Q: iPhone 4s Battery Life?

So my battery life is still horrible! I'm sad

Although 5.0.1 seemed to improve standby time. So I'm fairly sure that if I dont do ANYTHING on my iPhone and just make or receive the occasional phone call I can get 48+hrs.

HOWEVER if I want to do something like... I dunno...  ANYTHING ELSE... especially anything requiring downloading data over 3G, my battery can drain faster than 1% per minute!!!!!

My worst experience was today whilst using TuneIn Radio on 3G network. 15 minutes of streaming cost me 18% of my battery life!!

What is going on? Why isn't this thread a thousand pages long?

Just to add for the Germans... I have an iPhone 4s 32gb starting with Serial C39G

APPLE, I guess its time for a clearly statement and any options for us customers. Exchange, or refunds.!

Mine is also horrible. Worse than my 3GS on the same 5.0.1 software! I get maximum 5 hours on a charge. Called apple and they asked me to re-initialize the phone and set it up as a "new phone". I did this and no difference. Clearly something is VERY wrong and they need to address this ASAP.

You are not the only person having this problem,  I  am a contractor and used a Black Berry for years and had no problem with my battery .. I finally took the plung to get an Iphone and my battery died 1/2 way through my day.  I also did the upgrade and it did nothing.  I know when the GPS is off it does do better but why produce a phone with all these features if you cant use them .  As a stock holder in Apple this doesnt make me happy . I hope this is not a sign of whats to come without Steve.

My first day using the OS 5.0.1.  I have never seen my iPhone battery going down so quickly (having used 3GS and 4 in the past).  All I want is the old verion back!!! Or give Apple back the iPhone.  This is so not COOL!!!

Please everyone who is experiencing a problem, PLEASE, PLEASE make the effort to leave a post. WE HAVE to let Apple know that this is not just a small bunch of malcontents and whingers. This is a real problem, every one one of my friends with an iPhone 4s have experienced a problem with their battery life, this problem needs to be properly addressed.

5.0.1 did jack-****! Some even think it made the problem worse!

WE NEED A SOLUTION!!

After the update to iOS 5.0.1 my battery life increased to a standby-time of nearly 80 to 90 hours. According to my iPhone configuration (all location services services on, time zone under date & time deactivated, Siri activated, mail every 60 minutes) it is absolutely accetable for me now.

Today I am back in my office, where I do not have a good reception of the German Vodafone 3G network. Therefore my iPhone 4S is changing often from 3G to EDGE (E) or 2G (O) mode and therefore the percentage of the battery decreases faster than at home, where I have a perfect signal of 3G.

Yesterday @ home starting with 100%:

Standby 20 hours

Use 1 hour 30 minutes

Battery life at 84%

Today @ work starting with 100%:

Standby 4 hours 39 Minutes

Use 1 hour 27

Battery life at 79%

Probably the problems are caused by the new chip for the mobile phone services. That means, if the reception of 3G is low and the iPhone changes often to EDGE/2G, the iPhone needs definitely more power.

If I deactivate the mobile data mode (3G) the battery life of my phone will not increase. Probably caused by any services (e. g. all apps with activated notification service?) who are searching for a mobile service connection as during standby the W-Lan is going to sleep?

Sorry for my bad english! :-) Message was edited by: MetroStar1974

OK, so add me to the list ...

had battery drain with my 4S from day 1 - first with recovery from iCloud, then set up as new phone. I think I tried all workarounds listed here and elsewhere: soft reset, hard reset, reset settings only, switching off everything but the core functionality - nothing works. I constantly get about 15 - 20 hours of standby and > 10 hours of phantom usage - even if I leave the phone on my desk for the whole day and don't even touch it.

Hardware or software problem? My 2 cents are: it's mainly a software problem. My old 3GS showed similar problems when updated to iOS 5, but not as dramatic as on the 4S.

Apple, please communicate and show us that you are working on a solution for this mess. If I can help to debug by any means, just contact me.

Even after the 5.0.1 update battery life is terrible. My 3Gs had a better battery life. I feel ripped off by Apple's false advertising.

Sweden is also not without problems...

My iPhone 4 has the exact same problem.

Before 5.0.1 I had no problem what-so-ever with batterytime, but after the "upgrade" my phone doesn´t last even 4 hours! No aps, no wifi, just 10mins call and 4hour standby after a full nights loading.

Have tried hard reboot and turning everything off. Only thing I did find was that putting it in flight-mood seemed to work somewhat to reduce the rapid batterytime loss, but what meaning is it to have a PHONE when you are not being able to use it?!

Please APPLE - let us who have the problem be able to switch back to IOS 5 atleast!! It really is a problem for us who need a mobilephone for work and have to have it plugged in so it won´t die on us.

