Q: iPhone 4s Battery Life?

There are two groups to this battery iisue:

Group 1. The battery drains more than 1-2% per hour at idle. Some have reported up to 15% drop per hour while not using the phone. No matter what your settings are, this should not occur.

Group 2. The battery drains very rapidly while in use but does not drain rapidly in idle. I lose about 0.5% per hour while the phone is not being used. Draining 0.5% per hour is on par with what Apple claimed-200 hours of standby. While using the phone I lose 1% every 2 minutes. This gives me 3.33 hours of use-not acceptable. This is about half of what Apple claimed.

What group do you fall into?

Just wanted to further add to the list of battery drain victims. I don't have as severe an issue as some, mind you i pretty much always keep locaton services off. The only thing i can add to the the conversation is it really does seem that with siri turned on, my battery goes to the crapper fairly quickly. Last night I turned it off, and only lost 4% overnight, wich was typical of my iphone 4. I have notificatons set to manual, gps off, wifi off, and set the timezone support off as well. As soon as i turned on siri this morning, my phone did a 30% nosedive in power over the last 4 hrs. I've shut it off again, and will chime in again later this aft if there is no improvement in power loss.

I might have solved the problem thanks to sean-g11 ". At least it seems the problem has been solved.

Im not sure of the exact menu names in English, but here goes:

Go to:

Settings - Location Settings - System Services - TURN ON "Status Line Symbol" (at the bottom) . This prooved to show, that my iPhone 4s was running the "Setting Time Zone" 24/7. I turned it off, and the batttery time has been improved (or so it seems so far). "setting time zone" can be found as number 3 in the list above "Status line symbol".

Hope it works for you guys.

Okay when I first got my 4S I didn't have this battery issue, until yesterday that is. The football game started I had around 40% battery and I was doing light texting with my friend from sanfransisco like we always do on game day. An hour into the game my phone was in the single digits so I ran it up to the charger and pulled it back off at 40%. An hour later same deal. Thinking nothing of it I plug it in for the night and fall asleep with it in my bed (we cuddle). I wake up at 5am to the phone against my body really warm, so I unplug it and go back to bed. I wake up in the morning it's still warm and at 32% down from 100% not being used.

I changed NO settings. It just decided to start doing this and I've had it for weeks now no problem.

Nov 7, 2011 9:15 AM                                                    (in response to Andyroo31)                                                               

Tried both of those methods with no posotive return.  So far my phone will wind up dead after being on a wall charger all night.  And then trying to get it to turn on is a whole other mission.  For me personally my battery issues are only compounding in severity every time I go to sleep.  Wake up and the phone says it's dead and won't turn back on.  I think I can honeslty say this is probably the worst 'cell phone' I've ever used.  And that's back when we had to carry them around in a suitcase!

Lets see, hmm :I plug my phone in to charge and it is DEAD in the morning.

Well several things to look at. 1: is the charger being use and not plugging in to your PC usb port and it turned off ( no voltage) 2: when plugged in you will hear and see the charging screen ( is this happening ? If not then charger not working, cable issue, OR dead wall socket) 3: All above Check out OK then possible hardware issue in the phone.

hi my 4s is on 36% battery... 13 hours standby, 2 hour usage..... is this not normal for a iphone 4s. ps thats with everything u can emagin turned off....

rogerfromfrance wrote:

I agree , something seems activate the CPU half of the time, however all apps showing

% of CPU activity (i tried several) give low cpu usage while in standby mode..

I noticed another point : Battery is losing charge much slower when only 3G  or Wifi is on

but not both..Possibly a problem could be in the dual antena new system, switching from

one to the  other in abnormal way and wasting power.... may be...

3G will use up battery power even if you have wifi on because your phone has to maintain an intermittent connection. That's the price you pay for having something on even if you don't use it (like turning on the lights in another room while you're in the living room watching tv -- you pay more on your electric bill). The only reason to have it on is so you don't have to fiddle with the settings when you're out of wifi range -- just like how you would not have to turn on the light switch when you enter that other room.

As for CPU usage, you're not seeing -- at that particular moment when you used your cpu activity software -- the processes that get run on a schedule (e.g. reminders, calendars, email notifications, location updates, etc). Those eventually add up, and you will see this added to your usage time. This is why most phones won't ever have a usage of 0% even if they truly were never used by anyone the entire time.

Same issue as all of you....my phone drains after 4 hours of use on standby.  Horrible.  Something must be done!!!

Left home at 8am with 100% battery charge. I have location services turned off. I have BT turned off. I have all push notifications turned off. I have the bare bones going. I accepted 2 phone calls (no audio, had to use speaker phone) of less than 30 seconds each. I did no searches, and did not use any apps. Ran into an issue with the audio not working unless you have in headset, or use speaker, so had genius at apple fiddle with it for a few minutes. at 11am I had 23% power. Come on! this is really silly. 3 hours and I went thru 75% of my power? This really needs to be addressed. I expect a phone to make it thru a work day at least. I keep a car charger, a house charger and so forth. sad that I have to run around with a charger everywhere I go.

rogerfromfrance wrote:

I agree , something seems activate the CPU half of the time, however all apps showing

% of CPU activity (i tried several) give low cpu usage while in standby mode..

