Q: iPhone 4s Battery Life?

KiltedTim wrote:

 

ipod user119213 wrote:

 

When you double tap the home button and the apps come up at the bottom of your screen, all of those apps are running

This is NOT true.

More accuratly, it is only partly true.  SOME apps do continue to run in the background, but most don't.  Trouble is, there is no indication which ones are, and are not, running.  I hope Apple will address this information issue in the future.  Until then, to be safe, it is wise to kill all of them.

Mo 4s wrote:

 

hello guys ,

i was wonderiing if this is a good battery life ?

 

 

 

i have no wi-fi connection , so 3G is always turned on , location service  , push notifs both are on for FB , twitter and 3 mailboxes   .

 

i browse the web from time to time , play some games , listen to music  and chat   ( on 3G )

 

is it good ??

thanks in advance

It is pretty good, assuming you didn't have it plugged too long.  However, I am concerned that you have the GPS active symbol in your statusbar.  You know that having that purple symbol means that the GPS chip is active, and it is a heavy power user.  You might want to check that it is really needed.

This is what have 25 hours after last charge with the changes I mentioned yesterday.

Just to let you know that I reset the Iphone and it fixed the problem. It seems that there was a program hung and it was consuming the battery. Yesterday I had more than 8 hours of Usage and more than 24 hours of Standby.

I recently purchased a 4S to replace a 3GS (  new phone came with iOS 5.1 preinstalled - I can't address anyone whith an earlier os version though I suspect the solution will be the same for you as well). I restored all my apps, data and the user settings that can be migrated over from the old phone right after I purchased the new 4S, so can't speak to battery performance on a "clean" install. I also don't have a SIM card...

After completing the data migration, I noted the battery performance was horrible and pretty much in line with what other people have been complaining about in this thread. After spending 15 mins or so reading the various theories and proposed solutions people have suggested, I decided: 1. There is a problem with the phone (duh) and 2. There is a  lot of  "magic thinking" going on in here regarding the cause(s) and the remedy. I'm not here to debate whether Apple screwed up or whether the phone is or is not a decent piece of hardware - that part comes at the end.  I'm here to share what I did to fix my particular problem and hopfully spare folks some time.

Assumes you are using iOS 5.1.x

Steps taken: 1. Hard restart the device. (hold down both power and home buttons until device restarts). notwithstanding nuclear powerplants, and fly-by-wire systems, we still live in a world where the "reboot" can and often does "fix" some systems issues.

BTW you will lose "some" of your user preferences when you do this (like wallpaper and email passwords), so document and be prepared.  You won't lose apps.

1. I use 4 email accounts on the phone - 1 exchange account, 2 gmail accounts syncing via IMAP and a MobileMe account - also IMAP . The exchange account is primary so I let that push updates. I set the 3 IMAP acconts to sync manually,  otherwise they would constantly attempt to sync and this WAS eating up battery life. Given that I'm checking the exchange account often and the IMAP accounts will sync when ever the mail app is opened, that was a workable solution for me. If you're a Gmail or other POP/IMAP email user and need push functionality I recommend you try experimenting with the scheduled Fetch intervals and see what works for you.

1. I didn't check or tweak anything else - e.g. location services are left on.

Results: Device now has what I consider acceptable battery performance - e.g. it's as good as or better than what I enjoyed with the 3G or similar devices from competing hardware vendors. I have not charged the phone in three days, have made several longish ( 20 min) phone calls each day and am emailing and texting all the time. The current charge is 53%.

BTW: I also will not allow unused apps to continue running as that is like leaving lights on in rooms you aren’t using.

1. If the above steps don't correct the issue, back up your device, wipe it and do a clean OS install.... I've never been a fan of factory installs to begin with..

Opinion: There is an "issue" with the device that can cause the battery to dischage quite rapidly. I have no idea what is causing it. I do know that I have not had any problems since I did the hard reboot  6 days ago. Who knows, I may have to do another hard reboot in a month or so. No big deal.  Given how frequently I've seen problems with Blackberries and Android devices, I don't consider the 4S issue to be the "Huge" "Major" problem that some people have labled it. 

Gratuitous editorial - flamethrowers read on, everyone else go reboot and enjoy your iPhone.

I use every OS and nearly every type of hardware that is available to business and consumers ( VOIP hard/soft phones, POS systems, workstations/servers, tablets, network hardware/software, Flaming Gazungas… blah blah.. Beat my chest.. Thinking I'm better than all the rest)  and yes... if you really want to split hairs... sometimes it all *****!

Why?  Simple. Or more precisely, not simple. 

