Q: iPhone 4s Battery Life?

Same here! I went down about 20% in 10 minutes one day! I've tried changing all my settings...nothing seems to work

From my last post one can draw a further conclusion which I will explain in a twofold way even if it's all 3G data related. I will do so for your own benefit - and yes I'm bored - but I'm afraid this will come as a shocker for many of you. In some earlier post I said that smartphones only aggregate data and finally I saw the light because I also remembered reading about a trend where call functions are less used than data/texting functions since recently, so let me enlighten you...

1- POLLING: If you Mail/apps poll 3G in a way that is similar to browsing the web - that means going to a page, reading a bit then clicking a link, then reading a bit and so forth - then from the moment you disconnect your phone from the charger, you have 6 contiguous hours until it dies. So you leave the house at 8 for work and by 2pm it's dead. PERIOD.

Yeah, I know it's hard to bear. One way of reducing the pain is to use airplane mode as often as possible. So let's say you've robbed your employer of his money by staring at your FB statuses for the last 2 hours and doing nothing and such, and you're ready to work a little bit before the break and you take a deep breath telling yourself that you're not touching the phone for the next 2 hours, then put it in airplane mode. Doing so will steer you towards what Apple calls standby time - a fantasy scenario where your phone is doing nothing, not even background processing and auto-checking email; this never really happens but airplane mode and killing background apps brings you closer to that dream. By the way it's time Apple fully discloses what is "background processing" i.e. is it only related to installed apps or the OS too, and if so can they be specific about it. Using airplane mode is like quitting smoking cold-turkey... it's hard. You don't even get to have something pop on the phone to give you an excuse to go back to it, and you just have to work. Also, if your job requires you to go out of if you're on your time in the country or some place you're unsure about coverage, make sure you put your phone on airplane mode as Apple explains that low/bad coverage might use the battery more as the phone always tries to figure out some connection to the network!!! Yeah, fetch the maps to your carrier's coverage and such!!

2- DATA FROM THE AFOREMENTIONED POLLING: Having too many friends, too much mail, following too much tweets and having too much network centric apps is draining.

One can theorize that after polling, data weight passed on simply extends 3G usage - it's all data - which in turn counts towards your max 6hrs of 3G time, in the same way that after a web page is requested, well the data follows for rendering. Remeber that annoying guy playing MafiaWars popping on your FB thread all the time? Well maybe it's time you click "Less of that arseho.." on your FB feed. Further maybe it's time you trim your FB network proper. Like that girl you added because you thought you had a chance, well you just saw she's getting married now, so why not just remove her - or that cousin you added but each time you see him at Xmas you can't stand his guts... out he should go. What about Charlie on Twitter? That was fun early on but are you still intent on drinking tiger blood and such? What about mail? Do you really read that newsletter you receive because you had forgotten to uncheck the box when you registered to this website? The point off all this is that for the time that your phone is off airplane mode, then reduce the junk that spills from the 3G pipe.

One could say I've stated the obvious i.e. notifications delays and mail but it's more than that, it's really how much of a socialite you are. I suspect that the combined trend of network centric activity upstaging calls, and people always adding friends/following tweets/feeds/mail/cloud backup store and all and never cleaning up, you end up with a scenario that is similar in terms of 3G data usage to rendering web pages one after the other continually, which in turns prohibits stretching that 6hrs of 3G usage.

Sad hours for the mobile industry indeed. Apple and Android and the other players to a lesser extent have undone themselves. By creating 3G network centric mainstream smartphones and providing thousands of network centric apps and functions, they are quite simply in the process of undoing the concept of true mobility. Without fostering education of their user base in terms of good practices for network use and because of their relying on the content providers (who in turn have interest in maximizing usage and not in lowering it), well their device is merely just as good in that respect as their maximum usage 3G time which is 6hrs for the 4S. Either they invest in battery tech or otherwise they will have to invest in some infrastructure for charging "in transit" or OTA. And that couldn't really be called sustainable development. One must not forget that this "information" addiction drains more than a battery... because those batteries are charged by burning fossile fuels. Plus cyberaddiction is a public health concern. So for my part I believe it's a good thing that at the moment the user base is limited in terms of charging accessibility outside of the house and office. But I'll concede that's another debate...

Good luck with all that

I came from an Iphone 4 and upgraded to a 4s.  At first i felt i had low battery life.  I did everything suggested including a full restore as new. Followed most suggestions. 

Wifi on

Hotspot off

Notifications - phone, messages and mail are on.

Location services - camera, maps, siri and find my iphine are on

Sounds - no vibrate

Auto brightness on and brightness set to middle

Diagnostics dont send

Siri on. Raise to speak off

Bluetooth off

Itunes wifi sync on

Spotlight search - 6 items on

Autolock 1 min

Passcode lock on

Restrictions - all on except for ping

Date and time - set automatically - off

Icloud - mail off, contacts on, calendars off, reminders on, bookmarks on, notes off, photo stream on, docs and data on, find iphone on

Email - only 1 yahoo email. Push off. Fetch manually.

Icloud, yahoo and google cal all set to fetch manually

I use google cal and synced it.

These are my settings.  I took usage statistics from 100% battery up to battery empty-

Day 1

Usage 6 hours 18min

Stanby 12 hours

Day 2

Usage 6 hours 5min

Stanby 9 hours

Day 3

Usage 6 hours 30min

Stanby 13 hours

All 3 days involved a normal workday for me.  Lots of text messaging, normal amount of calls, some surfing on safari, less than 5 emails, checking my task manager app constantly, siri less than 10 times, and calculator app less than 10.

I seems from the data im getting a constant battery life of 6hours usage irrespective of the stanby times. 

