the asinine amount of time I've devoted to trying to fix it has made my life far more complicated than the **** phone is worth. The most frustrating part is that I was out of contract for years and am now back, locked in, to a contract with this throw-away phone and there is not much I can do about it. Thanks a lot, Apple. Never thought I'd see the day when I'd say that I'll never purchase another Apple product -- years of loyalty gone.

YES! Finally!

Someone who get's it! THANK YOU! This is EXACTLY what I've been saying since day 1!

God, it does go to show that the elite of this world are correct, most humans are nothing more than mindless cattle, unable to think and use their brains beyond that of consuming.

You, sir, are one of the few intelligent ones!

I've appreciated your comments as well -- most people simply do not understand how sold they are. In any case, i think this whole issue can be taken to class-action. It's not like apple does not have the money to settle.