Q: iPhone 4s Battery Life?

It's amazing that in 2011,  consumers expectations are often mismatched with reality. 

seanaustralia wrote:

 

shouldnt actually have to worry about what apps and services to turn on and off, it should last alot longer processing at the speeds that it is capable of. sort this out or im getting rid of my iPhone forever.

You're kidding right? That's like saying your monthly electricity bill should always remain the same regardless of what you set your thermostat to...

The more services you have on, the more battery power your phone uses up even if you aren't actually making use of your phone.

MarineMammal wrote:

 

Turned OFF all notifications and still my standby time barely reached ten hours - a far cry from the promised 200 hours. Apple has screwed the pooch. I will return my current iPhone 4s for a full refund if the problem is not solved soon.

After turning off the notifications, did you proceed to reboot your phone? The settings may have caused a hang in various processes that are triggered when those options are turned on. But if you turn them off while the process is hung, you don't actually fix anything. This is when a reboot would help (kills the hung process associated with your option that was previously set to ON, then boots up using the OFF configuration).

Could you please share your battery status %, usage and standby (and the configuration)?

iPhone 4S - 64GB Black ATT (running iOS 5.0)

Exchange (PUSH)

Timezone OFF, Calendar notifications OFF, Raise to Speak OFF

24% battery

Usage: 5 Hours and 25 minutes

Standby: 20 Hours and 16 minutes

Question: Good? Bad? (I'm a new user for iPhone and in the past I had a blackberry with extend battery (more than 2 days to recharge). Please let me know what you think about the numbers.

Thanks neto

I have had my 4s a week today (minus a few hours). My battery life was really bad in the first few days - I expected this - new phone, new settings, messing around to get used to it.  Nothing has improved much since. I have turned everything off that I can; no notifications, not even looked at siri, email to push (wondering about deleting that completely).Reset completely to factory settings, started as a new phone instead of back up, taken as many apps off as possible. I only actually play 2 at the moment anyways.  At least 2 dead to full complete charges.

Yesterday I thought things had improved. Phone was dead the night before so charged at 7am until 11.30 100%, went out shopping, made 1 phone call - still a good percentage. Returned home around 4.30 made another phone call and 3/4 text messages, percentage around 75%.  Very good I am thinking, although the usage and standby times were still only in low hours. I had spoken on the phone in total for 22 mins (2 calls).  I went to bed at 11.30 with 65% charge, got up at 5 and the phone is dead.  Good job I am on holiday and didnt need the alarm clock.

My problem is do i wait for the fix (which I really hope fixes the problem) or do I ask to exchange my handset.... where do I stand with my guarantee etc.  My brother who bought a 16g black 4s on launch day only charges his phone every couple of days (I wish).  Sometimes I do wonder if it is the bigger models that have the problem...

Hi Deborah, definitely not, I have a 16 GB, White, Verizon, and didn't have the same battery life my sister had.  She has the same version, only on AT&T.  Unfortunately she had to return it for a hardware defect, but her battery life was amazing compared to mine. 

Well, my 4s used to drain 50% per night in standby mode. Then i started switching off all the notifications/siri etcetera. To no avail. Lastly i deleted the icloud settings, turned everythin off that has something to do with icloud includi g photostream and now my phone only draws 1% per night! Seriously. I did reboot after turning evrything off.

Hope this helps someone because 1st i thought i had a bad battery. Now i know ita faulty software. Ill post my using stuff when the battery is at zero.

Well all I can say is my 2 32gig 4s (mine and wife) Both are running purfectly as expected.

All push are on, iCloud , Siri, and Photostream. Have only iCLoud .me mail as defualt (I get over 60 emails daily so I really don't need all that to push to my phone(thats what my Macbook Pro is for) Only thing off is auto time zone set.

use about 30-40 min talk,texting daily with siri and web access.

Use around 20% a day and charge every 3 days. The phone is on 24/7 !!

One thing you need to do is close ALL open apps in the DOCK regularlly in order to gain more batt %.

