Q: iPhone 4s Battery Life?

You do know that 4S has a different antenna? On the 4 it had a tin stripe on top, and one on each side on the bottom. The 4S has four antenna points; one on each side on top and bottom. Different signal reception and management. iOS has integrated support for such management, but it is only activated on a 4S. Different signal management means different reception. It also depends on the surroundings; muck items and walls do weakens the signal too.

--Daniel Isaksen

My original phone regularly exhibited the "wiggling" problem. Showed it to the Apple "genius" and he ignored the behavior. Seems reasonable it would keep the CPU busy. The new phone doesn't have the issue (so far). I have diagnostic tools installed now to keep an eye on free running processes, CPU usage, etc. Will report back if I discover anything.

Just to update:

Late last night, I implemented a full reset to factory specs. I imported no data, account settings, apps, etc. All services were turned off with the exception of WiFi. I also pretty immediately added the System Activity Monitor app and left the phone - starting at 96% capacity - on all night. I last checked at 11:41 p.m. at 93% and first checked in the morning at 88%. It showed 41 minutes of usage (which was higher than actual).

A loss of 5% points over that time period was an amazing improvement.

Building off that, I opted to enable my Exchange account at 8:54 AM with 83% battery capacity.

The next 5 hours were spent nearly all in standby, excluding two calls for a total of 7 minutes. During that time I dropped 9% to 74%. By comparison, I've been had 30-45 minute periods exclusively in standby with that level of loss before the wipe and restore.

Given those results, I enabled contacts on the Exchange account. At 4:39, I had dropped to 69% - 5% in 2:40, roughly. Again, a significant improvement, at which time, I enabled the Exchange calendar.

In the hour, 20 minutes since then, I dropped 1% (though I'm likely not receiving any calendar invitations or notices given the day of the week) to 68%.

These are amazing results - ones that I did not think possible 24 hours ago.

Usage 2 Hours, 3 Minutes

Standby 20 Hours, 42 Minutes

Battery at 65% capacity

I'm not suggesting that this solution will work for every one. I'm not suggesting that it will hold for me.

However, doing a full reset sure seems to have paid some immediate results.

I thnk that my issues might be solved. Here's what helped:

1. I deleted & re-added my exchange email/calenadar account. This caused the excessive heat to stop (my iphone was always warm) & it dramatically helped my battery life. Before this, it was dropping like 30% an hour, unused. My phone was still using battery like crazy, but at least I could use it.

2. Just found this one out on the thread yesterday. Turn off the automatically set time zone option in the location settings. This made my phone work pretty much like normal. My phone was still depleting the battery way too fast to be useful, but once I turned this off, my battery life again improved dramatically. Right now, I have 68 minutes of usage & 7 hours, 30 minutes of standby & I'm at 87% battery life. Prior to turning off the time zone option, i would be somewhere around 20-40% battery life right now.

Sure it's a PITA to have to turn this stuff off & to have to discover it yourself, but at least it works & i still love the iphone. I'm sure Apple will fix this eventually, but in the meantime, this has pretty much solved my battery drain problems.

I may have been lucky, but I tried the trick another poster suggested (sorry can't remember who exactly nor if it was in this thread or another about this), and simply do a few charging cycles in a row.

I mean completely empty the battery (until the unit turns off) then charge it up to 100%, and repeat.

I did it once and didn't notice any difference, the iPhone4s would still drain super fast.

Then I did the second one and WOW!

It was back to using it normally and being at or about 55% when I'm going to bed... and normal drain during night-time and standby.

And all that with regular options (nothing drastic like almost no luminosity, no notifications or whatever).

So do try that, more than once (2-3 times) before turning every setting off or going crazy and trying to exchange it! Maybe you'll be lucky like me and it'll do the trick! :-)

I've read through most of the 120 pages of this thread and tried the most of the fixes (including several complete rebuilds and several batter calibrations). They do seem to make some difference, but I agree that the battery life is just not acceptable. I had better life on by old HTC Incredible with the standard battery.

My question is, as anyone else tried a different charger (not usb), such as came with their Ipad? I've been using my Ipad charger and "seem" to be getting better life (again with a lot of fixes mentioned in all the previous posts) then with what came with my 4s.

Came from iPhone 4 (went to my daughter in law)

I'm an IT manager who likes the Android OS better, but not the batter life (what a joke right)

Verizon carrier

64G iPhone 4s

Thank you for the response. Exactly how I did it.

Battery depleted a few hours ago while at a theme park. Charging now.

I doubt it. You may just be getting lucky.  The time zone fix seems to be the making the most difference for people.

that it is in 2G ,all OFF except  notifications ON for calls,and message

7 photos, 10 minutes web , 7 minutes GPS and 40 minutes calls

should be better

next time in 3G and all in ON MODE!!

OK I think I have done something not sure what because I have changed so much stuff. I let my phone run down to nothing last night. I left it to charge all night, In the morning around 8:am I unplugged it. I have turned off almost all location services except maps and compass and a few others. I did disable the time zone setting, as suggested. I resynced my contacts with Icloud and shut all other cloud services off except photo stream. I have 3 gmail accounts setup as push.  All day I have been on Wifi with 3G on.

As of 8:30 PM here are my stats: usage 3 hrs, 57 min

                                                  Standby 9 hours, 1 min

Currently sitting at 38% battery.

I am not sure if this is good for the 4S as I upgraded from a 3GS. I do know this is alot better than the day before when I was using 10% an hour doing nothing. I will try total 3g tommorrow.

Okay while I work on why the iPhone uses excessive data transfer for no reason here is

the ultimate list of iOS 5 fixes compiled into one easy to read list!

http://pcbin.blogspot.com/2011/10/ios-5-battery-drain-solution-iphone-4s.html

It includes the 'Time Zone' fix and a lot more... check it out.

My stats tonight:

Usage     3 hours 52 minutes

Standby   21 hours 30 minutes

45% battery remaing

I use Battery Doctor Pro to maximize my battery performance, and optimize the charging process.  There's also a free version.

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/battery-doctor-pro-max-your/id340171033?mt=8

I was experiencing VERY poor battery life.  The batterly would be completely dead within 9 hours with very minimal usage.  I discovered that my problem was Location Based Reminders.  I deleted the 3 location based reminders that I created just after purchasing my phone and there's been a DRASTIC improvement in battery performance.  I'm at 95% after 5 hours now. 

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