Q: iPhone 4s Battery Life?

Thanks for saying what I was thinking!  Why does everyone think they are Apple technicans with all the answers? 

We need to contact the heck out of Apple and get their attention!  These posts are more of a place for us to get our frustrations out!

Again, glad you wrote what you did.

I have just installed the update, but not before charging my phone to 100%. Now one and a half hours on and having made one 10 min phone call and another 2 min call my battery is down to 83%. If it keeps dropping this dramatically then the phone will only have enough power for just over 6 hours of next to no use. I intent to call apple to state my complaint but having tried once so far and getting an automated voice tell me that i would have to wait for 10 minutes plus to speak to someone, i decided against it for the time being. During the time from purchase to update i have charged fully and drained fully everyday so that i could be sure that the battery itself was not damaged. I just hope Apple take the time to read these threads and release "updates" that do just that, not 'downgrade' the quality and functionality like it has on my device. 

When I received my iPhone 4s, the battery life was way less than what it should have been. During the first week I tried all sorts of tweaks, but nothing seemed to help. I was also very puzzled by the Standby and Usage stats (In Settings->General). Regardless of the time since last fall charge, the Standby and Usage figures were identical - and this made absolutely no sense.

Towards the end of the first week (actually on the 10th aniversary of the release of the original iPod - something I found quite ironic), I encountered some further anomalous behaviour. I was listening to music, and after playing a song for about 1 minute, the Music app would suddenly stop - as if I had pressed pause - and I would have to press play again. This happened with amazing reglarity, and I looked this up on https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3424116?start=0&tstart=0 - where other users were apparently experiencing the same issue. I decided to follow the suggestion of one of the posters, and I re-synced my music.

I was amazed at the following result:

1) Music played perfectly again - without stopping randomly

2) Battery life doubled

3) Interestingly, the Standby and Usage stats now relect different figures. The Standby figure reflects the time since last charge, whereas the Usage figure now reflects a number somewhere between 1 and 3.5 hours - which is typically the correct cumulative time for my calls, browsing, music, email etc.

I can only conclude that my phone (which was originally set up from a restore of my iPhone 4) was consuming power because there was some process that was not terminating as it should have (in fact never terminating). This was also reflecting as a Usage stat that equalled the Standby stat.

It is not possible for me to replicate this scenario, but as a software engineer with 25 years experience, my guess is that iOS 5 is prone to get itself into a state where processes do not terminate as they should - resulting in abnormal power consumption.

Two other points:

1) I have 5 iOS 5 devices - three of them presented with the music stopping problem

2) iOS 5.0.1 has improved battery life on my iPhone 4S - but I would expect the update to be of little benefit to those users with rogue processes sucking battery life.

Hotphil wrote:

 

... I didn't realise that the Standby display could get into double-digits.

It definitely can be good.  Here's my 4S at 64 hours standby with 25% left, on iOS 5.0, with light usage.

FWIW here are my settings (32GB black 4S).  Most features are "ON":

Notifications - all on (not only in the Notification Center, but also for badges, lock screen, etc. including stock market and weather)

Location Services - On are camera, compass, find my friends, maps, siri, find my iphone.  System services - all on except Time Zone and Traffic

iCloud - on for contacts, calendar, reminders, photostream, find my iphone.  Off for bookmarks, notes, documents and data

Mail - two accounts:  Exchange Server for mail with push.  A POP account set to fetch-manual and advanced-manual

Bluetooth off

iTunes WiFi sync - on

Siri raise to speak - off

Settings > General > About > Diagnostics and Usage - Don't Send

The phone was activated at the AT&T store where I bought it, and then I added apps and music via iTunes.  That is, I did not "Restore" it from a backup, if I remember right.  I think I set it up as a "new phone."

I dont think many of ours phones will have the battery-capasity to call apples service. 10 minutes wait and "kaboong" there was my phone emty for battery!

Thats ironi!

Everyone should write feedback to Apple about bringing back the 3G on/off switch:

http://www.apple.com/feedback/iphone.html

If you're with AT&T, write the facts, that AT&T's 3G blows and that calls drop and your battery life is HORRIBLE with 3G and you can live with switching it on and off to use Siri so that you get beter battery life and can make/keep calls.

PLEASE READ THIS:

As most of users here, i tried do to many settings

since X or Y said that works for me.

Never really succesfull.

