Q: iPhone 4s Battery Life?

I am not sure what it entirely consists of yet, but you should try something that has dramatically improved my battery life. Take your iPhone and hook it up to your computer and manually backup photos, docs, music, ect; as in open My Computer and open the device and pull the stuff off. Also back up anything you may wanna keep, but don't back it up to anything in the Apple genre (iCloud, iStream, ect.), rather back it up to either your computer, email, or whatever means you may have.Once you have backed up everything set aside about 30mins after your phone has come to a full charge.

First, go to Settings>General>Reset>Erase all content and settings.

This will prompt you through factory resetting your phone for the most part. If along the way it ask you to set up from back up or backup from iCloud, ignore the urge and make sure you always set up as new phone. Once this is complete your phone will reboot. Once it has rebooted, set up your phone in the startup sequence to where you can get to your homescreen; don't forget to always choose set up as new phone.

Second, now that your phone seems fresh, empty, and good to go, youre just not done yet. Now hook your phone up to itunes, but make sure auto-sync is disabled. Once itunes has recogzined your phone, click on the device over in the left pane. Now look in the center where the restore button resides. Click restore if your battery is at 100%; if it prompts at any point to back up the phone, once again, ignore, push through and set up as a new phone if it asks. Itunes will begin downloading the iOS 5.1 operating system to your itunes, which should be about an 800mb file. As soon it completes it will initialize the restore process. Push through all prompts in the same manner you have so far (no backups, just new phone). This will take awhile, your phone is basically being formatted and wiped clean with a fresh OS installed 5.1 from the ground up, not some ******** corrupt update from 5>.

Anyways, your phone will do wierd stuff along the way and seem like it starting over, but its just firmware installation and testing; let it do its thing, it may take something like 10-15mins possibly.

Once it's done, it will reboot and it will ask you to set it up again, just like the second step. Again, set up as a new phone. Once you have pushed through everything you should be able to sync up your phone to itunes.

Thats's it! Now that may seem like something you have tried, but try at least once (I have heard of success on the second attempt for some), but this should fix it. My battery life went from 2-3hrs tops to 2 days. I don't have disable anything if I don't want, although I do disable bluetooth, location services, and system services now so I don't have to think about a culprit, but it doesnt help or hinder, except for maybe bluetooth. I do use wifi when I can, but I use the **** out of my phone now and get at least 40hrs!

I think what is happening is:

1) The 5.0.1>5.1 update is either corrupt or it is having issues updating with all the different setups each phone is using.

2) Resetting the phones settings and content before doing a full format and restore sets a better stage for 5.1 to do its thing.

3) Do this all while at 100% charge I feel sets a threshold in the software.

Now that you have it here, very important, do at least 3 full charge cycles to condition the battery with your new setup. That means you just unplugged your phone at 100%, now you need to run it down to 0%, not 1%, but shut off on its own 0%. Then without using it charge fully back to 100%, then repeat a few more times. It's very unconvient at first because the charging cycles hardly fall on your typical charging schedule, but stay strong. After my second charge cycle I was very very very pleased...

Like I said, this seems like a typical resolution, but the sequence of instructions here is the only thing that has worked for me and my girlfriends phone; don't discount any stage. My way should be attempted considering I have been through two phones and done every trick in the book, from Apple store genius bar, to deep deep deep forum thread searches. This for some reason really worked out the kinks and I think its because the landing strip was cleared for a new OS to land properly. Also, I should mention I had my microSIM card out during all this and have never put it back in. It is only needed for international travel, so I dont need it. The reason I bring this up is because it you were following my other threads and posts youll notice my mention of the SIM slot heating up... You can imagine why I removed it... Now it would be interesting if someone wanted to do a controlled version of my "fix" and do it the first time with the SIM in and see if it proves to work. If it doesnt, try it all again without the microSIM. Regardless it would nice for other users to know that it doesnt seem to be a red flag of any kind.

Everyone be proactive, if you find this works, let me know, then let others know. Don't move on and leave everyone hangin in the same brain-squashing temperment you were once in. Have a heart! If this doesnt work for you at all, please let me know also...

Thanks!

@phonytony:

Thanks for your suggestion, I might try it out, but am a bit reluctant with my stats of about 5h active usage and 2 days standby as I'm not sure if I'll see any improvement.

For clarification, can you please give us your BEFORE and AFTER figures for both active usage and standby?

phonytony- should I follow your advise? even though my iphone 4s already up to date 5.1?

Xerberus wrote:

 

@phonytony:

Thanks for your suggestion, I might try it out, but am a bit reluctant with my stats of about 5h active usage and 2 days standby as I'm not sure if I'll see any improvement.

 

For clarification, can you please give us your BEFORE and AFTER figures for both active usage and standby?

If you are getting two days service for a charge, why would you consider that inadequate?

I would only follow it if you're getting less than 24hrs full hours of decent use.

i'd like to get a solid 8 hours out of my 4s, like I did with the 4. Somebody in this thread posted such stats with their 4s.

I called Apple yesterday and they suggested to turn off Siri and Ping. Apart from that, they only proposed that I make a genius appointment to have my phone checked.