WOULD THIS BE CONSIDERED NORMAL? Considering the apple 4s battery specs specify 3g internet of 6hours and call time of 8hours? So it seems to even out about right.  Are other 4s owners getting longer USAGE times?

Its timely how i was typing my post and yours got posted explaining 6hours.  I guess my post shows it is normal battery usage time then... 

I am not a 4S user. But your usage time places you right on par with what Apple expects of its phone. Standby time is utterly irrelevant. It cannot be more than 200 hours and it just means the time that didn't count as "usage" since your phone was last disconnected from the charger - and usage includes automatic checking of emails and background processing, the latter never being defined by Apple. Look at the last page where I quoted their stuff.

I just made the argument here that the way people use their phone nowadays makes it a 6hrs phone in almost every scenario.

Maybe real users can comment.

Tc.

p.s. yep loll, but don't take my word for it... I'm just speculating. Yet I know I'm right lolll.

Message was edited by: 1AppleADayNoWay

Ya exactly!  Now i feel better and can stop watching my battery % after each use.  I think ill just turn it off now!  At any rate, if 5.01 will improve it then all the much better. 

Maybe i can now slowly turn back the other stuff i want on and see which are big batt drainers and figure out if it is worth it being on-

Email to fetch hourly then push if its not much of a drain

Icloud notes on.

Thats about all i need to turn on really.

Do you have any kind of FB/Twitter/RSS component with notifications or on in the background, and if so, can you quantify it approximately in terms of number of friends/followed threads and such... just curious.

Anyways, enjoy!

Tc

Count me in the few left who dont check facebook and twitter every hour.  I probably check it once a week on my pc.  I dont have fb installed so no notifications.  Twitter is installed by notifications off.  The only thing on for notifications are calls, sms messages and email. 

I dont even have the default reminders app notifications turned on.  Thats because i use 2DO which is a more powerful task manager and i have the habit of checking it often throughout the day.  And yes, it does work with Siri too.

Im interested what other iphone 4s users have to say with regards to the 6hour usage time.

Thank you, that was very instructive. I believe the only way a scenario can change is whether the 6hrs are contiguous or not from the moment of charger disconnect and I believe they will be for FB/Twitter/Mail quick fetch and such users.

Now I'll shut up so maybe others will reply!

Good luck!

Add me to the pile of customers who have a battery issue.  I have never owned an iPhone before now.  Been a die-hard BlackBerry user....if this isn't fixed soon - I'll be back to the BlackBerry.  Having a battery with only 20% left on it after one 10 minute phone conversation is not acceptable. 

I depend on my phone far too much to encounter this problem (and several other smaller ones) on a phone that is supposed to be leaps and bounds above the others. 

Smaller items include, but does not completely encompass:  Siri doesn't work with my BlueAnt hands free device, told me today that she couldn't connect with the network today, emails are not being pushed, Facebook rarely updates, and my boss didn't get the text that I was running late today.  Sooo...

Apple - please take care of the issue PDQ, I can't be ******* around and losing my job because this wonderful new device can't send a simple text message.

Let me know when I should reactivate my BlackBerry.  Thanks.

Add my name to the horrible battery club.... this is really bad,  needs to be 2-3 times better at least.

Have the impression that the App Bria exacerbated the problem with the battery life yet.

This app should be checked by Apple.

Yesterday drove 80km with my maps.app active, blue dot tracked me all the way.

Three SMS, fb status update, email checked and arrived at work an hour later. Checked voicemail and locked screen and went to work 92% ( v happy considering active gps tracking is a battery pig)

Drove 3hr with iPod on shuffle, got Siri to send two or three texts, 5 minute phone call over blue tooth and had a quick squirt on another world app. Got home 7 pm with 59% battery.

Usage at 19 % later that evening was 19 hours standby, 7 ours usage. This must have mainly been iPod play + gps and phone calls, then later a handful of random war texting, phone calls and browsing about this very issue

Push is on. (fetch 1hr gmail), push for fb, weatherplus australia and twitter etc on. Location services always on. Notifications are on. Weather widget is off. Service options are all off for location services(about menu), none affect map performance. Siri raise to speak off and iCloud contact / calendar sync off until the delta. I do not have diagnostics running. Screen brightess in auto at around halfway on the slider. Vibration off when not in silent. I have been known to crash my 3GS for want of apps hogging ram, but am spoilt rotten with the 4s and haven't had anything attributed to battery drain by apps left open.

I believe this is largely to the apps I use not constantly requiring a connection for play or functionality.

Wifi is off as I don't have need for a wifi connection, Telstra 3G in Australia. Point to note- my 3GS battery lasted 60% longer with Telstra than when I was with vodafailAU- less than dismal network speed and 3G connectivity due to vodafone's coverage and the 3GS' propensity to hop between gsm, edge and 3G.

Perhaps people need to wait until the 5.01 delta is released so users can see how valid a fix it is before they completely can their new toy.

I think of battery life for a phone with poor cell signal like fuel in a car. If you drive flat out all the time(phone trying to find coverage / send info over and over again due to poor coverage) , you burn more fuel and run out quicker.

I charged my phone last night at 100%. This morning when i went to work, i forgot the phone at home. When i returned later it had drained the battery to 54%. Without doing anything. This is absurd. Ive turned off all the notifications/ time settings/ location settings/siri. Everything. To no avail. What do i do now? My last option is a fresh install/factory reset, but i hate losing my data.

So Apple, where do we go from here?

100% charge at 11pm.  Next morning 74%.  No phone use overnight, notifications off, location off, no push services active.  This is appalling and not what I expect of a new phone.