Q: iPhone 4s Battery Life?

IM16 wrote:

 

Kinsorder, do you mean "usage" as in the total amount of time spent off the charger? or 11/12 hours of straight wifi, music, internet, mail, apps, etc.? There's a big difference between "usage" and "standby", I hope everyone  realizes this as they post numbers and talk about their personal experience it helps to compare people's stats.

Standby time and usage time are defined by Apple at the following link, and their use of the numbers is counter-intuitive:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1805?viewlocale=en_US

Standby time is said to be whole of the time since the phone was last fully charged (including the usage time).  The usage time is just the time out of that period since the phone was last fully charged, where the phone was actually awake and in use.  So the usage time can be any amount of time smaller or equal to the standby time, but not more.

So for example, in the phone settings, if the usage time 9 hours and the standby time is shown as 10 hours, that means that your phone allegedly has been in use for 9 out of the last 10 hours (90 % of the time since the phone was fully charged 10 hours ago), NOT for 9 out of the last 19 hours (47 % of the time).'

Some people like myself are actually seeing usage times of 9 hours or so, when the standby time is shown as 10 hours, despite the fact that we have not used the phone at all or hardly at all since last fully charging.  I suppose this means that either the usage time and the standby time are not reported correctly by the iphone, or the phone is actually awake even when the screen is shut down and the phone is left unattended for long periods of time.  Given that the batteries are also running down very quickly for a phone not in use, it seems more likely the latter.

Exactly, I just wanted to make sure everyone was aware of those definitions. Because I feel like sometimes people want to add them, or consider their "standby" time alone to be a reflection of their wifi, games, facebook, maps, etc etc, when in reality their "usage" time reflects that.

I had my phone go from 80% to dead in 7 hours on Saturday. It was so dead that it took 5 minutes to show that it was charging after plugging it in.   All I've done is turn off the location services for Setting Time Zone.  That's it. I have everything on.  Location services, WiFi, WiFi synch, Bluetooth, Cellur data, push e-mail, active sync, pretty much everything.

I've still got a 37% charge after 34 hours of standby and almost 4 hours of use (that's 30 hours sleeping and 4 hours of actually being used). These numbers seem to jive with what Apple says the phone will do.   If you're having issues look closely at what location services is doing and if need be turn it off. Also look closely at geofenced reminders - I think that a reminder I set Saturday afternoon is what started the drain process.

Good luck.

Edit.  Just to be clear, I didn't restore my phone.  All I did was turn off the time zone location services setting,

Message was edited by: wqerwqerwqerwqer

JS408 wrote:

 

Exchange might be draining my battery? Why would it drain my battery? What's the point of having an iPhone if I can't use it to CHECK MY EMAIL?

 

That's like if I told you my brand new car was having engine problems, and you asked me "well have you been driving it?"

I have Exchange turned on with push and it doesn't affect my battery.  See my post above. 

How heavy is your web browsing (also, 3G or wifi mostly?) how about gaming? email use? please describe what that 4 hours of usage entailed, since it's so variable from user to user how we spend that "usage"

I'm reposting this in this discussion since I don't think it was seen in the other one I made.

I was one of the people Apple asked to download an "app" to monitor my battery usage.

Receivd a call back with the results this morning and was told my battery came out as "normal" as far as the engineers are concerned.

The only thing that they think it could be is the camera>iCloud PhotoStream when I'm on WiFi, and the data it takes to upload to the cloud.

Was told that the battery should drain 12% an hour with the screen on, and that's at 21% brightness.

Weirdly enough, in the last two days I've noticed my battery is much improved and I have everything on that I want.

My Settings..

Siri: On, Raise to Speak: On

Auto-Lock: 5 minutes

Restrictions: Off

Notifcations: Manually

•     Phone: Badges, Banners
•      Stock widget
•      Weather widget
•      Messages: Badges, Banners
•      Calendar: Badges, Banners
•      Facebook: Badges
•      Twitter: Badges, Sounds, Banners
•      Instagram: Banners
•      GetGlue: Banners
•      Words: Badges, Sounds, Banners
•      Groupon: Badges, Sounds, Banners
•      Mail: Badges
•      RMakers Pro: Badges, Sounds, Banners
•      Living Earth: Badges, Sounds, Banners

Location Services: On

•      Apple Store
•      Camera
•      Facebook
•      Foursquare
•      Groupon
•      Hipstamatic
•      IMDb
•      Maps
•      Safari
•      Siri
•      Weather
•      Weather HD
•      Find My iPhone

System Services:

• Cell Network Search: On
• Compass Calibration: On
• Dianostics & Usage: On
• Setting Time Zone: On
• Traffic: On

I had my iCloud services almost all set to On.  Just turned my PhotoStream off, to see if that improves my battery life even more.

The conclusion from Apple is: "Nothing" is wrong with our phones....just turn off PhotoStream?