For me the main problem is the usage time is growing

while the phone is doing nothing. 3 to 5 % lost every

hour. I find that unacceptable and i almost decided

to sent back my IP4S to my internet provider since

they sold me the phone.

Then i decided as very last test tu activate and try to

use the micro SIM card they sent to me 3 days ago.

I talk to them , asking if i really need to activate and use

the new SIM since mine is coming from my IP4 already

from same providir ( SFR in France).

They told me forgot the new card  yours is still ok

no need to activate it.

BUT, when my new activated SIM was put in my IP4S

You know what ?

For the fist time in 2 weeks, i can see my phone

working normaly, i mean still 100% after 1 hour standby

and usage time 2 minutes ! i never seen that before.

3G and wifi are both Set to ON and i keept some

adjustment we discuss before but now, using the phone 2

or 3 times per hours for checking mails and news,

the battery loose only 2 to 3 % for 1 hour.

If the situation remains like this, i stop to complain.

Here's my experience. Got ip4s, AT&T 64GB. Did restore from icloud. Everything turned on except iads and time zone. 2 email accounts imap fetch on 1 push on the other.

First 2 days let phone goto 0% got 17 hours standby 6:15 usage. Second day 16 hours standby 5:35 usage. This seemed to be perhaps the same or a little better than ip4.

Installed ios 5.01 and then turned on the time zones. Battery usage went to about 20% after 9 hours. Recharged to 100% and turned off the time zones. Day one 29% battery, 15:45 standby, and 4:53 usage. Second day 9% battery, standby 1day 2hrs, usage 5:56.

So it looks like the time zone is still a problem for me but, I can live without it.

I would say now the 4s battery is probably a bit better than the ip4

Thanks for saying what I was thinking!  Why does everyone think they are Apple technicans with all the answers? 

 

We need to contact the heck out of Apple and get their attention!  These posts are more of a place for us to get our frustrations out!

 

Again, glad you wrote what you did.

I don't think most people "think they're Apple technicians", as you condescendingly put it. However, most people are seriously ****ed off with the ***-poor battery life they are getting, and Apple's rubbish response to the situation. As such, they are trying whatever they can to get halfway decent (or useable) battery life while waiting for a fix that actually works. If you don't like what's being said here, why come back at all ...?

This is my current status. Does anyone know if this is good?

Pammy,

I don't think people are trying to be apple technicians, I think they are just sharing what worked for then and trying to help. That being said I think there are multiple reasons people are having issues, there are too many variables that could cause battery issues, some have figured out what there problems were others haven't. So I don't think it's one issue or magical setting that's causing all these issues. There should be one major list made at the beginning of this post that states all things that have been tried and what has worked for people. That way someone can take this information and try the suggestions if they want to, or leave it and go see a technician at an apple store.

are you being funny? or serious?  Not to be rude, but if you actually read the posts you will know, so you can stop rubbing it in the faces of the people who don't have good battery life. 

Mine says 14 hours of Standby and 10 hours of usage since last full charge.  The battery was completely dead after this.  The problem is, I was asleep for 8 of those 14 hours.  What the heck is making the usage go up so high when I am sleeping? 

Okay..so..I've had my iPhone 4s for about a month now with no real issues at all. I have been quite impressed with the battery life, although I did notice that the battery seemed to drain faster some days than other days, with about the same amount of usage. My phone usually has about 30% battery left with about 14 hours of standby time and about 6-8 hours of usage. I don't think I have ever HAD to charge my phone in the middle of the day. Except for when I used Hotspot and I only charged it while I used the Hotspot because I know from experience with Android phones that the battery dies quickly.

I do have the Locations turned off..the wifi turned off..bluetooth turned off..and almost all notifications turned off except for messages, emails, etc. I also have the screen brightness turned down..I also noticed that if you leave the BATTERY PERCENTAGE on, my battery seems to die more quickly. However, I am used to having to do all the same things with my previous phones...Droid Charge, Droid Bionic..I did not have to do these things with the Samsung Galaxy S2 however.

As I was doing my update to 5.0.1, I was reading these posts..now I am very concerned that I am going to get worse battery life than I was..I was actually very pleased with my battery life, but now I am worrying that the new update is going to upset me..LOL..kind of wish I hadn't done the update..hope I didn't just make a bunch of issues that I didn't previously have. =(

I'll letcha know how it goes I guess=/

Does it say "iPhone has been plugged in since the last full charge"?