Q: iPhone 4s Battery Life?

All,

I ran an experiment the other night and wrote it up. Please consider these findings *before* you go exchanging your 4S for another one:

http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Mobile/iPhone-3GS-4-4S-Battery-Life-Testing-Putting -Conjecture-Rest

I've found that even under ideal conditions, standby time of the 4S is less than 200 hours, while the 4 is greater than 300 hours. The difference may be fooling some prior 4 owners into thinking they have a more significant issue when in fact they have what's 'normal' - at least for a 4S under the current iOS5, that is...

Hope this helps!

Allyn Malventano

Storage Editor, PC Perspective

Nope. iPhone 4S just has crappy battery life. My iPhone 4 is outlasting anyone of my friends with the 4S by about 5 hours.

Other then Siri... iPhone 4 is still King.

The battery life on my 4S is horrible.

The "good" thing is that I switched from a an Iphone 3G so the battery life was already a joke i.e. I had to keep it plugged in at work, in the car, at work and use is at a minimum. So this is really a deja vu for me, but really, for 800$, this is not serious. How can you release a product on the market that needs charging every 5 hours with minimal usage? I don't want to carry a back-up UPS in my briefcase like I used to.

I am really thinking to give it back at this point and buy a different brand.

I don't know HOW I fixed it (or if it's even really "fixed") but my 4S after much tinkering is at least on par with my old 4.  I went 2 full days with pretty heavy 3G use and about 12-14 hours of standby and plugged it in with 30% life left which is anecdotally equivalent to what I would get on my 4 under similar usage.  I think the frustration is that there are likely multiple memory/usage leaks.  I'm not sure which ones affect which users but the problem is most definitely NOT related to the 4S specifically.  It's iOS5 related (my wifes 4 has gone through very similar bouts recently).

I've tried most of the tricks here with very limited success, but one thing I did notice is this:

Every time I look at Settings > iCloud > Storage 7 Backup, it pretty much ALWAYS says the phone is restoring, and makes it impossible for me to disable iCloud backup.

I'm not saying this is the cause of these issues, but I'm pretty sure my phone isn't actually restoring 24 hours per day.  That in turn suggests that there COULD be a relationship.

If the phone thinks it is involved in a restore, it would stand to reason that it won't ever enter a low power state, which would in turn explain poor battery life.

I'm going to enter this into Apple's bug tracking system.

Ok... Got the solution... Well... this definitely worked for me and I have seen a SIGNIFICANT improvement.

1) Ok. you will need to restore the iOS5 using iTunes 10.5.

2) Apple don't tell you this.. but the initial imprint of iOS5 has bluetooth turned on by default but you won't see this in the status in the top of the screen. Go in to settings and turn Bluetooth off.

3) Turn off the phone then turn it on.

4) Done.

Before I did this, my battery percentage was 100% at 8am and 70% at 1pm purely on standby.

After I did this, my batterry percentage was 100% at 8am and 82% at 4.30pm purely on standby.

Good luck!

Two days ago my iPhone 4s experienced a quick drain and very warm case while in Disneyland.  I had just downloaded an app that located rides, how long the lines were but more importantly allowed me to enable location tracking.  I assume the location option remained on while it was not open. This was the only time I experienced a quick drain.  I removed the app and have had no other issue at this time.

After nearly 24 hours of light use, I have 63% battery.  I have location services, push, Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi sync, Cell data, etc on.  Basically everything but bluetooth.  I've been getting lots of e-mail today.

What I turned off is the location services for time zone.  I have performed no restore or any other type of maintenance.

There is defintaely an issue with location services getting stuck on with geo-fenced reminders and also the time zone thing. There are probably a few specific scenarios that cause the drain, because the huge majority of people are not having this issue.  Therefore they are probably different ways of temporarilly resolving the issue, which seems to involve getting location services to turn off. 

I recommed that you turn off location services and reboot your phone before resorting to a restore and see what happens.

I have Bluetooth on and my problem is gone. I am wondering if Apple may have done something in the background. It just started working fine this morning. The only things I've done were turning off location srv & auto time zone. Maybe I'll try turning location back on.

Kaps

I second this!

No bluetooth icon at the top of the screen but it was actually on when I went to the Settings.

Gott my iphone 4s 3 days ago. My batterilife i terribel.  Whit normal using i need to charge my phone twice i one day.

Love the phone but this is really something that  bugs me. Dissepointed that we goot 4s and not 5 than this battery problem. I really think that the Andriod market will get alot of new costumer now.

glad you saw it too. did not see the bluetooth symbol at the top but hey, you go into settings and you see bluetooth is on ! convinced this is the issue.

Same problem.

After charging my phone overnight and it's up to 100%, by the time I get a shower and head off to work the battery usage is already down to 96%!!  That's without me touching it!

I hope apple has some kind of fix to this battery drainage issue.  it's becoming a real concern, I don't want to be stuck in the middle of the day without my cellphone working and don't want to be walking around with one of those mobile battery chargers.

Fully charged it Less than an hour ago, edited 2 photos on it using the new editing tools on the new OS, took a train home and listedn to musid about 20 minutes, and now its at 85%.  Haven't used Siri, Safari... bluetooth is off, wifi is off (wasn't near a signal)... Crazy!

bluetooth, like location services only show up when active.  I have both enabled and no icons at the top of the screen.  This is normal.  It is highly unlikely that bluetooth is draining your battery.