A rotary phone - like what your great grandparents used - is a more reliable device than your fill-in-the-blank digital device. Until software can achieve the same performance standard as an old POTS phone or a kitchen water faucet,  stuff will break and/or belch and folks will complain.  When it comes to overall reliability and simplicity for the user,  Apple currently does OK in this regard and that is reflected in how people respond positively to Apple products...it might even have something to do with why some of the die-hard "anything but apple" peeople finally "caught the fever" and bought their first iphone. That said, I too had my *** moment as I watched the battery drain..but in the end it wasn't anything more than a reboot couldn't fix.

On last thing.  ALWAYs buy the Applecare. Just in case you drop it.. :-)

It's a bad battery life time

The Usage : 3:39

And the standby : 9:14

What I've shoud do

How is that bad battery life?

What percentage battery is left?

I have been testing my battery for the last two weeks. I was annoyed by the less than promising battery life my 4S was getting. My previous last restore had been at the end of February, but during that restore my issue had never gone away, most likely because I restored from a backup. This last time, on Sunday April15, I did a DFU restore and set up as new.

Like others said and suggested throughout the last few months, I let my phone do a complete cycle before charging it back up and doing the restore-as-new when it was at 100%. My immediate results prior to the restore were 6hr 5m usage, 13 hr 45m standby (saved a note but didn't save the screenshot). This was with 1% left (before charging it up for the restore). WiFi was on, cellular data was off, most location services off (all system services off), and it was my usual use at home on my off days: Tweetbot (updating probably every 30-45 min), iMessage (consistent throughout the day, hundreds of messages), playing local music (1-2 hours), some Pandora streaming (maybe 1 hour), with manual email enabled. I never use bluetooth, brightness is always about 50% on with auto enabled as well. Of course, iCloud is also on all the time.

After setting up as new, I took a few hours to download my purchased apps, videos, TV shows, and some photo albums from Dropbox. While this happened, I also fixed my iTunes Match (finally) from an issue I had (began in Nov, fixed April 15 https://discussions.apple.com/message/16961620#16961620)

After downloading all that and setting up my settings, I turned on my newly fixed iTunes Match and completed the setup as new. Since most of the time was spent downloading, I let my iPhone sit and charged it all the way back up, but due to work, wasn't able to get down to finally realistically testing it until my next off day on Wednesday (April 18). These "first" results were fantastic.

Almost all the same settings as above were enabled, except I purposely used the phone more. Push email as enabled for my Gmail, iCloud and Yahoo accounts now. I had also turned on iTunes Match, which was previously not in use. I played my Match music for approximately 2 and half hours, still used iMessage and Tweetbot (and some other apps, WhatsApp, Facebook, like before) as normal. Didn't do any Pandora this time but did catch up on my YouTube subscriptions, and like I said, the rest was the same. Sans the results, which were almost an hour and a half longer. I was happy. The following Saturday, I got a full day testing again (also, note these tests have been at home on WiFi only/no 3G as noted above) I more of less did the same usage, still Push email, Match, same heavy data usage and messaging. These were those results:

I justified the lower usage time with the fact that I had let the iPhone sit in standby (aka without use) for a whole hour and a half hour longer than before. Even with heavier use and settings than before my restore, my phone was lasting longer under my continuous use.

Unfortunately, 3G still takes a toll on the iPhone's battery, as I found out today. On my first off day this week, I finally got to testing my iPhone again, except this time i left my 3G on. I knowingly did this to see how long the phone would last, as I know 3G is horrible in my area (as is reception in general, for all major carriers). Here were my results; I should also note something peculiar I saw with 3G on. Everytime I've been on WiFi only, my phone never seems to drop off the WiFi even while locked/asleep, as it has no backend data network to fall back on anyway, yet I still got all my data notifications and such. Today, every time I would go wake my phone from sleep, I could actually see the phone attempting to reconnect to WiFi; upon waking, the GPRS or 3G signal (depending on strength) would show up for about 5-10 seconds before reconnecting to Wifi. this told me that the entire time the phone was asleep today, it was trying to connect to 3G (thus search constantly for a very weak signal, working harder) instead of my WiFi network, for whatever reason. This had never happened before even when I had my iPhone 4 on iOS 4.

Results were horrible. I noticed something was off this morning because when I awaoke, phone on the charger, it had only reached (or was stuck) at 97% over a 6 hour sleep. This had also never happened before. Just on standby, I could literally watch the phone drop percentage points rapidly, probably 1% every few minutes, depending on the usage. Usage, again, was my normal use, except without any music playback until the end. As you can see, I was playing music at the very last 4-5% to try and extend my usage as much as possible (not just standby). This horrible battery life was what I would get on an average workday, where I'm not around WiFi 100% of the shift, and where 3G is always on in the background. But this was by far the worst I've ever had with normal use (I have pushed my phone to its limits with gaming and HD video, which is understandable, in the past).

