Q: iPhone 4s Battery Life?

Like many others, I received my 4S on Oct 14. The phone worked as expected for 9 days then abruptly developed battery problems. With no changes to the phone, it began rapidly discharging and would completely drain in about 6 hours (standby). Other than Siri, the 4S was configured exactly like my old iPhone 4 – where standby battery life was a couple days.

I experimented with disabling various features like 3G, location services, Bluetooth, etc. and found Siri to be the most impactful. Disabling Siri gave me a few more hours of battery life. I do not use iCloud or wireless sync, but have Exchange email.

Last Tuesday, I endured the agony of my local Apple store. As always, it’s a battle to convince their arrogant staff I have a problem. After nearly 2 hours, they swapped the phone with a new one. Oh, their “genius” tech staff “heard” of battery problems with a “few” phones, but said it was no big deal. The new 4S came with a disclaimer: if this one develops the issue, I have to wait for a “firmware update” to fix the problem. Hmmm….

I rebuilt the new 4S from scratch rather than restoring a backup. The phone initially seemed to work well, however today it developed the discharge problem like my previous 4S. Over the last hour in standby, the battery dropped 17%.

Please fix the phone! In a business environment, it is unusable -- unless, of course, I keep it plugged into AC power (which isn't always available)!

Moses - After about 12 hours of troubleshooting I think I've narrowed my problem down to either iCloud or Exchange.  There seemed to be an issue with the Calendar and Contacts getting caught in a loop with the Exchange server, which kept the CPU's churning and eating the battery.  So, between turning off Calendar and Contacts in Exchange and COMPLETELY resetting all of the iCloud services it seems to be behaving now.  Unfortunately I didn't do a good job of documenting the order of what I did, so I can say for sure if it was Exchange or iCloud that caused it.  It almost seems like it might be iCloud because there are soooo many people with this issue and I'd guess that not everyone has an Exchange account.  That makes me lean towards an iCloud issue, but I can't say for sure.

If they're telling you to go exchange it, give it a try.  I'd be curious if you have the same issue with a new one.

All I know at this point is that the battery is draining like my 4 did, and it's not hot to the touch since I made these changes.  Maybe try resetting all of your iCloud and see if that helps before going in?  I did it by going into settings, turning them off one by one and deleting from my phone when prompted, and after all iCloud services were off, rebooted the phone and turned them back on one-by-one.

I thought I was the only one! I'm having to charge my phone twice a day, and I have to keep the lighting super dim :( I love the iPhone 4s but it kills me that my blackberry had  better battery life !!! Apple: HELP!!!!!!!!

jeffk@jeffkelly.net wrote:

 

Like many others, I received my 4S on Oct 14. The phone worked as expected for 9 days then abruptly developed battery problems. With no changes to the phone, it began rapidly discharging and would completely drain in about 6 hours (standby). Other than Siri, the 4S was configured exactly like my old iPhone 4 – where standby battery life was a couple days.

 

I experimented with disabling various features like 3G, location services, Bluetooth, etc. and found Siri to be the most impactful. Disabling Siri gave me a few more hours of battery life. I do not use iCloud or wireless sync.

Last Tuesday, I endured the agony of my local Apple store. As always, it’s a battle to convince their arrogant staff I have a problem. After nearly 2 hours, they swapped the phone with a new one. Oh, their “genius” tech staff “heard” of battery problems with a “few” phones, but said it was no big deal. The new 4S came with a disclaimer: if this one develops the issue, I have to wait for a “firmware update” to fix the problem. Hmmm….

 

I rebuilt the new 4S from scratch rather than restoring a backup. The phone initially seemed to work well, however today it developed the discharge problem like my previous 4S. Over the last hour in standby, the battery dropped 17%.

 

Please fix the phone! In a business environment, it is unusable -- unless, of course, I keep it plugged into AC power (which isn't always available)!

Would like to know how you disabled 3G since I don't have that option on my sprint iphone 4s.

When people say "Restore" or "Hardware Restore", do they set-up the as a new phone or restore from a backup?

Casey: I replaced mine, and I am having the Same issues :(

I deleted the Friend Finder app, and now my battery life is back to normal. At least, for the last four hours. I had already tried the restore, and deleting and re-entering my email accounts. This is the first thing that has shown any improvement.

VERY DISAPPOINTED by 4s battery life.  I can barely get through half a day with normal use without having the battery drain to about 30%.  BAD APPLE!  BAD BAD APPLE!  fix it Mr. Cookie.

Erika - have you tried resetting all of your iCloud services?  That seems to be a common denominator.

Has anyone noticed that since Apple reset the iTunes Match data on Thursday is when this started?  Or at least it did for me.  I wonder if a change to iCloud getting ready for the iTunes Match release could be related.