I noticed another point : Battery is losing charge much slower when only 3G  or Wifi is on

but not both..Possibly a problem could be in the dual antena new system, switching from

one to the  other in abnormal way and wasting power.... may be...

This is very possible roger !

With WIFI on 24/7, the phone will constantlly be searching for a network to Join (JUST LIKE ANY MAC OR PC ) 

Turning OFF WIFI when you are in a 3G only state is a BIG + to battery life increasing. JUST DOIT.

I see that alot of this issue is USAGE: (what is loaded and running ALL THE TIME (turn those apps Off from the DOCK).

Email should be a Manual push, iMessage is for immediate contacting ! ( emails for business need to be business only which means few to download and replyto) My main email gets 60-100+ emails daily, this would KILL a batt if Push was ON.

But turning WIFI off when not needed will help a lot.

(JUST FOR INFO : WHO IS CLOSING THOSE APPS ??? ) I don't see ANY Posts EVER replying that this is happening !!

yep i have to admit, this is crap lol... i cant even play a game or videos or music, have hardly got enough battery to text lol

So, i see people saying that the issue will be fixed with this new update coming. Oh, you guys are so naive! I have a nice word for you guys but don;t wanna disrespect you.

Here are the facts actually just one.

For people who are experiencing 10-15% drop an hour, yes they have some kinda issues and that will eb solved majorily because either there is something worng with their phones or their software management i-e " a bug in software".

Now for people who are losing 1% an hour (and i fall into that category) our phones are not going to get fixed. And in thsi category we see drastic drop in battery when we use the phone?Correct? Yes i know it's true and alot of peopel would agree with me.

And now why would i say that it would not change our 1% loss situation because you guys are mising something. Its the same freakin battery that had alot less features and no dual core in iPhone 4! So what will happen when you have a dual core processor and things liek iCloud ..... they will drink all the juice in yoru battery.

Now let's face teh fact, that Apple is going to learn form this and now they know that our old strategy that we don;t wanna increase the size of the phone is going out the window because they know now. Triple teh features in thsi phone and dual core means a bigger and more efficient battery. And one can hope that the next phone will be an improvement. Because this will give apple a pretty good idea that future apps and programmes need more juice than an old iphone4 battey can do.

Now, we might see(people who suffer1%loss in battery in standby)  a better standby time with teh update. But guys no way it's going to improve the efficiency of the battery in use than what it is. Because this phone is almost nwo doing double ot triple the job than iphone4.

I get almost 1% loss in 3-4 minutes max. if i am using something on my phonr or playing aorund with some applications and you know wht "WE MADE A MISTAKE BUYING A PHONE TOO EARLY" and we gonna have to stick with it now.

We could have waitied for 2-3 weeks and see how phone behaves.But some of us could'nt even sleep thinkin "OH SIRI" when are you gonna come in my life.

If this new 4s battery lasts me a day i would think its too much... i am already tired of thinking that it's going to get fixed and than i stepped back for a moment and thinkyou know what" let's face the facts". Its our fault that we trusted teh arvertisement that 200 standby hours" and didnt even think logically bcoz we were too hyped abotu new features.

That's it!

32gb Orange UK ( black )

Ok hope this helps?

I have done a lot of what's said on here. I now turn off Mobile Data located in: Settings> General> Network> Mobile data> set it to off - I only put that on if I need to surf or require 3G, when you are on WiFi turn mobile data off - its better than airplane mode as you can recieve texts and calls, Mobile Data turned off also stops it burning the battery when in low signal areas. I managed 9hr 4min usage/18 hours ( approx ) standby until it was totally flat ( switched itself off ), that usage was surfing/texting/calls/apps and using msn some on WiFi some on 3G.

The list of changes I have done:

Push e-mails off ( manual fetching )

I cloud - on - all other settings off - Back up off ( find my mobile is on ).

I back up to iTunes ( WiFi sync off )

Siri is on ( all functions )

Location Services:

Compass - on

Diagnostics & Usage - off

Location Based iAds - off

Mobile network services - on ( Please watch this, sometimes it gets stuck on - turn it off for a few seconds then back on should sort it )

Setting Time Zone - off

Traffic - off

WiFi setting switch the Ask to Join Networks to off.

I have reduced my screen brightness - so turn the Auto off and set it lower.

Apps set as required, but remember notifications etc will cost battery so just have a think if you need all of them to notify you.

I have also done 2 total drains of the battery ( to the point of it switching itself off ) and after each drain a 16 hour unbroken charge cycle.

It might not work for everyone but give it a go!

Hope it helps until the fix

I have turned off ping, time zone, Diagnostics & Usage, and iAds and I have not had any trouble at all with my battery.I left it on yesterday, turned it off without charging last night, turned it on this morning and I still have 51% remaining. I have used it normally, (email, web surfing, apps).

For what it's worth... My 4s battery also drains like a seive. Also thinks its fully charged at 97%, until I unplug the charger then plug it back in. Tried switching various things off to no avail, still drains and makes you wonder what the point of a smartphone is if you have to switch all the smart stuff off... Where's my Nokia 3310? Hope apple can sort this out soon... It's lost 6% since I started writing this!