I've charged up my phone now and turned off cell data to avoid that nightmare again, hoping my battery life will still be okay, and it really was just the 3G/cell data ruining my device. Sorry for the long post, but I'm hoping for any thoughts, feedback, discussion on what I can do differently to avoid horrible 3G battery life (please note again: I didn't use the phone in 3G; any time I used it was on WiFi, but it seemed to try and use 3G while on standby). Any feedback is appreciated

Don't know that there's anything that you can do about the 3G problems.  Personally, I'm waiting for the next update in hopes that they fix this, since it came with iOS 5.1 (for me).  Didn't have this 3G problem in past iOS updates, including both iOS 5.0 and iOS 5.0.1.

One thing that does help my phone in this regard, though, is using a Verizon femtocell (their Network Extender with 3G) to boost the phone and 3G signal strength in my house, where I only use WiFi with 3G cellular data turned off.  That does seem to help some.  But when I go outside of my house into an area with low phone signal strength  and low 3G strength, my battery will drop much more rapidly than it does at home with reasonable phone, 3G, and using only WiFi.  I can put my phone in airplane mode and mitigate that as well, but I prefer to leave my phone on, since that's why I have it.

My opinion is that only Apple can fix this new problem.  I continue to be amazed that this release, iOS 5.1 is so bad, and that I cannot downgrade to iOS 5.0.1 or iOS 5.0.

i have everything on,only thing i did change was the e-mail notifications,i have 6 email accounts all turned to manually not push,that drains the battery alot.but i agree with others,why should you have to turn off things,to enjoy your iphone experiance.like mine you should be able to have what ever you like turned on,without any issue.

I've been following this thread and working on my iPhone 4S since I got it a month ago. My battery was losing 10% overnight and was barely able to make it through the day with minimal use. I am a very light phone user. I put it to sleep, gave it a full charge, turned everything I could find off, including Network, 3G, GPS, Wi-Fi, everything. I also started turning the Airplane mode on when I'm sleeping or don't care about getting calls. Being a light user, I don't know how to send those fancy screen shots of the usage screen, but here's what I'm showing with 20% left:

Usage      5 hours, 6 minutes

Standby   6 days, 23 hours

The only issue I have now is that I know that I have NOT used the phone 5 hours and 6 minutes. My guess would be that a correct usage figure would be closer to 30 minutes, so something is still "working" in my phone without me knowing it.

Hope this helps someone.

Yeah unfortunately I think I've solved my issues while on wifi and standby, except when on 3G or when I leave cell data on. It seems to be the culprit in the background since I have no 3G service here. We do however have a network extender as well, which hooks up to our Wifi, but only for talk and text service (which works great). Only thing I lose by having cell data off is receiving MMS from non-iPhone users which is very rare anyway.

Anything, just as a proof of concept to my "theory" (so to speak), I have continued on the same charge cycle since last night (without plugging in of course) and I am currently 4hr 44m usage/12hr 26m standby with 46% battery remaining. It seems all my woes were from 3G data on while in a low reception area. I'll post end results when I reach 1%.

Alright, so my iPhone finally died on me at 2% and I have determined that 3G is certainly the culprit for bad battery life. But who is to blame for that, Apple (hardware, software) or Verizon? Was it because my reception for GPRS/3G up here is so poor? More than likely yes, but it seems like a combination of both issues. Because when the phone is on standby, on WiFi only, battery drain is nearly none. Yet yesterday, leaving Cellular Data "On" caused my phone to plummet particuarly in standby time (as during usage, it would hop back on WiFi).

Anyway, I am overall happy with my battery life and can attest that after two weeks testing, ideally, I have no battery issues. I just have to suffer through bad days during the work week, but it's not like I don't have access to chargers and since we have WiFi where I work, leaving 3G off should be fine, too.

Here are my final results from last night/today. Same settings as mentioned in my posts above... WiFi on, cell data off, push email on for 3 accounts as well as sending them, iTunes Match on, music playback around 4-5 hours, frequent twitter and facebook browsing, and all night/day iMessaging. Even went to sleep from 2am-8am. I never stop messaging, so this is showing that the phone is always in use, along with my music playing in the background. As you notice, not only was my usage time far better (7h 42m) but so was the standby at 15h,53m than even my original test after my restore-as-new, which was at 7h27m usage and over 11h standby on 4/18.

Hope this helps out anyone having the same 3G/standby issues!

I have the same problem !!! Seems to lose 1% every 3-4 minutes, even when locked/asleep.

My battery life was fine and then after a discharge it went bad.  The issues seem to be related to 3g, battery drains alot while on 3g and with wifi its fine.

Problem is I always had my iphone on 3g and had no issues so I don't know what changed exactly.  Not sure how to fix it, i did reset network settings, deleted all apps did pretty much everything and no go .