Q: iPhone 4s Battery Life?

Same issue here. I've been watching this thread for quiet some time and yet no resolution here. I went to the Genius Bar and all they had to say is everything looks okay in diagnostics. This is definitely an issue. I switched off wi-fi and cellular and battery held up. But, now am to switch it off everytime I dont use it. Not much of smart phone I would say. 1st iphone and I am disappointed.

the battery life of the 4s is horrible. last night i could not call a cab when coming from a just 1 day business trip after arrival at the airport. i started with a fully loaded phone, had some 3-4 hours of talk, reading and writing emails and went out-of-battery.

i switched off a lot of features, but basically the difference between 4 and 4s are *these* features you have to switch off to increase battery life minimal. so why you should buy an 4s, if you have to switch of siri and won't listen to music and movies when travelling just for the chance to use your phone in the evening?

personally i think that one of the most important "bugs" from apple is, that you can't switch off 3G any more. this helped me to save battery life with the 4. so it would be very helpful if there was something like "auto 3G"; so the phone normally runs und edge and turns to 3G either on using siri or if turned on from the user.

also it would be very helpful if bluetooth and 3G could be toggled from information center.

maybe its apple's strategy, so everybody has to buy two 4s - on day and one evening phone ;P

apple, please solve this problem asap or replace my 4s back to an 4!

Shouldn't we keep diagnostics and usage on so Apple can see what's going on? I doubt that's the issue anyways.

16gb 4s - At&t - Battery Drainage - 40% 3 hours of usage (no phone calls)

My iphone 4s was on charge all night, and in the morning was charged 97%.....i had 4 apps open, so I closed them. 1 hour later it had lost about 15% charge, and by mid day, was down to about 40%. I put on charge once again, only this time it charged relatively quickly to 100%. Now for the rest of the afternoon and evening, its down to 69%, I have stopped photo streaming, I collect emails every 30 mins,and have stopped Icloud for calendersand documents/data.

Could it be that the battery meter is faulty too? Who knows.

When I upgraded my Ipad1 to os5, all my ebooks/pdfs dissappeared from the bookshelf app, any ideas anybody?

I am glad I found this, I thought it was just mine. I have had a 3G/3GS/4/ and now the 4S, never have any of my phones drained the battery this fast. It sat on my desk today with 100% charge, from 7:30 to 9:00 I was down to 83%. I never so much as touched it. I hope this is a software issue and not hardware. I am confident that Apple will get this fixed soon. I honestly believe that Apple has the best customer service in the business.

If any engineers are reading this, I would be happy to install the file on my phone for diag. Please contact me. Thanks

"Could it be that the battery meter is faulty too? Who knows."

Yes, I'm pretty sure of that with some scenarios. I've seen it reported here quite a few times. Like the time this guy was playing youtube movies for more than 52mins with the battery indicator at 1%. That's why I suggested people really bring the device to shutoff before charging and report usage based on shutoff time, not extrapolation, just in case that last percent yields hours of use or something along those lines...

Greetings,

I don't know why you are having battery troubles, our three iPhone 4s's are working pretty much as advertised. If I had to guess, I'd say it was a bad, or incompatible app, or something along those lines that came in from backup.

In my case, I have few "apps" on it, iWork, Evernote, Bento, Skype, Quick Office, and a few more like that - no music, and few photos. I also started from scratch, and reloaded everyting manually. I already knew that some of the older apps, would not work with the new phone. No loss.

I love it, and it works mighty fine, for me anyway, the way I use it for work, and some personal stuff.

I'd start from scratch, and lose the backups, if possible. Some folks like to save text messages, and gobs of email - I just toss them all - once read, what's the point.........

Cheers,

M.

******

I've had the iphone 4s for Sprint and AT&T.  I noticed that my battery drained much faster for AT&T rather than Sprint.  I don't know why the carrier would make a difference on battery life but maybe it has to do with signal stregnth or something.  I live in a suburb of Chicago and do travel around the city for work.  I'd say my battery life with the Sprint iphone was close to ideal.  Almost an entire day without needed to plug in and using apps, internet, music...  AT&T will last on average of 6-7 hours on a single charge.  I'd say at least half of the time I'm connected to wifi and I've tried to make the adjustments on other website regarding gps and other battery sinks.

losing anywhere from 5-10% an hour without much use, certainly not intensive.  In fact many times I am not even using the phone, it doesn't seem to matter. 

Many times I find the phone running very hot and battery draining quite rapidly. Either killing specific backgroud apps (facebook, foursquare) stops it, but not always, or power cycling the phone.

Very frustrating.

Mike

From having read a bunch of articles and several comments re: this thread, there is obviously something weird going on re: battery life with the iPhone 4S. However, as one who has owned one since release day, my battery is working fine. For example, after having charged it up to 100%, it was still at 100% in standby mode two and a half hours later--and I've got 3G and Siri enabled AND I've got over 150 apps. I used location services for a couple of minutes during that time, and then turned it off when I wasn't using it. Yes, it does drain faster than I'd like when I'm using apps or surfing the Internet (which has always been my least favorite thing by far about iPhones in general), but no more so than the 3GS that it replaced. It doesn't drain quite as fast when I'm making a phone call so long as I'm in an area with fair to excellent reception, and am not using Bluetooth. (ALWAYS turn Bluetooth off when not in use, as it is a battery sucker.) The bottom line is that I've never had to charge it more than once a day of moderate to heavy use, which is normal for a smartphone. Maybe I lucked out and got a "good" one. The point is that not all of the iPhone 4S's have this problem, but obviously many of them apparently do. Even though it doesn't affect me personally, I'm really curious as to what's causing this on others' iPhones. Hmmmm...

"I've had the iphone 4s for Sprint and AT&T.  I noticed that my battery drained much faster for AT&T rather than Sprint.  I don't know why the carrier would make a difference on battery life but maybe it has to do with signal stregnth or something."

Extremely interesting, and one of the rare posts on that issue. That's why it would be so interesting if people would disclose their carriers when talking about their usage stats. If such differences are confirmed, it hints at how complex the issue may be in terms of the 3G aspect.

Monty1945, you who have no battery issue - and a simpler config - which is your carrier?

Biggs Inc. you who setup the 4S with 2 different carrier, did you set them up in the exact same ways in terms of restore - from 4 or to new - or did you setup both from sratch... and is there any difference in the apps you used, charging patterns and such?

Reggie143 - you're satisfied. How did you setup your phone initially in terms of restore?

Centennialapplefreek - what is your carrier and can you identify something different in the apps used on that 4th phone. Finally, are you sure about usage i.e. real world usage i.e. until shutoff or are you relying on the battery indicator and charging before shutoff?

Thank you.

By the way, my carrier is AT&T. Occasional dropped calls (which doesn't annoy me too much since I don't use the phone part nearly as much or as often as the apps and Internet browsing), but otherwise I'm a satisfied customer. I LOVE my iPhone 4S.:)

Started at 100% this morning. Bluetooth on. Connected to bluetooth in the car for about 45 minutes this morning. Location Services>System Services all off except Compass Calibration and Traffic. Push on with 2 Exchange accounts. One IMAP account fetch every hour. iCloud on (all iCloud services).

Currently at 53%

Usage 2 Hours 57 Minutes

Standby 10 Hours 49 Minutes.

that would make a lot of sense.  since AT&T's 3g has higher frequency or something which increases the bandwidth, then perhaps that makes a difference.  Sprint has been throttling down their 3g since the release of iphone and I was getting 0.3-0.5 mps.  AT&T gets between 2.5-3 mps on speedtest.