It also gets warm on the right side (when looking at the screen), and takes longer time to load.

I am having exactly the same problems. Got a new O2 Germany sim for the iPhone 4s and had battery problems due to phantom usage from day one, iOS 5.0.1 changed nothing...

Also tried everything from hard to soft reset to recovery to trying to switch of different settings, but nothing worked. Yesterday evening I did a recovery from iTunes, charged the iPhone to 100%, unplugged it and put it on standby the whole night. This morning after about eight hours the battery was down to 60% and I had more than 6 hours of phantom usage...

The only thing that has worked for me is to put the phone into flight mode, then I only loose 1-2% per night. But this is of course not really a viable option...

I, too, would be willing to help Apple in finding a solution if I can do so in any way, but please make my iPhone work as it is supposed to...

Hi timothy27,

I really think you may want to review the solutions flagged on the discussion post which work. (They are there.)

The thread is no longer being paid attention to since believe it or not there are users who joined only recently and may not be providing accurate information. Some do not have devices. If you try the solutions in the thread it will work.

I think that this time, everyone has moved on (The Press) with their devices performing properly. For other users consider visiting an Apple site based on your language and local. http://store.apple.com/Catalog/US/Images/intlstoreroutingpage.html If you have a valid device they can help you in your native tongue.

So again, try the following.

If you continue to have iPhone Battery Problems after iOS 5.0.1 update please perform the following:

1. First make sure that you backup you device in iTunes with Encryption on.
2. Turn off any un-necessary network services such as WiFi and Blue Tooth.
3. Make sure that you are in fact running iOS 5.0.1 by checking in General>About. It should read 5.0.1 (XXX)
4. Perform a "Hard Reset" on the device.
5. Do a reset by selecting Selecting Settings>General>Reset.
6. Setup as a new phone, all your email and APPS will still be there.
7. Use the device and let the battery drain down, under 10%.
8. Do a full recharge using the power adaptor. (Make sure all the connections are secure.)

If the problem persist only after doing all the steps above:

1. Backup and Encrypt your device in iTunes.
2. Do a factory reset on the device.
3. Perform the Update on the Device.
4. Perform a Restore of the Backup.

Users of first generation iPads have extensive improvement by do the following:

1. Selecting Settings>General>Reset.

** Depending on the device and applications installed your results will vary. Performing all of steps may not be necessary for every user. If however you hit a road block performing all the steps has proven to work.

Best of Luck.

My experience so far with the 4s (5.01).

Currently I have the phone setup in the following way:

1) All notifications turned off

2) 2 email accounts both setup to pull manually

3) i-message and facetime active

4) icloud turned on with notes, documents and data, and find my iphone active (all others turned off)

5) Phone setup as new using restore in itunes (5.01).

6) wifi turned off

7) location services turned off

8) All background apps turned off

This is my second iphone 4s, the first one went back due to an issue with the screen coating.

Anyway, if the phone is charged up to 100%, then left overnight in the state above unplugged, I will find that in 8.5hrs  the phone has lost around 20 percent of its charge. What is strange is that the usage is always atleast 60% of the standby time, i.e 8.5 hrs standby and 6 hrs usage.

My previous iphone 4s on 5.0.0 was exactly the same. I have tried doing exactly the same test as above but turned off "all data". In 8.5 hrs with only a cellular signal I still observed a 10 percent reduction in charge (I have full 5 bars of signal in my location).

On average using the above settings and only light use (with 8.5 hrs of time during my sleep) I get around 30 hrs standby, with 60% of this value in usage.

Clealry there is an issue. Its better than my previos Desire HD but know where near the 200 hrs standby advertised by apple.

I would like to know what settings apple uses to determine the cellular standby time of the iphone 4s?

we are same problem. just terrible:( Apple please do something!!!!!!!!!

Hi,

I have recently bought an iPhone 4S in Spain, upgrading from an iPhone 4. It doesn't seem that my new handset has the severe battery drain problems that many are reporting.

I have, however, noticed that the iPhone 4S battery seems to drain significantly quicker than the iPhone 4 when being used. For example, surfing on Safari or with a web app, I can see how the battery goes down quite quickly, around at 1% every 2-3 minutes. This seems to be much higher than with my previous iPhone 4.

Experimenting with some settings, it seems for me that the problem may be with 3G connection. When I disable mobile data and surf on Wifi, the drain under use is significantly lower.

Could this be related to the new mobile chipset used in the iPhone 4S? I hope its firmware related, but if there is some hardware issue with the new chipset or antenna design its going to be difficult to fix.

Just my 2 cents.