I have no clue as to whether my battery would be deemed horrible, but I've certainly noticed a large decrease in battery life. I've turned Location Services, and iCloud completely off and am currently on WiFi. I kept my phone on the charger all night, unplugged it this morning @ ~ 9:30am, and let it sit for a good hour and a half, while I fell back asleep. I woke up @ 11am, with email set to fetch for every hour, notification for my calendars on, as well as for words with friends, text messages, and facebook -- battery was still fully charged at 100%. I played about 3 words for words with friends (1 word for 3 separate games), checked facebook for a good 5 minutes, played a total of 2 minutes for Family Feud with Friends, and sent one or two text messages, which caused the battery to drop 1%. After this drop, I probably looked at the usage in settings which showed about 1.5 hours of standby and 10 minutes of usage, and sent/received 3-4 text messages, and the charge dropped again. I got up, went to the bathroom to brush my teeth, came back, and unlocked my phone from the pw screen and lost another 1%. It's been dropping ever since, maybe about 1% per 10 minutes or so. I was on an 11 minute phone call, and lost 4% charge (from 91% down to 87%). I'd look at the usage and it would say 50 minutes of usage, meanwhile I know I haven't used it for that long. In a span of an hour, I had lost about 8% with, what I'd consider, pretty light usage. In 2 hours (which is the span of which all of these events I mentioned occured), I lost nearly 15%; some of the loss from my phone just SITTING THERE! I've even reset the phone (soft reset), to wipe out anything that might be running in the background and it's the same.

I've done 2 fully cycle charges to try to recalibrate the phone, but I don't think it's improved anything. I asked my bf what his charge was at the end of the day (he has iphone 4), and he says about 80-87%, light usage and that's from a 100% full charge). I know 4s battery life isn't as great as 4, but STILL!

Settings->General->Network->Cellular Data, set it to OFF.

I have read through the posts. I am having the same issues. Has anyone had a official reponse from Apple with suggested remedies? I am very frustrated with the standby battery loss on my AT&T 4s.

I have been following the forum and trying all the tips by turning off all the different settings and so far absolutely nothing has improved the battery life.  I fully charged the battery this morning and took it off the charger at 12:41pm at 100% charge.  So far I have only sent 5 text messages and it's now 01:41pm (one hour later) and my battery charge has dropped to 81%.  This is crazy, almost all services turned off, 5 text messages sent and my battery life dropped from 100% to 81% in one hour.

I have the same problem, I recently recived an iphone 4s, and it runs out of battery way faster than my iopd touch, which i have had for a year now. The ipod has about 5 hours of usage time if it is on all of the time, while my iphone only has two. My mom also has an iphone, but she sees no problem with the battery life of it, it has considerably more than mine, being able to stay on standy for a few days.

Hi All,

This is neto from Brazil

How are you?

I believe that some of you have read my post about my HORRIBLE experience with Genius Staff at Apple Store.

Thank you very much for your words my friend jeffk@jeffkelly.net I had the exactly same issue with you at Apple Store and the genius was very rude and with no good manners with me.

I would like to share my experience:

1) Yesterday, I did a reset all (erasing data and applications)

2) Plug on my Mac and I did a restore (PLEASE setup as a New iPhone (don't make a restore with other applications) - do a restore on iTunes and setup as a new iPhone.

3) I did some things that I believe that can help: (I had a full charge 100% at 6AM today and now the battery is 74% - and I spoke to Apple Care for more than 30 minutes)

My Iphone has the following right now:

Wi-Fi On

Notifications ON - set to manually - ONLY Phone, Messages, Reminders, Calendars and Yahoo messenger

Location Services - ON - Apple Store on, Camera on, Maps on, Siri on, Weather on and System Services ALL ON

Brightness Default and Auto on

Siri - on and Raise to Speak OFF

Bluetooth - OFF

Splotlight - ALL

Restrictions OFF

NOTE: Date and Time - Set Automatically OFF (I don't know if this make some improvements, but I guess yes)

iCloud - OFF

NOTE: Mail - I have been using Exchange (the company that I work) - I'm not in 2010 yet.

Accounts: netofrombrazil: Mail, Contacts, Calendars and Reminders ON

mail days to sync 3 days

Mail folders to push Inbox

IMPORTANT: Fetch New Data - Push OFF and Fetch every 15 minutes

PLEASE CLICK on the buttom below: Advanced: select your account and either select Manual or Fetch (to make sure select Manual)

Twitter - OFF

Facetime - OFF

Disclaimer: Usually I used to receive more than 300 emails per day, today I just received 40. The real test will be on Monday, but compared that I had before I have an improvement.

For example:

Time since last full charge:

Usage: 2 hours and 14 minutes

Standby: 7 hours and 50 minutes

Call Time: 34 minutes

Status of my battery right now:

100% (Full Charge): 6:04AM EST 

Status right now: 73% (1:53PM EST)

Also I have realized that when you do a full charge (discharge the iPhone to 5% and charge it to 100% - I did it 2 times, the impression that I had that I have an improvement in the battery life, but I don't know if that is only a perception or if this is real.

I know that is less than we expect, but I hope my configurations could help someone.

I wish all the best to you my friends

All the best

neto