Q: iPhone 4s Battery Life?

It should be definitely much better than that!

Ridiculous. Went to bed at 3am, with 60% battery. Set an alarm for 7.30am. Woke up at 9am to a dead phone.

How does one explain a 60% dip in power over 4 hours. I can acertain that the phone didn't ring itself dry because my roommate was awake at that time and did not hear any alarm.

I've done my bit, dimming the Brightness, turning off running apps, turning off Location Services for the mentioned things, turned off Notification Centre for Calendar. And still the drain is shocking.

Missed my class. Lucridous from Apple.

Derek

Update: I just got off the phone with Apple and I cancelled my return.

The wipe and restore has apparently resolved the issues I was experiencing with battery drain. I do continue to see a number of log entries of concern and feel the actual usage time is less than what is reported (in other words, I suspect Siri is throwing a party in there when I'm not looking).

Joking aside, I had very measurable battery depletion (though not as bad as the most-severe cases I've seen here).

Disabling services did not help. I wiped the phone out and restored as new when I initiated the return. While waiting to get a box to Fed Ex it back, I notice that bettery life was cooperative.

I began restoring settings to my preference and adding back in apps. Subsequently, I have only disabled push on my Exchange account (I didn't want it on because it wakes me at night, but did notice some increased battery loss when the work week began and the usage was heavier).

Also off:

- Location services related to Reminders (Reminders as an app is very buggy for me, seems to crash a lot and the geo location was not functioning properly).

. Note: Location services are enabled for Camera, Find Friends, Maps, Siri, Weather, and Find My iPhone. The other apps are disabled by my preference.

- Bluetooth (I haven't yet re-enabled this because frankly I forgot about it).

- Auto time zone and iAds

- Calendar Notification Center (this is my one true compromise on battery life. We use GroupWise through Exchange and I don't trust that this isn't a big part of the problem).

- Mail is also not in Notification Center (the volume was too high for me).

- Siri's Raise to Speak (again, personal preference. I didn't like using it that way, so call this insurance).

- iCloud fully enabled except for Mail (don't use that account) and Notes (don't use Notes). [On: Contacts, Calendars, Reminders, Bookmarks, Photo Steam, Documents & Data, Find My iPhone. Storage & Backup has iCloud Backup disabled (again, prefrence, not compromise).]

- WiFi on, but "Ask to Join Networks" disabled. This is a semi-concession as I have no evidence it drains battery, but have no real need for it and have some concern that it could be a contributor.

Currently ..

Usage 7 Hours, 0 Minutes

Standby 1 Day, 13 Hours

Battery 11%

By the way, my call quality is significantly better compared to my original iPhone and the 3G I migrated from. My signal strength is significantly better in locations where it was weak before and usable in places where it was previously unusable.

Hi Marc,

Thanks for the lengthy and in-depth explanation of how it helped maintain your iPhone battery life. Could you run us through how you did the Wipe and Restore? I will be desperate to follow some instructions.

Best,

Derek

Thanks, Derek.

The wipe and restore was connecting it to iTunes and setting it up as a new phone. As I understand it, this process removes all data from the iPhone (I didn't want any data residing on a phone I returned).

So, after connecting it to iTunes, I selected the name of my phone in the bar to the left and clicked on restore. There was an option to do so from a backup or as a new phone. I selected new phone. This process took about 10 minutes (tops).

When that was complete, I went through the process of setting up the phone from scratch on the iPhone itself.

In an attempt to diagnose the problem, I did not set up iCloud right away and I disabled nearly all features in the settings right away. I had only the stock Apple apps installed.

Out of curiosity, I enabled my iTunes Store ID and re-downloaded the System Activity Monitor app (I had previously purchased) and I watched CPU utilization and open processes.

As the battery held, I began to add items in (and even took a vote here what I should try next (maybe around page 82)).

One by one I added things back and the battery just kept working. I've noted the exceptions and reasoning in the post above.