• Not too much web browsing - I don't really have a good estimate for that, a few Facebook updates.
• I received and read about 50 e-mails,
• a couple of phone calls - via Siri,
• a couple of text messages
• Numerous calendar reminders
• took 4 or 5 pictures with flash
• a wi-fi synch
• extensive stopwatch use for 45 minutes, meaning the display was on full brightness for most of that time

Most of this, I'd say 80% was via WiFi.

I think most of the usage was the phone waking itself up for e-mail and such because I have push turned on for exchange with calendar, mail, notes, and I get a lot of mail, and I send a lot too.  I also am always getting meeting requests, so even though the screen is off the phone is still being updated. 

This is pretty normal usage for me.  I can generaly take the phone off the charger in the morning and have 40 to 50 percent at the end of the day, unless it's a hiking day, in which case 90 to 120 minutes of Nike+ GPS does hit the battery a bit harder.

It's just that one day where the battery droped like a stone.  I'm convinced it was a location services bug that caused it.

Message was edited by: wqerwqerwqerwqer

I  read some of this post, but not all the replies.

I just want to post my issues with my iPhone 4S battery life.

I upgraded to the new iPhone 4S. (I have owned every iPhone since the first one.)

The battery life, IMO, is MUCH worse than my iPhone 4.

A simple, real life and NON-TECHNICAL test was done by my wife and I.

She is still on an iPhone 4.

This Saturday, we both charged our phones up all night, and unplugged them at the same time. We both did our normal 'iPhone stuff' all day... and, no we didn't like MATCH what each other was doing....

In the car, I played some music... but she checked out some YouTube videos, etc...

Anyway, MY NEW IPHONE 4S ran out several HOURS before her older iPhone 4.

Not just a LITTLE BIT either, her iPhone 4 still had like 60% when mine was flashing the 20% warning. And when mine went all the way, iPhone TURN OFF dead, hers still had 40%+++!

What the heck. I can understand a BIT of a shorter charge, but this is crazy... Now I know, Apple will help us the best they can.

And I am technical, but the reason I love iPhone is that --- I DON'T HAVE TO BE! I don't wanna figure my phone in and out and go through location services, siri, ALL THAT STUFF.

It's an Apple iPhone - I want it to, "Just work."

So, Apple, help ME TOO! My i4S battery *****. Literally and figuratively.

Help.

Paul

paulie420@gmail.com

Just a quick update on my battery status (54% after close to 2 days) since undertaking the 5 minutes fix described here:

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

In this two day period I mainly did some email sending with attachments, taking about 25 photos (some with flash), 3-4 calls, notifications, iMessages, and most of this over WiFi. I plan on running down this tank of gas and see how far she goes.

wqerwqerwqerwqer wrote:

 

JS408 wrote:

 

Exchange might be draining my battery? Why would it drain my battery? What's the point of having an iPhone if I can't use it to CHECK MY EMAIL?

 

That's like if I told you my brand new car was having engine problems, and you asked me "well have you been driving it?"

I have Exchange turned on with push and it doesn't affect my battery.  See my post above. 

Yes, I think everyone is having different experiences. I have tried pretty much all of the suggestions and I am not having much luck.  Just waiting at this point to see if Apple weighs in on what exactly the problem is and what they are going to do about it.  Only problem, my window for returning the phone expires not too long from now, so if I hear nothing by then, I'm going to have to come to a decision.  As it is now, the phone can't really be relied on for me to make it through my busy work day.

Li was wondering if I was the only one having a problem with the battery life on the iPhone 4s.  Does anyone knows if apple has said anything about it?  Thank you.

My question is: both parties have suggested a RESTORE AS A NEW PHONE as the only solution at this point. Have any of you already tried that option? Is it worth of investing a time in it, was it helpful?

On Friday, I called Apple to return my phone because the battery problem was unacceptable. I was pretty certain it was softwar and would be resolved - but not 100% and I didn't want to be stuck with a faulty phone.

As part of the return process, I restored it as new so that none of my data would be going back to Apple.

This amazing thing happened when I did that: the battery functioned as expected!

Over the weekend, I restored software and services one by one. Finally adding my music and all my apps back last night.

Other than some heavy drain from my Exchange server today at work, I am pleased with the performance of the battery.

Current stats:

Usage 3Hours, 34 Minutes

Standby 15 Hours, 2 Minutes

Battery capacity: 55%

I haven't done the math on how the stats compare to the advertised specs, but they appear to be better than the phone the 4s is replacing. I intend to call Apple tomorrow and cancel the return shipment request.

StudiosLB wrote:

 

Is there anyone who made a restore and now the 4s battery is better?

Yes.

I am so pleased that I am not going bonkers. There are problems with the battery life on the new 4s and its not just me. I will now patiently await the reply from Apple that corrects this issue.

I have Note that turning off Push for my 1 exchange mail (gmail) and the 2 other emails have improved standby time, by a big leap.

I suspect PUSH algorithm in the iOS5 build for the iPhone 4S could have some bug (perhaps)

Its just a finding I have made. I will confirm on this after a day.