Q: iPhone 4s Battery Life?

even with the screen bright on the lowest level, no wi-fi and 3g desactivated...I need to charge it twice a day....

An unlikely fix?

I did everything suggested in all the forums, in all the blogs and in all the tweets. At first I still didn't see a difference. But now, when I think about it I think it's fixed. I don't think any single thing fixed it. I haven't turned off any features that I feel I need or want to use and therefore I haven't turned my smart phone into a flip phone as some of you fear.

On the iPhone 4S 16GB Black UK I have iCloud Backup on, Contacts on and Docs & Data on. Email and iCloud are set to manual. After a full day mostly on WiFi but some on 3G (whilst commuting) I have now 57%. It is now 10:43PM and I unplugged my phone this morning at around 7:10AM.

I DFU restored, I restored normally, I've restored from iTunes backup, from iCloud backup and set up as new, I restored settings, I restored network settings, I've turned off the uneccessary location features (however Siri's location is still turned on), I've swapped from my old sim (previously in the 4) to a brand new sim provided by o2 and I've deleted and re-entered email accounts and my iCloud account.

My phone still doesn't charge to 100% it usually stops anywhere between 96% and 99% however I seem to be noticing a definite difference from when I first received the phone. So I'm guessing that somewhere along the lines I fixed it? Or maybe the new battery just takes a while to reach optimum operating capacity. I don't know I'm no engineer. But as far as I'm concerned it's fixed, or at least 150% better than before.

I havent noticed any real problems with Battery Life.  I am coming from a 3GS and usually connected to WiFi so daily charging is something I'm used to.  That said, I made one observation I have not seen mentioned.  I turned on the "Status Bar Icon" in system services and when I rebooted my phone I noticed the "Cell Network Search" feature stayed on for more than five minutes.  At other times the icon goes away pretty quickly.

Just for good order, I disabled the Time Zone, Diagnostics & Usage features from Location services.  It should also be noted when i set up my phone, i set it up as a new phone and manually set up my email and other settings.  I figured it was a safer bet being that my 3GS was jailbroken.  I have Gmail with Push, a pop account checking mail every 15 minutes, iCloud and photostream enabled.  Aftter 3.5 hours, with one phone call and almost no usage except to peek at the battery life, i was at 97% which seems acceptable. 

I have cycled the phone battery once since owning.  It was not my intention but I had left my charger at home during a two day stay at a hotel.  I aslo made the mistake of connecting to the hotel's wifi to download a movie from iCloud but the connection was soo slow that even overnight it had only downloaded a small portion of the file and it cost me 10% of my battery. 

I hope this information helps bring the probelm into focus.

EDIT:  One more thing about the bluetooth being on when off discussion.  I noticed the first time i went to pair a headset, that it seemd to 'turn on the bluetooth automatically".  I thought it was a new feature in IOS5 to help new users.  I guess others are seeing this differently.  It's really strange looking at some of your screenshots showing your usage/standy figures so close together.

my battery life is very disappointing.  could it have to do with icloud?

My battery is now at 15% six hours after unplugging it fully charged. Most of the time it has been sitting next to me unused. I turned off bluetooth and everything else people have recommended. I downloaded an app that shows cps usage and it fluctuates wildly between 5% and 90 %, but seemed to hover between 60 - 70%.

Also - It does seem that the phone is simultaneously reading usage and standby. These are my stats. Not normal for 6 hours of light use with one phone call.

Just make sure it really dies and don't rely too much on projected usage... there were some reports of the battery indicator not reliably reporting battery charge... just saying.

In one scenario this guy was doing some "push charge" and he would remain at 100% with light use for hours. In another scenario, this guy was trying to discharge the device playing videos and he remained at 1% charge for 52+mins.

Help me out here too. It's worse than 2-year-old 3gs battery.

I had not set up my  iPhone 4S  as a new phone but from my previous iPhone backup.  I quickly found the battery drain was 50% in two hours, and the processor  usage was oscillating between 30% and 50% while the iPhone was just sitting idle.  The phone was very warm as well.

I read the info about reset and decided to do the following:

RESET ALL SETTINGS AND CONTENTS. Connected iPhone to iTunes, set up as a new phone and followed iPhone instructions including turning on WiFI and location services. Siri OFF. I selected Sync to iCloud. The iPhone then charged to 100%.

This process resulted in the iPhone 4S cool to the touch and the battery stayed at 100% for two hours. The  battery drain appears to be less than my husband’s iPhone 4 and 24 hours later, the phone is cool to the touch and the processor usage is around 3% to 8% while idle.

i had a very weird experience today..my phone alarm went off randomly @ 6:30 a.m. for NO scheduled reason

So, crossing fingers here that all goes well from now on. whatever i tried to do to stop it after it happened again and again...did not work..short off shutting it off with off button & home button

this really weired me out...so i bit the bullet and restored it as a NEW phone..previously when i first got it  on day1..i did restore from my iphone4

Well, i have to tell you battery is not a problem yet. (10 hrs later)..maybe a little more drainage than the 4,but not anyway near what it was from the beginning till today's restore new.

the alarm has not gone off once..i must add that there were no alarms set at one

point when it started to go off!! i had deleted all of them.

i have set nothing back except the automatic clock . i will let it drain down and see what happens

who knows..but i'm a happier user this p.m. than earlier!!  right now i give the phone 2 rating.

not being presumptuous and saying this is the answer, but if you are having issues try it

you may like it!!

