Q: iPhone 4s Battery Life?

Again, it's NOT a hardware issue as plenty of people who've upgraded their 4 (not 4S) have complained about significantly degraded battery life even after setting it up as a new phone (my sister included).  It's iOS5 people.

It's not the iPhone 4s, it's IOS 5 on the iPhone. I have a 3GS, and it exhibits the same problems. As an experiment, I made sure that both the iPhone 3GS and iPad 2 (both running ios5) were at 100% charge. I then unplugged them both and left them in standby (no activity). After 90 minutes, the iPad was at 97% battery, while the iPhone was at 80%. Different hardware platforms, but a good indication that it's ios5 on the iPhone.

With ios4, I usually pulled the iPhone from the charger at 06:30 on my way to work and put it back in around 16:00 or so, and it showed 70-80% battery remaining (many months experience with this). WIth ios5, I'm down to 20% and a low battery warning at 14:00. Once again, a definite problem with ios5 on the iPhone (3GS or 4 or 4s, apparently).

I've tried jiust about all the suggestions; eliminating most notifications, eliminating location services, resetting network, deleting and re-entering email settings, and even a full reset and restore, all to no avail. Interestingly, running the 'System Status' app shows the CPU utilization at 100% almost all the time on the iPhone, but only 5% or so on the iPad. This is somewhat confirmed by the fact that if I launch just about anything for the first time (app, system settings, etc), it takes 8-10 seonds for it to launch. Very indicative of a hung process somewhere in the OS chewing up all the resources.

On a related note, I stopped by the Apple store yesterday and mentioned this to a sales rep, and he confirmed that Apple is aware of this problem and working on it. Let's just hope they get it fixed before all the constant charging and discharging ruins the battery.

I'm certainly not impressed with my battery life either. I did everything that has been suggested, short of doing a DFU restore. With moderate use such as surfing the web and checking email (and keeping Bluetooth off), I'm down to less than 60% after coming home from work.  There must be something wrong.  After 34 pages of people reply to this thread, I would have hoped that Apple could have come up with a solution by now. 

I must be doing something wrong...     My 4S gets battery life only slightly less than my 4.  It has a screen that is slightly cooler/bluer than my 4.  Voice quality is outstanding, nothing shakes, rattles or rolls.  The only operational issue so far is that Siri seems to have trouble getting onto the servers, presumably due to volume. 

I did tweak my settings a little - I have never left BT on all the time on any other phone, and I don't leave it on with this one, either.  I restricted some of the system location services that seemed superfluous.  I also did a DFU install as a new phone and did not do a backup at all - I "rebuilt" the phone from scratch with virgin app installs.  I almost hate to say it, but I have no complaints at all. 

VZW 32GB Black iPhone 4S purchased on launch day

Got my iPhone 4S 64GB AT&T on intro day and have been experiencing many of the same things everyone else is here.  Luckily, I am always near a charger at home or work.  Really nervous for my next all day trip or vacation, as I know I am going to be screwed.  There is a battery case, but not wanting to have to do this.

I am about to try the restore from iCloud to see if that helps.

I do use an Exchange account and a few gmail accounts.

Fingers crossed that I am not wasting my time...

newwellj,

Do you use Exchange email accounts/push?  I'm thinking that might be the culprit on my 4S as I've tried everything else recommended in this thread and in numerous others. 

Something is causing my 4S to report usage numbers that are significantly higher than my actual usage and I suspect it might be Exchange account related.  I have since turned off push and set them to fetch manually and will see how that goes.

A full restore had fixed my battery. I restored as a new phone with a fresh download of IOS 5 on itunes. Im not going to touch any settings until a fix comes out. I know its something in the settings that messed it up.

Try a full restore and when setting up the phone turn off diagnostics, skip cloud setup, and I turned off location services.

The moment I change settings is when the drain begins.

Hi everybody, I have made some detailed posts on pages 7 and 8 I believe... I am fairly new at this forum so I haven't figured out all the tools but you may be able to search for these to read over them.

I MAY HAVE FOUND A MAJOR CULPRIT to the POOR BATTERY LIFE.

I have observed that being a student - and being mostly only at two different places everyday - my battery is much worse when I am away from home.

I think this may have to do with one setting under Wi-Fi Networks.

Can anybody corroborate that "ASK TO JOIN NETWORKS" is a major component of the issue of bad battery life?

Negative, have never used an Exchange account on any of the phones.  That is a comparability problem vs. those who do but is consistent between my 4 and 4S, and that may be where the/one of the software glitches that I assume are present in iOS5 is present.

Dont think so man. My phone was fine the first 2 days then it went downhill. I even went as far as to shut off EVERY single setting. I mean everything man.

Only thing that has helped me was a full restore. Im not touching any settings because after I changed things my batter started draining.

Griswaldo4g,

Do you have "Ask to join networks" turned on?  I have it off and my battery is also significantly worse when I am away from home.  I lost over 20% today while out shopping for 3 hours and checking email 1-2 times and reading/responding to a few texts.  My usage was in the 10-15 minute range tops and the phone was at 100% before I left the house.  I was also not in a low signal area.

Ill keep saying it, my phone was great- 2% standby loss the first 2 nights.(At normal factory settings with cloud enabled!). The only strange thing was the phone was at 1% for about 20 minutes of heavy use. Dropped some settings to increase usage drain and things went downhill from there. constant 30% drain overnight. not to mention massive usage drain.

after dropping ALL settings- (location services, cloud, wifi, itunes ping, push notifications, etc.etc.etc) things have not gotten any better. I dont care what idea you can come up with- (Wifi search,diagnoistics, compass calibration, auto time set, stock ticker,iAds ) NOTHING made it normal again.

My system status system log keeps showing "Unable to cancel system wake for 2011-10-21 09:20:12 -0400. IOPMCancelScheduledPowerEvent() returned 0xe00002c" Seems like something is not letting the phone sleep.

So im pretty sure its a software issue

Also there have been instances with my phone becoming warm while its in standby

I just did a full restore to new phone and its fixed.

I just did a full restore as well here, but battery life is in the gutter, I swear if you look at it long enough you see the percentage drop right in front of you within minutes.  This has to be software related since I updated aan iPhone 4 to iOS5 and battery levels are dropping much faster there also. iOS 5 needs major attention to the battery section somehow.

I just downloaded IOS5 through itunes today. I wonder if anything changed in the dl?

blah I should mention I havent changed any settings except battery percentage, I havent downloaded apps and havent set up my email lmao.

But my battery is kickin!!!

I turned off "Ask to Join Networks" and it seems to have helped quite a bit.

The explanation next to it when it is off says, "If no known networks are available, you will have to manually select a network."

The explanation next to it when it is on says, "If no known networks are available, you will be asked before joining a new network."

I think it is actively searching when "Ask to Join Networks" is on because it will actively ask you if you want to connect to nearby networks.

Now, of course many of the things other people have mentioned would definitely affect battery life, and if you look back at my posts you will see that I have tried those same things.

But, I have a secondary observation to share... I went out geocaching today with the Geocaching app (which uses location services including wifi) and my battery life dropped from 78% down to 51% in about 20 minutes.

The interesting thing is that, with all of the location services I use everyday, this is the one that seems to really affect battery life... I really do think the wifi component of this particular service (it uses wifi according to its description) may have a bigger impact on battery life than some of the other issues mentioned on this forum.