I really hope this is helpful for everyone desperately wanting their phones to work. Trust me: I was there.

I was having the same problems as most of this forumn and was shocked and dismayed that it felt like my battery power was slipping through my fingers... even though I haven't calculated the drain times as accurately as some, on average I'm having to do a 4 or 5 pm charge on a normal, light use workday after a full nights charge. I would be shocked to see it having drained after standbye periods. I basically read this whole forumn and turned EVERYTHING that was mentioned as a fix off. (I did not do a restore, though).  Push off, location service stuff off, calender notifications off, location based iads, time zone stuff off, compass calibration off, ping off, cloud services everything off but find my iphone, diagnostics sent to apple off and location based services for random apps that I didn't think would need it off.... , Siri was still on, mail set to Fetch 30 minues and making sure never to set location based reminders... I've been with apple since the SE-30 as a kid, and have alot of loyalty cause I know how complex the stuff they are doing now is and this device adds so much to my life it's immesurable.  So I'll stick this out and am glad they are contacting people.  Even if they fix it this bug soon, I know that this super fast draining it was doing in the first few weeks will ultimately hurt the longevity of my battery's life which *****.  With all of this stuff off I finally went 24 hours on a charge until I ran out.  This was about the battery life I was getting on my iphone 4 or slightly better and I'm happy with it now. It just ***** to have all of these things turned off. I wrote a list of everything I did so that hopefully when they release a fix I can turn them back on. 

Marc Posner wrote:

 

Update: I just got off the phone with Apple and I cancelled my return.

 

The wipe and restore has apparently resolved the issues I was experiencing with battery drain. I do continue to see a number of log entries of concern and feel the actual usage time is less than what is reported (in other words, I suspect Siri is throwing a party in there when I'm not looking).

 

Joking aside, I had very measurable battery depletion (though not as bad as the most-severe cases I've seen here).

 

Disabling services did not help. I wiped the phone out and restored as new when I initiated the return. While waiting to get a box to Fed Ex it back, I notice that bettery life was cooperative.

 

I began restoring settings to my preference and adding back in apps. Subsequently, I have only disabled push on my Exchange account (I didn't want it on because it wakes me at night, but did notice some increased battery loss when the work week began and the usage was heavier).

 

Also off:

 

- Location services related to Reminders (Reminders as an app is very buggy for me, seems to crash a lot and the geo location was not functioning properly).

 

. Note: Location services are enabled for Camera, Find Friends, Maps, Siri, Weather, and Find My iPhone. The other apps are disabled by my preference.

 

- Bluetooth (I haven't yet re-enabled this because frankly I forgot about it).

 

- Auto time zone and iAds

 

- Calendar Notification Center (this is my one true compromise on battery life. We use GroupWise through Exchange and I don't trust that this isn't a big part of the problem).

 

- Mail is also not in Notification Center (the volume was too high for me).

 

- Siri's Raise to Speak (again, personal preference. I didn't like using it that way, so call this insurance).

 

- iCloud fully enabled except for Mail (don't use that account) and Notes (don't use Notes). [On: Contacts, Calendars, Reminders, Bookmarks, Photo Steam, Documents & Data, Find My iPhone. Storage & Backup has iCloud Backup disabled (again, prefrence, not compromise).]

 

- WiFi on, but "Ask to Join Networks" disabled. This is a semi-concession as I have no evidence it drains battery, but have no real need for it and have some concern that it could be a contributor.

 

 

Currently ..

 

Usage 7 Hours, 0 Minutes

Standby 1 Day, 13 Hours

 

Battery 11%

Which carrier are you on? AT&T, Sprint or Verizon ?

what about your contacts and so forth? did you restore those from icloud?

Hi Marc,

Appreciate the effort in the post once again. When my iPhone 4S died this morning, I charged it to 100% via my MBP. I am now also slightly concerned that this might result in the battery being calibrated to a source not from the normal output.

