Q: iPhone 4s Battery Life?

Come on, if it's s/w bug, how could its impact be limited to a small number of users only?

Initially I had to charge my new  4s three or four times a day. I thought it might be due to my application downloading and data activities. Lately I tried not to run any applications, turn off email Push, and only check emails once or twice a day Manually instead of automatical Fetch, in average two or three calls a days (less than 30 mins in total), it'd fully drain itself and need re-charge almost every single day!

I agreed with ayemerica. If your phone has excessive heat like that, get it checked out. Mine was a battery defect. I returned it because heat just came out from it like it was a stove. Before I did the reset, heat came through the case and I didn't know why. I kept asking all of my friends and they said their phones were fine. Only warm when they used them for so long. After the reset, playing 4 minutes  video on You tube and I could feel the heat through my hand on the front and the side. I really didn't  know what was wrong until I returned and they said it was a defect. You need to let it checked out. Good luck!

TigerWont wrote:

 

7.15am unplugged 4-day-old iPhone 4S which was charging overnight. Apps running in background: iMessage, eBay, PayPal, Mail. All Wi-Fi, Location Services, Auto timezone etc (per recent press postings) turned off.

 

Battery: 100%

 

8.20am Arrive at work after being in tube for 40mins.

 

Battery: 19%

 

I've read that the battery life on the 4S isn't optimal but this is ridiculous. I will be taking it back today.

Those apps that you have running the background: PayPal, eBay, etc. likely have their own Push settings that are constantly using your network connection. You mentioned wifi is off, so then you're probably using 3G which generally uses more battery power. So in addition to your Youtube usage, your background apps were probably draining your battery over your 3G connection with their push notifications.

Check Settings then scroll down to those apps and make sure they are set up in a battery-mindful way.

dave2003 wrote:

 

Come on, if it's s/w bug, how could its impact be limited to a small number of users only?

 

Initially I had to charge my new  4s three or four times a day. I thought it might be due to my application downloading and data activities. Lately I tried not to run any applications, turn off email Push, and only check emails once or twice a day Manually instead of automatical Fetch, in average two or three calls a days (less than 30 mins in total), it'd fully drain itself and need re-charge almost every single day!

It's pretty darn easy for s/w bugs to affect only a handful of users. That's usually the nature of a bug. If it affected more people then it would have been picked up much earlier in the testing phase.

i have tested this on my ip4s and my wife's ip4  AND IT WORKS

i happen to have 2 itunes accounts (1 is my wife's with all the music we share and the other is my work stuff) here is my configuration:

macmini (ALWAYS ON) ITUNE ACCOUNT 1 ACTIVE set for automatic downloads

my iphone 4s- i changed the store setting to itunes account 2 no automatic downloads

my ipad 2  wifi - itunes account 1 automatic downloads

my ipad is off most of the day so it doesnt burn 3G battery

before i switched my iphone  itunes account to account 2 i was burning battery now- i am not

SETTINGS>STORE>AUTOMATIC DOWNLOADS> Music OFF > apps OFF> Books OFF

it is not the phone it is itunes servers constantly pinging the phone

my wife's phone was showing 3g activity when her phone was asleep - that i believe is itunes looking to match stuff.....

i do not think you need to make a new itunes account - just turn off automatic downloads.

as with everything ymmv

dave2003 wrote:

 

Come on, if it's s/w bug, how could its impact be limited to a small number of users only?

 

Dave I see your point but perhaps things just aren't that simple.

You're implying that all iPhone users and all iPhones are like you and yours, and they surely aren't.

Firstly there are clearly at least three types of folk here:

• Those with really bad battery life [30%+/Hour] and heating up phones.
• Those with a lot of battery loss [15-30%/hour]
• Those who have poor battery life [5-10%/hour]

The first lot above probably are the unlucky ones with hardware faults, bad lithium batteries or 'Friday Afternoon' lemon-iPhones. For the last two above, there clearly is a S/W issue, imho, that Apple are acknowledging and working on.

So then there's everyone else. Why aren't they clogging this forum? Well many [most?] may not be English speakers so why would they be here at all? Then there's those who use their phone like my mum does: once or twice a day and who's phones aren't loaded up with apps and don't push or pull anything. Then there's those who've not had an iPhone before to compare it with. Others will probably contact their service provider as that is who they are a customer of and those providers will probably be fobbing them off with hooky advice. Finally, some folk just don't feel like sharing their issues on forums like this and they deal with it in their own way.

These are just a few examples of how the 4million+ users are percieving and dealing with any battery issues.

Thankfully some sticky wheels out there kick up a fuss and keep Apple on their toes. It's equally good that not everyone does or they'd grind to a halt under the pressure of dealing with all the complaints and Genius-Bar visits.

Yeah software bug can be related to specific sim cards or carriers or even signal strength, they all make a phone behave differently, it can also be your sim is dirty or has some skin oils on the contacts, wipe it down with a damp cloth or metho and don't touch the contacts at any stage after and it will have a better connection.

