Q: iPhone 4s Battery Life?

The CPU load on my iPhone 4s 64GB is constantly above 53%. (even in Airplane mode)

On the iPhone 4 32GB the CPU load is 12% with similar settings.

On the iPhone 3s 32GB the CPU load is 15% with similar settings.

The battery drops around 10% an hour on the 4s with only System Monitor with Battery Max running to measure CPU load.

It seems the dual-core A5 processor is busy doing something close to nothing.

iOS 5.0.1

Full restore does fix the problem, for me it did.

My wife talked me into getting the new 4s 3 days ago. I had a Blackberry 9700 which had an amazing battery and functioned well for me but this phone is supposed to be so much more advanced. I do love the phone, but the battery drain is shocking. I am a truck driver and depend on my phone for work. I was at 100% when I left for work yesterday after new update. I used my GPS once for about 10 minutes and sent 2 texts and in 3 hrs my phone was down to 20%! I have read previous posts here with people saying to turn location features off and turn various other services off.  No way.  I bought this phone to be able to use at least some of the available features, not just to keep them turned off and boast about having them! Please help Apple!

@gerpet: Full restore to 5.01 and then backup of your personal data?

Since updating to iOS 5.0.1 the battery life on my iPhone 4s is getting worse.

Looks like we've still got the same issue with the "Setting Time Zone". When its switched on, the GPS indicator is still showing up, suggesting that its still using GPS services (hence draining your battery). This can be found here.

Settings - Location Services - System Services - Setting Time Zone

However, I'm positive theres more to it than that, if you switch this off it still continues to drain your battery. I've even switched every single location based service OFF and its still draining the battery, despite no GPS icon showing.

If, however you switch OFF Location Services altogether this drastically improves battery life. Additionally if you switch OFF SIRI this improves the battery life even further. This can be found here.

Settings - General - Siri

It would be nice if Apple could admit there's a problem and notify its users, its not like they don't have everyones email address!

I look forward to the next update (or do I)?!?!!!!!!!

Carrier: 3 (UK)

I am on Sprint and I too am having battery problems with my new iPhone 4S.

Can everyone posting please us know what carrier you are using? 

The issue seems like it is predominently experienced by Sprint users.  Just add in your post who your contract is with.

https://discussions.apple.com/message/16705073#16705073

Seems to work just fine. I find a lot of times there may be a bit of user error here. Deffintly wouldnt run out and buy a droid ever. All of the android phones I see people using need and extension cord with them LOL!!

I suggest giving this a try.

I am with AT&T. Even my 3GS out lasted my coworkers android phones running on 3G all day long. It is simply settings.....

How did you make the full restore? As a new iPhone or restore from a backup?

Thanks!

LOL, agreed, I checked a droid forum yesterday and all they could do was try to rationalize that Droids were as good as an iphone.. I just chuckled as always.  Right when I got my 4S I went to two stores and held Droids and other top competitors in one hand and the 4S in the other.  4S destroys them in every area and it's not close..

I own a Iphone 4s the battery life is terrible i loose 30% in 7 hours of sleep on standby and this "Phantom usage is occurring

I had stats like Usage: 4 hours 45 minutes

Standby: 7 hours 3 minutes

I decided to play around to see what was using this phantom usage i have indeed found the problem now just need apple to fix it

please test this everyone

Exchange is on fetch

Icloud is on fetch

hotmail fetch

did all the location services people have said.

my idea

I was on wifi during the night and it was using up the usage so i decided to start

disabling notification centre apps and location services still usage and still on fetch email.

Below were 20 MINUTES TESTS!

I switched to airplane mode = usage stopped

switched to 3G = usage stopped but 3g uses far more battery than wifi but if people are having drains of like 1% 3 min this could help them

went back to wifi = usage started to occur

I tested all these on 20 mins by using screen shot before then checking back 20 mins later.

I erased all settings of this phone yesterday as i feel the battery has indeed gotten worse with 5.0.1.

so I suggest if people having been getting the phantom usage with wifi to test 3g for about 20 mins then test wifi again to see if you get these results and

if some are using 3g and getting this I suggest switch to wifi.

