Q: iPhone 4s Battery Life?

1) Using System Status (app store) I was able to look at error/warning message log from the phone.  So when the phone starts to spontaneously get hot, or the battery starts plummetting for no reason, I looked in the system log and saw it filled with error messages from dataaccessd.  When the phone is operating normally, there are no messages from dataaccessd.

I'm not exactly sure where you're looking for the information. It is a very interesting fix and one that seems to fit the pattern.

I had to turn the battery percentage off because it was too frustrating to watch it drain 1% every 2-3 min.  I have already drained the battery to 0 and recharged it, disabled location finger and during the day turn off wifi.  The battery stran seems to drain more quickly when I use it without wifi and cellular such as reading the news off line or calendar and contacts than when I use the phone. My iPod touch and iPad batteries last for days even with heavy usage.

Hi

I bought my 4S and this has been a major issue for me as well.  If you read the promo on the 4S, Apple were trumpeting the better battery life - not sure if anyone really used it at Apple, as the battery life stinks! 

I bought the phone to be able to use Exchange, Siri, iCloud, Location services etc etc.  I did not buy it for its beauty alone. Turning of everything to get some usable talk time is not good enough.

The fixes suggested might help - have tried and will see.

However, as I see it the best fix to preserve the battery life is to turn it off completely.  The phone is UNUSABLE but it is unusable as it stands now.

FIX IT APPLE.

Andrew

I currently upgraded from the iPhone 3GS a few days ago to the 4S, and I am saddened to report the battery life is... underwhelming.

The battery life on my 3GS was long, but I upgraded for the camera(s), for the clearer picture, and for Siri.  While the features of the phone are amazing and certainly better than I had anticipated, I am frustrated with the idea of having to plug in my phone twice a day for fear it might die.  I haven't altered how I've used the 4S versus the 3GS, and I refuse to believe the user should be "punished" for all the upgrade.  This punishment has come in the form of a battery drain, and it is seriously making me consider switching back to my 3GS (which I still have and is excellent condition).  I have always been confident in Apple's search to better their products, and I am confident now they will determine a fix.  I'd like to suggest they pay to switch out/fix phones with free shipping once they have figured out the problem and determined the solution. 

I decided to restore my phone to "new" and drain its battery. I am in the process of draining and the phone has been stuck at 1% battery while playing youtube videos for the past 52 minutes. I am at a total loss to explain what is going on with this phone.

That seems a bit paradoxical that your battery drains too quickly -- and, yet, it won't die, either. Maybe even almost funny, but I bet the experience has been too frustrating to laugh.

To me, it indicates that the battery actually had more capacity than indicated by the battery monitor (and maybe that wiping the phone out and restoring has helped). The calibration you're doing should provide for more-accurate readings in the future.

RELAX!

The Apple Technicians are no dummies and a fix will be issued soon.  Apple has taken us this far with such a amazing product that I seriously doubt they will leave us high and dry.

Focus yourselves on other things, preferably things that benefit mankind and our society.  I am a technician myself and usually ignore and toss out "stupid ranting" emails because they are of no benifit to anyone.

What I would recommend for everyone to do is learn to deal with the current situation by sitting tight and finding a simple solution for the moment, like buying another charger, either for your car or home, until the fix is released.

Peace

Yes but Marc, it may not be an isolated case, as it's safe to assume that people don't wait for the device to die in their hands before charging, which also means it's quite possible that most people posting battery stats here were falsely misled by the indicator...eerie. Maybe they had more juice than they thought?

Both my iPhone 4 and 4s have the same apps and same config

But the 4s battery drains fast.

I have exchange (gmail) configured

A me mail configured etc.

It's identical in softwares loaded and config but the 4s looses power very fast.

  As kenf has noted:

2 full dead/ charge cycles is what it should take to properly calibrate the iPhone lipo. This should also be done every few months to keep the lipo in full health.

it may not be an isolated case, as it's safe to assume that people don't wait for the device to die in their hands before charging, which also means it's quite possible that most people posting battery stats here were falsely misled by the indicator...eerie. Maybe they had more juice than they thought?

I'd say entirely possible on all counts (bolded for emphasis).

Just because many of us have watched the percentages change in front of our eyes doesn't necessarily mean that the actual depletion was happening at that rate.

battery life is terrible, like others have said.

has apple publicly acknowledged the problem yet?

Like so many other consumers have reported, I experienced an alarmingly rapid battery depletion on my brand new iPhone 4S. It was quite a relief to finally identify and rectify the problem. I didn't have to disable valuable phone features, delete/recreate email accounts, drain my battery completely, or perform a hard reset. In my case, the solution was actually quite easy and painless.

While there have multiple causes and solutions reported, issues related to Location Services seem to be the most common culprits of the accelerated battery drain problem. I've seen many reports specifically about the Time Zone function being the cause, but it was something a little different in my case. And while the specific cause may be slightly different in your case as well, the following information may help you to easily identify what that is.

If you don't already have the location services icon turned on, I would strongly encourage you to do that by going into Settings » Location Services » scroll to the bottom » System Services » scroll to the bottom » enable Status Bar Icon. You can see a sample of the icon in the image to the right. With the Status Bar Icon enabled, you will see the purple icon momentarily appear between the time and the Bluetooth icon at the top of the screen whenever an app is identifying your location. You will know there is a problem if you see that the icon is remaining there. In that case, you'll want to go into Settings and locate the offending app in Location Services. This is precisely how I identified the problem on my iPhone.

In my case, when I went to  location services under settings, it was apparent that the offending app  was actually Siri (although the status icon appears gray in the image to the right, it was stuck in purple when I discovered the problem). I  powered-cycled my iPhone thinking that would clear it up, but  surprisingly it didn't. So I reluctantly proceeded to turn location  services off for Siri. It was clearly hung up for some reason, which would  understandably cause a serious drain. I could practically hear my battery release a great sigh of relief while I immediately saw a substantial improvement in power conservation. Hoping that I wasn't going to have to live with that setting disabled, I later  held my breath and turned the setting back on. Thankfully, the battery life has been great for several days straight.

It seems quite possible to me that any of the LS-enabled apps might cause this sort of hang, so don't limit your attention to Siri or the Time Zone setting.

This may actually be an iOS5 issue rather than just an iPhone 4S issue. It's been reported on iPhone 3GS devices running iOS5 too.

Please be sure to post your comments below to let me and others know if this solution worked for you.

Hope you guys are testing this i.e. calculating usage time until the device DIES... and not only until the battery indicator makes you think "oh, well, I'm at 5%, it's going to die so it's time to charge"... it's time to pull out the old stopwatch... and might I add if the battery was easily accessible, all of this could be established with trustworthy external tools i.e. multimeter. There's always tricks to make a battery last longer and there might be other issues, but if this theory of the misleading batt indicator were confirmed, it would be conceivable that some of the tricks simply set the indicator straight lollll. And that would all be memorable lollll.

Die is Really dies not till 5%, 2% . The big old black shut off and plug in till green indicator shows that self power up is posible again. ( won't happen with RED batt indication, too low )