I noticed on mine after removing the sim and putting it back in an hour later seemed to reset something and it appeared that I had no more usage while the phone was locked, definitely worth a try!!

I agree automatic downloads, sharing apps or media between all devices is a very likely culprit for standby drain in particular. Mine also got better life after that was switched off.

iPhone 4S 16GB - I posted yesterday here for the first time and reported that I was getting pretty good battery life results after changing my exchange email settings from push to fetch 15 minutes. I decided to experiment and I took the phone off of my charger at the office with a 100% charge 20 hours and 31 minutes ago. At present I have 53% bettery life left and I am pleased as opposed to what was happening the first week I had the phone. Granted, I am not using everything and my complete settings are as follows:

Wifi - on

Notifications - Messages, reminders, Calendar, Mail all on. Everything else off.

Location services - on with all off except maps and Siri. Under System Services all off except Cell Network Search and Compass Calibration. Find My iPhone is on.

Brightness at around 85% because I can't see great anyway at close up (age).

General - Siri is on, Network is all on, Bluetooth is on.

Restriction - everything is on except ping.

ICloud - everything is turned off. My computer is not compatible at the moment so this is likely a huge battery saver as well.

Mail - set to fetch 15 min.

Anyway, while I was typing this out, I took 2 phone calls and kept the display on to see my settings and I am down to 49% battery remaining. Usage is 3 hours and 15 minutes. Stand by 20 hours, 47 minues

It's not great because I am not using the full potential of the phone, but it is a lot better than the first 6 days with the phone.

Hope this helps and looking forward to the update/fix.

I got a replacement handset from Apple due to Battery usage/ Excessive heat on the back of the iPhone 4 and a intermittent fault with the home button. The replacement come with 4.3.5 which I used for a while battery was faultless. Now with IOS 5 installed again the battery usage has gone way down. The battery will drain on standby constantly even with location services turned off. I used to charge my iPhone 4 on 4.3.5 once every 2 days now with IOS 5 I need to charge my replacement handset sometimes twice a day its ridiculous. IOS 5.0.1 needs to be released ASAP never mind in a couple of weeks

I got a replacement handset from Apple due to Battery usage/ Excessive heat on the back of the iPhone 4 and a intermittent fault with the home button. The replacement come with 4.3.5 which I used for a while battery was faultless. Now with IOS 5 installed again the battery usage has gone way down. The battery will drain on standby constantly even with location services turned off. I used to charge my iPhone 4 on 4.3.5 once every 2 days now with IOS 5 I need to charge my replacement handset sometimes twice a day its ridiculous. IOS 5.0.1 needs to be released ASAP never mind in a couple of weeks

I find it interesting that for about a week my phone's battery was draining excessively, even with all those services, etc. turned off. It seems though that perhaps the battery needed to be conditioned or something, because the past few days I have only needed to charge my phone once at the end of the day rather than many times a day. I still have all those features turned off, but it seens weird that it went from heavy, heavy drain and having the phone heat up, to suddenly acting as it should. I'm holding my breath waiting for the other shoe to drop, but for now, I'm happy.

What I have found is that the standby time is much better than the first week I had the phone. If I surf the net, text, make phone calls, or use an app such as CNN or other news, the battery drains very quickly as I illustrated in that last post I made where I went from 53% to 49% (actually 48 by the time I shut everuthing downin right at 10 minutes. I love the phone but hope that moderate to heavy use won't kill the battery life quite so fast as 1-2% every minute or two.

There is a group of people out there that was not accounted for, those who have no unusual battery usage.  Like myself.   Two push accounts, 1 fetch, calendar notifications, wifi sync, icloud all enabled.  I did turn off the the time zone thing because i figured it couldnt hurt.  I also cycled the battery once, for good measure.

Given the complexity of this device, and number of applications available its' easy to see how a bug like this may only affect a certain number of people.  The mitigating factors are too many to go into here.

BTW, I made one interesting observation on the standby vs. usage time.  My phone appears to show the correct ratio (about 3-4 hours a day for every 24 hours of standby) but my neighbors phone on Sprint always shows close to 1:1 ratio.  Neither of us suffer any battery problems though.

The best advice here is to wait for the software update before we pass judgment on it.  It's too bad more developers havent commented on this thread as to their experience with the latest beta but they are probably too busy testing their applications to be beta testers for us. 

This is also my problem. Bought the 4S from USA (I'm from Chile) and used with my carrier, no problems there. Anyway, I noticed since I started using it, that the battery drained really fast. Like 1% each 3-4 minutes. First, I tought it was because it was new. But now, I realize there's something else. It doesn't get hot, it just drains. Maybe if Apple allow us to turn down 3G for normal use, the average of battery drainage would dicrease. I don't know, I only hope they got this fixed because I spent a lot of money on this device and it's the first Apple product that has given problems to me.