Hello everybody,

A friend had the same problem on Iphone 4S iOS 5.0.1, and i solve it easily:

I saw that GPS symbole in the statusbar.

Went to settings-> location service->system service

and found that an apple process where using GPS all the time: it was: TimeZone, put it to 0.Now the battery last 2 days instead a half day.

If GPS symbol appears all the time in the status bar: just check which process is using it by setting all app to 0 ( in the setting Location service) then let it to 0 or delete app if necessary

See you!

Since I asked the genius bar tech to replace my iPhone, I have seen incredible improvement in battery life. It went from about 6-7 hours before it was completely empty to 48 hours.

I have not yet updated the OS to 5.2 because I'm concerned that might have been my issue. Every time I reset my old iPhone back to factory settings the first thing I always did was update the OS.

The Usage stats on this iPhone are very different which confirms my suspicion that my old phone always had a process running and draining the battery. Previously the statistics were never more than 15 minutes difference between Usage and Standby, now they are more reasonable at 3 hours Usage and 1 day Standby. Clearly something was always running, but since I had turned off every possible service - Location Services, ICloud, Bluetooth, Cellular data, Siri, everything! - and the battery still drained, I never could figure out what it was.

I've even loaded a few apps on this phone, very hesitantly, but no unreasonable change. So I think there is a flawed process in the OS somewhere that gets triggered somehow, and how it gets triggered is probably different per user depending on what they're doing. Which is why there are so many reported fixes that work for some but not for all.

Just my theory. I'd say if you're having problems demand a new phone and see if you have better luck like I did.

Close all your apps at least once, or twice, a day.  Double click on the Home button.  The open apps will show and all you have to do is hit the "X" to close them.  It does not delete them.  Good luck

Xerberus wrote:

 

i'd like to get a solid 8 hours out of my 4s, like I did with the 4. Somebody in this thread posted such stats with their 4s.

 

I called Apple yesterday and they suggested to turn off Siri and Ping. Apart from that, they only proposed that I make a genius appointment to have my phone checked.

If you mean 8 hours of usage, that depends on the usage.  8 hours of 3G talk, maybe, IF you have 5 bars.  8 hours of streaming movies from wi-fi, no way.  8 hours of mixed standby and mixed apps, sure.  I see no influence that Siri has on battery use unless you are USING it.  It's always on on my phone.  Turning off 'raise to speak' may have a good effect on battery life.  Basically, if you can't get through a normal day of usage without a recharge, there may be a problem, either with the phone, or the expectations of use, as above.

I went ahead and restored my phone from new as I haven't done that since I had the 3G. I reinstalled apps from the app store and not from my backup. I am noticing a big improvement in battery life. Although I would not recommend doing this with every upgrade I would do this every once in a while to flush out old data. It is almost like doing a complete reinstall of windows because after so long it becomes slower and slower and when you do a complete reinstall it works like a champ. I will do a complete charge cycle today and let you know what my stats are when I get down to like 20% left.

I just switched from an HTC Evo to the iPhone 4S and I am very disappointed.

I am currently at 50% battery remaining with 3 Hours 15 Mins of useage and 13 Hours 23 Mins of Standby.

Most of my useage today has been changing the settings to get better battery life, browsing facebook and instagram, and I did a small (10 mins of web browsing reading about battery issues).

I have all push settings disabled, no Siri, location services off, BT off, wifi on only when at home.

Why should I have to jump through hoops to get the phone to last....it is rediculous! All of the features that make this phone "smart" can't be used for fear of losing battery.

I would not be so ****** if the battery was removeable, and could easily be swapped out later, but this is not the case.

I am documenting all of my battery woes with screen shots from the settings menu.

I find it comical that even after 804 pages in this thread, and the release of iOS 5.1 the issue is still here.....get it together Apple.

Sadly, I will probably be returning the phone and not purchasing another Apple phone again (hey...I still love my Macbook and AppleTV).

I equally am very dissapoiinted in my battery life of my new IPhone 4S.  I just got it three days ago...  and yes...  I drained the battery fully and recharged it fully...  and have had to do so each day.  I only use it very little ( about 3 or 4 phone calls tops a day ) each lasting no more than 15 minutes or so.  Play a game on it for about 15 minutes once a day at my last break.  and that is about it.  Very sad it is to see that I am now having to charge it up again tonight from 0 to full.  I pray that they find a fix for this soon...  or I will simply return it and get something else.  My old 3G lastest way longer and I used it alot more.  This is so very sad!

Wifi: Always On

3G : Sometimes

Push: Yahoo, Hotmail, Gmail, Skype, Facebook, Facebook Messenger, Instagram & XMS

Location service: Never used

Cloud: Off

I'm a moderate to heavy user, all my emails are done from phone...I have a samsung galaxy s2 which won't even last for 3hrs if I've the same setting as iphone 4s. I'm happy with what i'm getting it, besides low memory issue.

How much battery life in standby mode(only) and without using the iphone 4s?

and 3g OFF & blutooth OFF& wifi OFF &....