I would say that if you have a regular email set (ie gmail, exchange etc) on with push, you will be sucking alot of batt due to the constant pinging of the email cliant to the server(Not Good, and has been noted since the 1st gen iPOD Touch !!)

Mahalo

Well i am truly  disapointed.  I have always used Nokia phones since forever and finaly decided to take the plunge and go apple and get the Iphone 4s.  I researched everything and it was so very exciting i went into my regualr store where i upgrade all my phones and was told due to the demand i would have to wait 7 working days.  Which i did when i finaly picked up my phones i got two iphone 4s black 32g instantly we noticed the battery life.  After discharging and charging the phone multiple times i realised that there was obviously alot i needed to learn about apple products..  I researched for hours and did everything it said to do turning off all the push things etc and still the same.  I occassionally play the odd game but not for long and make a call or two and messages and within 4 hours im finding im charging it again as when i have to go out i need a phone to use not a flat one.  I have been caught so many times now being at friends places and having to charge my phone just so it wont go flat its rediculous.  I rang up the apple store as i am in Perth Australia and spoke to a person after being on hold for almost 30 minutes and was told her words " I'm not sure if there are any issues with the new iphone 4s you will have to make an appointment with one of our  genious staff     and they should be able to help you further.  So now i realise that just to get my problem which at the time i wasnt sure if it was either a problem with everyone or something i was doing or wasnt doing myself, i have to make an appointment and then drive all the way into the city.  Then i explain my problems and go from there. MMMMMMMMmm i would have thought that when i rang that with them full well knowing that this phone had issues that they could have just said that with a little patience there were issues but they were being assessed and an outcome would be following soon.  I would have been fine with that.  I'm a patient person.  But i am discovering that apple products arent very savy to communicate with anything aside from apple products.  I  cant use my bluetooth to connect to anything i mean anything will not detect anything even another phone exactly the same.  I cant video call my family interstate unless they have an iphone which they dont.  You can easily add ringtones to your phone without them costing you money.  Someone please tell me where are the bennefits with an iphone????? The only good thing about this phone is Sirri.................... SOOOOOOOOOO NOT HAPPY APPLE......... Next upgrade will probably go  back to my Nokia 's they stayed true and faithful in everyway to me.............

I also restarted from recovery mode , reloading IOS5 , and configured as new phone my 4S.

At this point, i was very happy while my phone was losing only 1% every 4 to 5 hours in standby mode.

But one thing bothers me: without installing any application or email account, i noticed that

used time is always the half of standby time!  even by doing nothing. 4 hours later used time is 2 hours!

Of course i did all settings about time zone, norifications etc...

After that, i start to reinstall my apps , music etc... and unfortunatly i was disapointed..

Can't understand why this used time is so high because in the same time, my "old" iphone4 upgraded to IOS5

gives results very differents  for several hours of standby time , it's only a few minutes of used time.

And in standby mode , it need to be recharged only every 3 to 4 days .

Also , another point:  i installed an application from the appstore called "System monitor with battery max"

from Tekton technologies.

Running this app on my 4S , the cpu load is shown very high (53.6 %) while doing nothing else.

Same test on my iphone4 gives only 6%!

Someone could report cpu load using same app.?

even my iphone 4 with iOS 5 isnt as good as when i recieved it with iOS 4, i dont know whats going on , id charge it to 100% and within 2 hours its around the 60-65% mark , very dissapoining!¬ sort it please.

maurizio1956

I like you analogy of Ferrari. You can try to do the same as what I did and it has considerably improved the battery situation. This of course would be an intrim solution to the immediate problem.

Completely drain your battery until the phone switches off and then charge it for 18 hours in off state

Prior to carrying out the following it is recommended that you untick all the Sync options in iTunes including info (outlook), Apps and music etc.

Connect the phone to iTunes

Once recognised and backed up press and hold the power button until it disappears from iTunes

Now that the phone is off Press and hold POWER and HOME buttons simultaneously

Let go of POWER button and the phone will enter recovery mode

iTunes will recognise the phone in recovery mode and offer to restore and update the software

Accept restore and update but when prompted choose not to restore from the backup but as a new phone

Once the phone is restored (IOS5 will be downloaded and installed) the phone will restart.