Might this be a factor? Do you witness a lesser-than-stellar performance if you have charged your phone via the USB laptop and not from the DC/AC supply?

Best,

Derek

miless wrote:

Which carrier are you on? AT&T, Sprint or Verizon ?

Sorry. AT&T.

yassir75 wrote:

 

what about your contacts and so forth? did you restore those from icloud?

The contacts I restored from iCloud. My calendars are split between iCloud (personal) and Exchange/GroupWise (work) and those were restored that way.

I manually re-set up some (but not all) of my email accounts. I'll decide on the others later.

The songs, movies, podcasts, iBooks and apps were sync'd from iTunes.

Selecting the apps one by one and re-arranging their order on my home screens was, IMO, the biggest pain of the whole process. I decided early on that I didn't want all of the apps on my phone. Some are my wife's and some are ones my kids selected (and I don't want them touching my phone - greedy, I know).

Marc Posner wrote:

 

miless wrote:

Which carrier are you on? AT&T, Sprint or Verizon ?

 

Sorry. AT&T.

Thanks!

Your battery drain pattern is somewhat similar to mine ... about a day's use with less than 20% left. .. because we are both on GSM/UMTS

As compared to Sprint/Verizon flavor which could yield 36 hours of standby, 4-5 hours usage and still 50% left.

foostop wrote:

 

Hi Marc,

 

Appreciate the effort in the post once again. When my iPhone 4S died this morning, I charged it to 100% via my MBP. I am now also slightly concerned that this might result in the battery being calibrated to a source not from the normal output.

 

Might this be a factor? Do you witness a lesser-than-stellar performance if you have charged your phone via the USB laptop and not from the DC/AC supply?

 

Best,

Derek

I'm glad to be of any help I can. I had a laptop that died that was brought back to life because of help on this forum. I've been stuck on projects and found answers here from very helpful people. I have a debt to pay back - so I hope this works for you and a lot of other people.

[Disclaimer: I think we are all fixing symptoms, but not necessarily the problem and I do believe that Apple will need to issue a software patch to really fix what's going one. However, the reason I didn't return the phone is because I am now very confident this is not a hardware issue.]

As for charging, I'm not sure. I heavily favor charging from the wall rather than the computer. However, duing the long rebuild of the phone's content it was connected via USB and charged to 100%. That was Sunday night and I haven't charged it since then. And I almost always charge every night with every phone I've ever had (except for my stupid work flip phone that only stays in standy).

So, I'm guessing that USB is just as capable (though perhaps slower) of charging the phone. But, that's just a guess. I also have a newer iMac, so that could be a factor if your MBP is older.

I really hope this helps.

I also have been having the same problems as listed before me.  I recently upgraded from the blackberry to the iphone 4s.  I didnt realize at first that there was an issue with the battery life of my phone because I thought it was "normal" for the iphone batteryto die out so quickly.  After a few days, I couldn't bare it any longer.  My phone would only retain a solid 6-8 hours (with non maximum usage) after a full nights charge.  I finally decided to google this issue and realized that many people are having the same issue.  I came upon a website by cnet with some solutions in adding baterry power; including location settings, notifications, setting time zone options, and fully allowing the battery to drain (which was not too hard) and conducting 2 full battery charges.  Nothing worked! I will attempt to try a complete restore to factory settings and options after I receive a support phone call from Apple tomorrow.  However, based on everything I'm reading, I dont believe tht will work either.  Im very disappointed .... I couldnt wait for Sprint to finally have the Iphone part of their network.  Maybe I should have just ordered the Iphone 4?! Apparantly te 4 has much better battery.  Very confused and not sure what to do... I really need my phone to have good battery power because of my daily outings with work and children.  I cant really be carrying around a charger everywhere I go plugging it in!! Now I am wondering if the 4s is even worth this trouble if I can just have the 4 minus some minor features when the battery power is one of my major concerns.  Any thoughts?!