Q: iPhone 4s Battery Life?

I had horrific battery problems in my iPhone 4, i

phone 4s and even my iPad2 after 5.0.1 update

I just reset all devices to factory settings and restored from backup.

So far, seems much better...

After Update to 5.1 it works perfect. Settings-Reset and Battery-Calibration, everything is on, except Bluetooth and Push-Services.

I thought mine was better than everyone else's....I think it would have pulled 15 hrs if I had not got a call in the morning and three four text messages, phone was on vibration.... but this here is the money....

Royboyvdm wrote:

 

Iphone that i bought yesterday with contract is losing like 2% battery life in standby per hour...think im gonna return it..

that means it could go about 2 days.  What did you expect?

I'm experiencing same issues. I made restore to 5.1, and left my iphone 4s completely empty: no backup, no apps, no data, nothing.. just clear iOS 5.1. The result: 60% after 30min of usage + 10hours of standby.

The battery drains in standby 1% per 15 min only when 3G is on. Because the system was completely empty I think the problem can be in iCloud sync or hardware issue. Now I've switched off any sync with iCloud except iMessages hope it will help me. Actually I'm very disappointed with this problems.

alexanderfromst.petersburg wrote:

 

I'm experiencing same issues. I made restore to 5.1, and left my iphone 4s completely empty: no backup, no apps, no data, nothing.. just clear iOS 5.1. The result: 60% after 30min of usage + 10hours of standby.

The battery drains in standby 1% per 15 min only when 3G is on. Because the system was completely empty I think the problem can be in iCloud sync or hardware issue. Now I've switched off any sync with iCloud except iMessages hope it will help me. Actually I'm very disappointed with this problems.

You can experiment with turning off 3G data and see if the drain drops dramatically.  If it does, talk to your service provider about your phone's provisioning, and your signal strength.

Remember the battery meter is not "real time" so it may stay on 100% for a while then drop to like 96 or 97% in what seems like all of a sudden. The reality is its dropping that 3% the whole time just battery meter not reporting it. The spec says it shoulod drop .05% per hr in standby so 1% every two hours. However you may bot see 99% after 2 hrs (like you already stated yours stayed for 5 hrs) so I would expect to see 97% or so after 5 hrs. Effectivly going from 100% to 97% "all of a sudden". 

QueeeeenY wrote:

 

I charged my phone to 100% and after it has been at 100% for a while I unplugged it and it was in standby over night. 5 hours later and it still had 100%. So it is definitely not draining when in standby, but as soon as I start to use it, it goes very fast.

 

Right now I am at 5h56min of standby and 56minutes of usage with 91% left. I am on wifi, 3G is activated, location services are off, Siri on, bluetooth off and I made a 10 minute call. FB, Twitte and email all have push off.

 

I am happy with 1hour usage=10% of battery, but it is a lot more when I check Twitter and FB. I also would like to have those push notifications on, at least for Twitter and email. But I'll continue to mess around with it.

 

I have noticed that Photostream is giving me some trouble at times. Occassionally, I take a lot of pictures at once, and then the phone starts to crash. When I go into the picture gallery to look at them, it sometimes freezes up, when I slide through the pics, it freezes right in the middle of 2 pics. I wondered if the upload to photostream might cause my battery issues as well.

 

Anyway, I still love my phone, the battery could be a bit better, yeah, but other than that there is no better phone for me.

Sorta true but PhotoStream only kicks in if on wifi. Does not use 3G. So if take a lot of pics, it wil upload all as soon as wifi is available using battery then but wifi usage not 3g.

dkalchev wrote:

 

Uploading photos to Photostream, especially on 3G is serious battery drain if you snap a lot of photos. The iPhone 4S makes these 8 megapixel pictures at about 2-4 MB each. Sending anything on 3G (cellular) requires a lot of power.

ok 8hr/200=.04  100%-4% = 96%  So you are exactly operating within MAX spec for standby usage. Not sure what your complaiant is. You are in great shape so it would appear!

pezzman77 wrote:

 

I have tried several of the different things people mentioned here.  I'll let you know how it works out.  To let you know where I was at after the update a couple of days ago, I fully charged my 4S to 100% yesterday night, unplugged it, put it on my nightstand and went to bed.  When I woke up in the morning it was down to 4%, so it burned through 96% of battery life sitting on my nightstand doing nothing (roughly 8 hours).

Oops yeah sorry. .5% per hr.

While you are somewhat correct in that the phone should use battery during standby, 2% is too high.  .5% is the max stated spec and is quite common for a normal operating iPhone 4s. Now with that said, if there are apps like whatsapp or messenger or facebook etc running and checking in constantly yeah 2% could very well be the norm.

So my advice, close any running apps. Turn off location/notifications services you dont need, change email to fetch/manual, and see what your standby usage is then.

KC7GNM wrote:

 

Royboyvdm wrote:

 

Iphone that i bought yesterday with contract is losing like 2% battery life in standby per hour...think im gonna return it..

So you really think your phone should not lose any battery in standby? The phone is constantly on in standby and the radio is contsantly listening to the cell tower for calls. 2% an hour isn't bad. At that rate you can go 50 hours but I suspect you have push turned on and location services and other services that are constantly sending and receiving data. If so then 2% isn't bad at all.

Correction update: .5% an hour not .05%  (so 1% every two hours) Again that is Max not guaranteed. Apple states "Up To 200hrs in standby"

sbailey4 wrote:

 

Remember the battery meter is not "real time" so it may stay on 100% for a while then drop to like 96 or 97% in what seems like all of a sudden. The reality is its dropping that 3% the whole time just battery meter not reporting it. The spec says it shoulod drop .05% per hr in standby so 1% every two hours. However you may bot see 99% after 2 hrs (like you already stated yours stayed for 5 hrs) so I would expect to see 97% or so after 5 hrs. Effectivly going from 100% to 97% "all of a sudden". 

QueeeeenY wrote:

 

I charged my phone to 100% and after it has been at 100% for a while I unplugged it and it was in standby over night. 5 hours later and it still had 100%. So it is definitely not draining when in standby, but as soon as I start to use it, it goes very fast.

 

Right now I am at 5h56min of standby and 56minutes of usage with 91% left. I am on wifi, 3G is activated, location services are off, Siri on, bluetooth off and I made a 10 minute call. FB, Twitte and email all have push off.

 

I am happy with 1hour usage=10% of battery, but it is a lot more when I check Twitter and FB. I also would like to have those push notifications on, at least for Twitter and email. But I'll continue to mess around with it.

 

I have noticed that Photostream is giving me some trouble at times. Occassionally, I take a lot of pictures at once, and then the phone starts to crash. When I go into the picture gallery to look at them, it sometimes freezes up, when I slide through the pics, it freezes right in the middle of 2 pics. I wondered if the upload to photostream might cause my battery issues as well.

 

Anyway, I still love my phone, the battery could be a bit better, yeah, but other than that there is no better phone for me.

You misunderstood my original post.  I charge it to 100%, unplug it and go to sleep.  When I get up in the morning it is all the way down to 4%, so essentially burns through the entire charge while in stand by at night.

I'm going to try a full reset.  This seems odd to me that it is burning .12% an hour while in stand-by.  For comparison sake, my wife upgraded to the 4S on the same day as mee from the same Sprint store and she is not experiencing these issues.

After update to 5.1 the improvments are notorious!