Happy Halloween everyone

mellystew wrote:

 

My battery is now at 15% six hours after unplugging it fully charged. Most of the time it has been sitting next to me unused. I turned off bluetooth and everything else people have recommended. I downloaded an app that shows cps usage and it fluctuates wildly between 5% and 90 %, but seemed to hover between 60 - 70%.

 

Also - It does seem that the phone is simultaneously reading usage and standby. These are my stats. Not normal for 6 hours of light use with one phone call.

 

 

@mellystew, your CPU usage is definitely not normal, as it should be below 5% on average. Have you tried the steps described here (with screenshots)? It only takes about 5 minutes:

https://plus.google.com/u/0/109087467436585685463/posts/Zukh8dFh7Ao

and my iPhone 4S is still at 66% after 42 hours of light use. I'm just trying to help folks since I know how frustrating it was when I had the same issue.

In just 5 minutes of sending messages out, I have lost 10% of battery. I am noticing more of a drop of late just doing basic stuff.

I saw today there was a few articles saying it is a location bug and to turn off time zone setting, http://9to5mac.com/2011/10/31/how-to-extend-battery-life-of-your-iphone-4s-by-di sabling-setting-time-zone/, and even doing that I am seeing a massive drop in battery.

My iPhone 4, I could get a full day out of 1 charge, I am not even getting half a day off a single charge. I lost a lot of battery even in stand-by. I went into class today at 98%, and 2 hours later, not waking the phone, I was down to 90%.

Ok, drove home today from work, waiting on hold for Apple assistance....and my battery drained 20%.  Unbelievable.  The fellow from Apple had me close all the apps.  Did that.  The battery dropped 3% as I did that.  He recommended that I do a backup when I got home and restore.  We'll see.  I honestly don't think that will do it.  There is something REALLY wrong with the batteries in the iPhone 4s.  My iPhone 4 NEVER had any battery problems like this.  WIth this timeframe, literally doing nothing, my phone would be dead in just over an hour.  I also did the recommended turn off of the timezone thing.  Didn' t help at all.

Come on Apple, we need a fix!

My iPhone 4S battery seemed to be okay over the first two weeks.

THEN, I noticed something the other night ... I was hit hard with the snow in the northeast. For some reason, I can't even get 3G at my home. My phone keeps reading "No Service" and "Searching."

I went to sleep around 11p the other night with a 100% charge. I woke about an hour later and found that I not only still had no service but that my battery was down to 90%.

I see that there is now a "feature" in the OS to search for carriers. I turned that off this evening and will see what happens tonight.

But Apple might want to look into this.

I also turned off iCloud support for documents as I don't have any apps (as far as I know) that are supported by iCloud and this might be another battery drain even.

I also have iOS 5 on my iPad 2 w/ 3G and have adjusted iPad settings to as close as I could on the iPhone 4S as well.

Also, not sure if wifi sync is being attacked by something else that is hitting the battery. Wifi sync is obviously a new feature and may be a culprit.

Lastly, I now have my iTunes setting for backups (of my iPhone and iPad) to backup to iCloud vs to my hard drive on my Mac. Not sure if this is another prospective source of the battery drain problems.

If Apple wants, I'd be happy to put that battery test app on my phone.

I think i got my battery fixed! Or at least i used it a full day since im awake!

I'm not sure if i can hit the 200 hours standby what apple promised.

But the things i did today: played games, listning to music, browse on safari, downloaded some apps and updates and texting + calling. And still 25% left!

what i did and i think it worked:

1st: backup and recover the iphone 4s

2nd: turn of: blue tooth, siri, Icloud function: mail, reminders, bookmarks, notes and photostream

3rd: turned of the notifications of the programs i tought that wasnt usefull to notificate

4th: location services: setting time zone, switched to off

5th: restriction on "ping"

and i didnt turned my push email, because i love push emails, i came from blackberry, and that was a good function!

(sorry for my english , i tried my best)

Those things are a summery of the most things i read in forums, and i think it works! hope this was a usefull summery!

and i hope that apple will fix this soon in a new update.. (and hope this is not a hardware problem)

Thanks to all the people who are trying to help better understand this issue. Noise and personal agendas are not the answer (IMO). I had some success Turning Off Location Services. Have we been able to isolate the Diffferent Service Providors? I am on the Iphone 4S with AT&T and Battery Drain is a problem. I have been an Iphone user from the beginning. I have used every model Iphone! My wife is on Verizon with the Iphone 4S and her battery is better than the Iphone 4. It would be interesting to see if this is a GSM issue with the new antenna support for AT&T?