Q: iPhone 4s Battery Life?

PowerBook - Graphic Artist wrote:

 

Question: Of those who are reporting issues, did you initally setup your phone over the air or via iTunes?

 

 

 

the seller had to activate it.....ober the air.....at he store...........the rest was ON by default.......and when i plug in computer all contacts gone to my iphone with out ITUNES

Same problem. Upgraded from AT&T 3Gs to Verizon 4s, and immediately noticed much worse battery life. Need to put it on charger at least once to get through the day, and I am a very light user. I just now got back from the gym. When I left the house, it was about 90%. I streamed a 15 minute NPR show, then listed to my own music the rest of the time. After less than two hours, I was getting the low battery warning. With my 3Gs, I could stream or listen to music all day. That is when I began to wonder if I was the only one. With this problem...obviously not. It seems Apple has a product problem on its hands. Hopefully they will fix it better than the antenna issue on the 4.

Also, don't know if anyone else has noticed, but my unit runs very hot...can easily feel it through my pocket, or even through the thin leather case.  Others comment on it when they pick it up. Is this normal?

Rubydo wrote:

 

Same problem. Upgraded from AT&T 3Gs to Verizon 4s, and immediately noticed much worse battery life. Need to put it on charger at least once to get through the day, and I am a very light user. I just now got back from the gym. When I left the house, it was about 90%. I streamed a 15 minute NPR show, then listed to my own music the rest of the time. After less than two hours, I was getting the low battery warning. With my 3Gs, I could stream or listen to music all day. That is when I began to wonder if I was the only one. With this problem...obviously not. It seems Apple has a product problem on its hands. Hopefully they will fix it better than the antenna issue on the 4.

 

Also, don't know if anyone else has noticed, but my unit runs very hot...can easily feel it through my pocket, or even through the thin leather case.  Others comment on it when they pick it up. Is this normal?

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I've noticed that in addition to the battery life being much worse than my co-workers iPhone 4, the unit gets a little warm, only charges to either 92% or 96% (unless I turn off wifi, then remove and re-insert charger) and doesn't do well even on standby with nearly everything turned off.  I went for Apple instead of Android because of the (supposedly) better battery life, but after seeing this as a common problem I'm wondering if I should return it before it's too late.  At this point I gave to assume Apple isn't going to come out with some magical fix...if the 4 doesn't really have this problem, and the 4s does then it must be at least in-part due to hardware right?

I decided to go for a complete wipe and rebuild my phone (I did it once before but figured I would try it again).  I did it from the phone, without iTunes, and then setup my 5 caldav calendars, 3 cardav address books and my imap email.  No matter what I do phone always shows that it is in constant use, even when asleep/locked.  At night it only charges to 95% at times.

Hopefully the fix comes out soon, I was one of those that sent all my logs to Apple.  The tech I spoke felt quite strongly that it was a software issue.

Went to apple store today. Told them my phone runs all the time never goes to standby. The genius there said "I know exactly what is happening. We don't know what causes it but we can fix it. Going to do a complete restore"

No change for me yet. I'll see how it does tonight. Think the battery is good. After all I get 15 or more hours of life it just never goes to standby. If it would ever shut down the battery is probably good.

I'm not shutting of Siri or mail or locations.... I bought the phone to use it. Next thing people will tell me to do is turn the phone off except when I want to make a call.

Hope apple hurries with a fix.

Hmmm... I am a current Android user (Verizon Galaxy S -- Samsung Fascinate).  I was thinking about picking up the iPhone 4S as one of our lines is eligible for an upgrade.  One of the things that was somewhat bothersome about the Fascinate was the battery life after it got put on 2.2.  This was easily solved for BOTH my wife and I for around $40 on amazon.  I bought an external battery charger and 2 extra batteries.  Honestly, it sounds burdensome but it's been EXTREMELY convenient... My battery in my fascinate lasts all day (usually gets down to about 40% at the end of the day with moderate-to-heavy use).  The battery that it takes is very thin and small and fits in my pocket without me even knowing it's there.  It's so nice to be able to swap to a fully charged battery if I need to use it heavily and it drains quicker.  It's nice for my wife cause she's not extremely mindful of charging her phone so she always has a fresh battery to pop in at any time.

I figured that I could go back to being a 1-battery person and just have a charger at work for my phone.  I knew (from the experience of friends and family) that the iPhone battery was not NEARLY as bad as any android.  The 80 pages of this thread have me concerned.  I can be a pretty heavy user and I know if I got an iPhone I would use it more than my current phone (for music mostly).  The iPhone seems to fit the bill for me and includes all of the features that I liked from my android phone except turn-by-turn navigation which doesn't work well on my fascinate anyway.