NOTE that all data and settings will be erased on your phone!

When setting up the phone from scratch after the above process choose to leave the icloud, Location services and Siri off as you can turn them on later on.

Now configure you email accounts manually

Do not restore the Apps from iTunes or iCloud (install them manually)

You can import your contacts from Outlook by selecting Contacts in iTunes

And so on for your music and videos etc.

On this forum we are only sharing experiences and problems not claiming to provide solutions as thats being looked at by Apple and I am confident they will come up with a real fix.

My battery has dropped 3% in 25 minutes and it has only been sat on my desk (whilst I setup my Apple profile to post on here).

I have both a 28 month old 3GS (which I use as a Touch) and a 4S and they are both setup the same (apart from the 3GS not having a SIM card and 3G disabled). I have done all the tweaks, battery conditioning etc and also a factory reset/restore this has improved my battery life in little BUT still my battery life on the 4S is utter poo!

I work from home so over the last couple of weeks I have had both devices on my desk comparing the battery drain between the two in standby mode and with normal usage. Obviously I can't compare taking calls but I don't actually make that many calls on my iPhone as I have a Blackberry for business and most people call me on that. I only use Wi-Fi in my house so there is no need to compare using 3G for downloading data either.

Conclusion: Battery life is far better on the 3GS running iOS5 than the 4S (especially in standby).

I will give you an example from my comparisons last week

11.00pm Sunday:          Disconnect 3GS from charging (100% charge) and leave on my desk overnight

9.10am Monday:           3GS is at 92% (8% drop over night). I also top up my 4S battery charge

9.40am Monday:           4S is at 100% I reboot the phone so no apps are running and leave on my desk

I then use the 3GS during the day for light use - Facebook, Browsing, 15 minutes of YouTube, Sky News App

2.00pm Monday:           Receive a phone call on my 4S for approx 2 - 3 minutes

7.20pm Monday:           3GS battery 72% - 4S battery 69%. The 4S battery has drained 31% in standby (apart from a 3 minute call) in just under 11 hours, and has less charge than the 3GS which has been running nearly 20 hours and has been used during the day.

11:00pm Monday:         4S is at 32% - I used it at the gym that evening for an hour (playing music) and then used it later that evening for light data use (Facebook and Zombie Farm), before going to bed.

I have had nearly 4 full days without having to charge my 28 month old 3GS running on iOS5 (mostly standby but with occasional use each day). I wonder how many people with reported battery problems get 36 hours on a 4S just running on standby.

The worrying thing is I have seen some press releases regarding the battery fix in iOS 5.0.1 and all that is mentioned so far is tweaks to how Location Services work. All these tweaks effect services which I have mostly disabled.

If that's all there fixing and if you factor in that some people are reporting no battery problems. There must be something else thrown into the mix possibly a faulty hardware batch.

For the record I am a systems engineer for a global software company. I spend my working day installing, configuring and troubleshooting software enterprise deployments. I have dealt with enough product issues with software over the years to know this battery life problem is not purely down to how Location Services work!

I may wipe the phone and set it up again as a new iPhone, but I am not holding my breath it will work and this seems to defeat the purpose of having a back up in the first place.

If Apple don't come clean or provide a definitive fix, I will be asking for a replacement / refund!

I have had the same problems as other have reported with the 4S which i posted on somewhere amoungst this huge thread. in short within 10 hrs on standby with everything turned off that was possible to turn off the battery was down to 50%, so it had a total 20hr standby time as opposed to apples claimed 200hr standby time.

using a tip off here i drained my battery completely until it turned off. plugged in over night to charge with the phone still being off.

yesterday took the phone off charge at 10am and was at 100% and it went back on charge 15 hrs later at 1am. the phone had some use, made a couple of calls, sent some texts, watched a bit of a film, checked e-mails etc and everything was turned on, locations services etc. when i put the phone back on charge at 1am it was at 69%, a lot better then before.