Q: iPhone 4s Battery Life?

Reporting in.  Apple gave me a new 32GB AT&T 4S yesterday.  The phone seemingly behaves when you aren't moving in and out of various networks.  If I stay in one WiFi location, the phone holds up pretty well.  However, after being in standby all night it was failing to connect to the same WiFi connection in the morning (odd).  3G worked in that location, as I drove to work (and passed between towers) it really drained the phone down.  Now that I am at work and not moving it seems to have gotten better. 

My usage #'s make no sense, I've maybe used the phone for 5 minutes.  MAYBE, but the phone says 40 minutes with 1 hour 20 minutes standby.  There is no way I've been using my phone for 40 minutes since it left the charger this morning.  My error log is filled with errors from MobileMail.  Most are issues with the phone not releasing.

Apple needs to release a fix, obviously 5.0 has some issues, perhaps not critical failures but nowhere near the stability and performance of the last iOS4 release. 

iPhone 4s 64gb black here.   EVERYTHING turned on.   Exchange email for work.   Gmail and Yahoo personal accounts.   PUSH on.   All available location services and notifications on.   Nothing shut off to save power.

Current status:

16m usage

2hr 40min standby

97% battery life remaining.

Got the phone on day one of the release.   Set it up that evening and have done nothing but normal sync and app updates since.   I saw a significant improvement in battery performance after a few days.   Makes me wonder if something is happening between the phone and APPLE once you set it up, that settles out after a while.   Maybe a few users could just try doing nothing for a few days and see if the problems subside like mine did????   could it be that constant tinkering and restoring are making the problems linger on?

So saying that, do you think it is a matter of time, and that an update will fix the problem?

I set my alarm before bed last night and instead of leaving it on the charger in the other room (which I usually do). I decided to bring it in my room with me (fully charged). This morning I had 70% battery and my usage AND standby were at the same number, 6 hours 13 minutes. I had manually killed ALL apps before going to bed. So what the heck exactly was my phone using for 6:13 hours?

Did you originally download the iOS 5 over Wi-Fi? If so read on; was the same for me until 2days ago. I had such problems like, lag, system apps crashing, sms delay and the battery!! I tried what some articles suggested, turning all notifications off! Even after it was all turned off the battery percentage was in free fall, it was like watching a countdown timer, i was about to give up! However as a last resort, I booked an appointment at a genius bar at the Sydney apple store and 20minutes later walked out a happy man. The first question staff asked was "did I download the iOS5 over wifi?" and I replied with a "yes!". She explained that for some reason they found that downloading over wifi corrupts some of the files and this is what causes the pain we've all been experiencing. Before going to apple I scoured the web for answers, but all suggestions about turning everything off was useless but restoring my iPhone 4 with a stable iOS5 from the Apple store fixed all of the above we've been complaining about! So solution restore while connected via cable and NOT Wi-Fi or go to your nearest apple store and get them to restore your device with the stable OS they have! A new restore atleast from the genius bar solved all battery, lag, apps shutting down, delay in sms etc etc problems! If you do go to the apple store make sure you back everything up before, even if you don't they'll offer to back-up, up to 5gb in the cloud, but this might not be enough for all. Make sure you advise you're friends who havent taken the leap yet to download via cable and NOT wi-fi!! Hope this solves everyone's woes like it did mine; good luck!

Siri!!!!

Shut it off and test. I did and eliminated my battery loss. I am sure soon they will update and have a repair for this but it appears that Siri is tasking constantly.

Here's how to find Ping:

Settings-General-Restrictions-Disable Restrictions-Ping       Slider to OFF

Hope that helps your phone.

Yup.. mine too drains.. i bought the mopie juice pack and boy do i need it! yes it looks like this is a major problem and their specks on batterie life is NOT correct.. i am going to guess it is Siri but what ever the **** it is Apple HAS to fix this!!! this is not acceptable!! and by the looks of this post alone... it is overwelmingly that many people are not happy.. including me

In the 20 mins or so that ive had the phone on and browsing the web, ive lost about 8%. Seems like a lot right?? Especially compared to my 3GS

Sorry, it just dawned on me I didnt answer your question about charging.

I'm not fussy about removing it from the charger.

IF I'm awake I unplug it when it reaches 100%. IF I put it in the charger overnight I simply unplug it in the morning, and there's no doubt it's been sitting at 100% for quite a few hours.

At least for now, it doesn't seem to be an issue. I don't know about this practice over the long haul though, perhaps a battery expert will address your question.

I find it hard to imagine that the battery or it's management are so completely different from the iPhone 4 that we need to go to radically different battery conditioning.  I had my 4 for over a year, and other than an occasional full drain and full charge, I didn't have to do anything but plug it in overnight and use it all during the day and it got exceptional battery life for a smartphone.

In the 20 mins or so that ive had the phone on and browsing the web, ive lost about 8%. Seems like a lot right?? Especially compared to my 3GS

Well, it's hard to say because you didn't include pertinent information.

How where you browsing? 3G? If so, what was your signal strength?

What where you doing? Reading? Viewing photos? Video? Music? Combo?

What was your battery percentage at the time? 9% or 90%? I've noticed the battery drain a little quicker during intensive processing when it's down to the wire.

How many apps do you have open?

And, the $64k question - exactly how is YOUR phone set up?

There are a lot of very experienced people on this forum (I'm not one of them, btw), but it's totally impossible to answer questions like yours without a LOT more detail. It is a very frustrating and perplexing issue, to say the least, but I think if you'll take the time to read through this thread from the beginning and jot down the advice as you read it, you'll begin to recognize patterns in the work-arounds being presented.

4S 64GB on Verizon (w/ ~8GB available) ... I've tried a few of the suggested tweaks posted here. I think the three with the most positive impact for me (on improved battery life) are:

- Turning OFF "Diagnostics & Usage" reporting

- Resetting "Network Settings"

- Decreasing the "Auto-Lock" time to 1 minute.

So far, instead of ~10-12% overnight drain, it's been 2-3% the past few nights. End of work day drain has varied but vastly improved!

Note: Initial set-up was from an iPhone 4 back-up to iTunes. I did not perform a full reset. Wi-fi, Bluetooth & Siri are always on, a few "Location Services" are ON, iCloud backup is ON, various "Notifications" are active.

(I hope battey life does stabilize and it does not become an Android like task of manually closing apps, services, etc...)

I had the same issue on my 16gb 4s right out of the box.I tried everything..turning off location services, email push, siri...I finally got it to work yesterday by TURNING OFF NOTIFICATIONS...

Try removing everything from the "In Notification Center"  under Setting > Notifications

I did that, rebooted my iPhone and havent had the over heating/battery draining issues since then.

I haven't tried activating the other services I turned off earlier.

Throwing my two pence worth into this...

I found my new iPhone 4S battery was on par with my 3G after 24 months! Couldnt believe it. I noticed iOS5 drained my 4 pretty fast but presumed it was it's age more than anything.

I've been through and turned off a load notifications, location services etc...pretty much to the extent it's more or less iOS4 now - but it gets me from 7am to 10pm which it didnt before.

Really hope Apple can address this