I am going to keep an eye on this issue.  I'd like to try to pull the trigger on a new iPhone this weekend (if I go that route). 

My battery seems terrible too. Just did a full charge and I'm at 1 hour 1 minute of usage and 1 hour 15 minutes of standby and I'm at 84%. Pretty terrible right?

MrAnderson1001 wrote:

 

My battery seems terrible too. Just did a full charge and I'm at 1 hour 1 minute of usage and 1 hour 15 minutes of standby and I'm at 84%. Pretty terrible right?

what did you do in that 1 hour use? if nothing it should be about 98%

No, just regular usage, actually minimal usage. Idle or not, it would drop 10% an hour.

I had the same problem,  Poor battery issues right out of the box. I followed some recommendations for resetting network settings, deleting icloud, reset phone, etc.....and calibrated battery and I had a perfect phone for about 4 days.....Yesterday, the battery started returning to horrible life.

Today, took the phone to apple store, told them everything that happened, they gave me a new phone. I set it up in store as new phone, the battery was at 73% when i turned it on.....I left the store, and went to one other store in the mall, and walked to my car for a total of about 15 minutes. I looked at my phone, and it was at 65%.....I promptly walked back into the apple store and showed the manager and he tried to tell me that was normal and I shouldnt look at the percentage numbers......I about died laughing......I told him this thread was 80 pages long and he looked it up and said oh.......At this point he tried to tell me that the 4s was different than the 4 and was not an apples to apples comparison.....I agreed in point, but then reminded him that my battery life went from poor to perfect for 4 days and back to poor so there has to be something running in the background....I charged my phone to 100%, sent 6 text messages, and the usage stats showed it had been used for 1 hour and 16 minutes......My % went down to 86 after 6 text messages only.......

SO, bottom line, i returned my 2nd phone for a full refund and got a new sim card for my Iphone 4 and now life is back to normal.....I will be happy to buy another 4s as soon as this crap is figured out in the next month or so....Until then, my Iphone 4 is still at 81% after being in use most of the day......I think this speaks for itself......

Good Luck to others with the 4s.....FYI, I had the black 32gb model 4s....

Ok, I've been traveling out of the country, and I've had my iPhone 4s with 5.0 in my bag (not being used), in *airplane mode with location services and wifi off* and still lost 60% of battery in 5 hours. And the phone was hot. So, if it's not sending or receiving any signals, how is this even possible? Since I've been vacationing, it's stayed in airplane mode the whole time, and continues all of its bad behavior. That throws a wrench into some theories. I'd love to know if anyone else has tried this.

aimeekay wrote:

 

Ok, I've been traveling out of the country, and I've had my iPhone 4s with 5.0 in my bag (not being used), in *airplane mode with location services and wifi off* and still lost 60% of battery in 5 hours. And the phone was hot. So, if it's not sending or receiving any signals, how is this even possible? Since I've been vacationing, it's stayed in airplane mode the whole time, and continues all of its bad behavior. That throws a wrench into some theories. I'd love to know if anyone else has tried this.

I've posted about this before as I had similar experiences in airplane mode using iOS 4.3.5 on my iP4 (not 4S).  In August 2011, I lost over 50% overnight in airplane mode while camping (no signal) and in September 2011 I lost 13% while on a cross country flight with the phone in my pocket the enitre time (unused).

It seems there are some bugs in airplane mode where Exchange/email accounts occasionally get stuck in a loop checking for email or something and these bugs have not been fixed in iOS 5.  Not sure how this stuff keeps going uncorrected my Apple for so long, but as a long time iPhone user, it's starting to get pretty annoying.

UPDATE

I traded my previous iPhone 4S yesterday morning becuase the battery would simply not make it half a day.

It would get warm to the touch when in use and you can see the battery % dropping in front of your eyes as you surf the web. 

Happy to report my new Black 64GB does NOT seem to have this issue.  I am running everything on wifi, bluetooth, notifications and all and by the end of the day I am sitting at 48%.  Before with everything turned off I would have to charge it halfway thru the day.  I still think there is something not right with this drainage, my previous iPhone would be at 65% at the end of the day, but it is a HUGE improvment over the first 4S that I got.

Not sure if it was a bad batch, but my old one had a serial # starting with DNP.

This exactly has been my issue. Resets work short term. Then battery life disappears. Seems to me to be a begin location services that stays on even though you shut them down. Unfortunately I already have sold my 4 thinking I would never experience this problem with apple