I have reset all network settings no luck.

I do not think the problem is lying the notification center/ location center I indeed think it is occurring within the network

settings such as WIFI/3g and apple need to look into this as I cant keep using 3g has i dont have unlimited data and 3g drains more battery.

Currently what I am  going to do is use 3g in the night on standby. and when i am browsing etc I will switch to wifi if I can I should not be having to this.

I have had the 3gs and iphone 4 now the 4 S.

Please try this I will be reporting this to apple as i think this could be a problem!!

Thanks

I've really had enough of this sh*t!  This company creates a (defective) product... a product that cannot live up to its own advertised abilities. It then offers up a fix to its defective hardware/software only to create further chaos to those wishing to just use their phone as advertised. Never once does the company provide details on how the update should be applied (i.e. reset after applying update; back up from the Cloud after update; etc.). No, it leaves its customers to figure it all out on their own. Other companies do not work this way. Adobe has never left me scambling to find my own fix for Photoshop so way can't Apple man up and provide details on how to best apply their update. Here we have pages and pages and pages of guess work when all it would take would be for the people who created the product to come out with a guideline on how fixes should be applied. In conclusion,  customers are nothing but perpetual beta testers.

Rather than complain take it back.

I think sometimes people expect just a little to much. HOW in the world are they supossed to put a device like this in a real world situation when everyone who uses it does it differently, has differnt apps, and so on. READ THE FINE PRINT! There tests are conducted at best case just like every other company out there. They have the best help and support of any company I have ever seen.

Let me see you walk into an android store after you drop it in water and have them hand you one for free!

OHHH WAIT they dont have a store!

People complain way to much!

I updated to my iPhone 4s to IOS 5.0.1 yesterday. Sadly it seems to make no difference despite turning off location service, siri raise to speak etc as recommended by many. Charged my iPhone to 100% and woke up with 96%. After sending a few text and using whatsapp for a short while, dropped to 92%. End of the day my iPhone was left with 51% with very minimum usage. It's really strange i wonder what's going on, it's like even when i browse Safari for a few minutes it would drop by 2-4 percents. It's scary.

I was kind of disappointed, my previous iphone 4 battery life was really lasting, it would still be around 80% at the end of the day after i end work. I really hope the battery life bugs could be fix asap.

With this short amount of battery life, i now have to think twice to launch an app to read the news or play games on my iphone 4s when i'm out without a charger. I hope Apple will address this issue asap.

Okay... recap:

Yesterday at about 9:40am... after updating to iOS 5.0.1 and turning on Siri, Pushed email, Location Services... basically everything I'd turned off to slow the battery drain, I unplugged it and with very little use, it dropped 6% in about 45 minutes, as I recall.  The only thing I haven't turned back on is Location Services for the Time Zone setting.  Thinking about it now, I will only turn it on when I am planning to travel out of my current time zone.

At about 1:30pm it was 86% and at about 5:30pm it was at 79% (hadn't used it much actively - responded to a couple of messages and received about 10 emails.)  My thought was to let it drain completely and recalibrate the battery.

Well, after checking facebook, emails, sending a few messages and listening to music while reading Guillermo del Toro's The Night Eternal in iBooks for a few hours, I got it down to about 40%.  With Wi-Fi on, I left it unplugged overnight.  Here's my battery state now:

Not too shabby and a definite improvement over the pre-update performance which forced me to plug in the phone more than once a day.  I'm still going to recalibrate the battery to see if there's more improvement and possibly restore - though I don't look forward to restoring a 64GB iPhone filled with music - haha!

So, it seems like the update did fix my problem to a large extent.  We'll see if I can eek out more battery life with the recalibration and restore.

The Mophie Juice Pack Plus is the only answer, I have the 4S and the battery *****, there is nothing Apple will do about it, its needs a new battery, one that actually lasts. If they cannot prvide this many will start to use the Android devices, I love the 4S but it need a battery that can live longer without a charge.