Q: iPhone 4s Battery Life?

Have the same problem here in sydney australia, my battery life is terrible since the upgrade and now don't go anywhere without my charger. 

It seems my battery issue is caused by the cellular data location service.  My battery was dropping at an alarming rate, and someone here posted about the cellular data and antenna searching for a signal.  Well, I can already tell after a short time that my battery is now back to normal losing 1% for a half hour of checking email about six or seven times.   Antenna Gate lives on!!! 

I got my 4S two days ago and it seems like the battery is fine for me.  When I took it out of the box it had around 60% battery left and I began using it to drain it.  I got it to 2% and that was after playing games, personalizing the settings, and downloading apps.  The whole process was approximately from 2PM to 1AM.  So I felt good about the battery from there.  I plugged it to the wall at 2% and left it to charge.  Woke up in the morning and while the battery indicator showed that it was fully charged, the percentage showed 95%.  I was a bit worried, so I took it off the wall and plugged it to my computer so I can start syncing my files.  From the computer, it continued to charge and got to 100%.  And from the 100% charge, I'm currently looking at 71% battery, 21 hours 22 minutes of standby and 1 hour 25 minutes of usage. 

My settings are: around 40% brightness and no auto-brightness.  Turned off the auto time zone and diagnostic to don't send.  I have all the notifications from Facebook, Twitter, AIM, Email turned on... I guess I was lucky to not be a victim of the battery issue.  And after reading that people had even worse battery life after updating to 5.0.1, I am holding off on that update as the saying goes, "if it ain't broke, don't fix!"

Hi!

I bought few days an Iphone 4S. Update 5.0.1. I charged battery 100%.....12 hour later: 20% . I didn't use too much.

And I see one thing:

Go to Settings ->  General -> usage.

I see this:

LOCK THE PHONE 10 MINUTES AND I SEE THIS:

I don't use the phone because its LOCKED!!!!! What "Használat"(USAGE) 7Minute???????

This thing fast low my battery? This is bug more iphone 4s?

since you battery seems ok, very similar to the iphone4 performance i guess, can you tell us, how many minutes takes in your phone to drop 1% using 3g browsing?

this is a good way to compare to mine

thanks

I replied somehwere around page 20.  I had my first iPhone 4S/64GB/ATT/Black swapped for a 2nd one.  Tried everything mentioned.  5.0.1 fixes the standby for me, so if I am not using my phone, it will last a long time, but as soon as I start using, it drains pretty quickly.  Based on specs, it should drain 7.2% per hour for heavy 3G browser usage - would love to have that.

If Apple wanted to solve this issue, they should:

Create an app that we can download that monitors our phones and battery consumption and share the info with Apple.  I have seen reports of a file that Apple sends to users and users send the results back to apple.  How about making it an App, opening it up to everyone experiencing issues and get some real data on what is going on.  To minimize battery usage, just send the results every 12 hours.  I am sure this kind of data would be way more useful to getting to the issue then this thread. 

Dear Apple,

I woke up with 100% battery life and right now i have 89% battery life.  The movement i took my phone off the charger, i lost 1%.  is this normal?  Under usage i have 53 minutes of standby time, and 20 mins of usage.  And those 20 mins have been listening to music and sent three text messages. 

When i called the apple support line Sunday i was told the problem had been fix with the 5.0.1 updated.  I was also told to turn off Bluetooth and to set my email to automatically updated manually or hourly, i have my set hourly now. 

I think there is something wrong, even my Android, surprisingly, had better battery life then I all new and improved IPhone.

I don’t think these tech specs are correct. (see below),  since the start of writing this letter, had interruptions at work, my batterylife is at 85%.  At this rate, I will have an drained battery by 5 or 6pm. Which is not what you advertise. Please help us.

**Talk time: Up to 8 hours on 3G, up to 14 hours on 2G (GSM) - Lie*****

***Standby time: Up to 200 hours - Lie*****

**-Internet use: Up to 6 hours on 3G, up to 9 hours on Wi-Fi - Lie*****

***Video playback: Up to 10 hours - Lie******

***Audio playback: Up to 40 hours -Lie*****

My observations I've included my 4S in 6 hours and 30 minutes in the morning, it was fully charged. With an average use and disable geolocation, time zone and another, by 10 o'clock in the evening the phone was completely empty. I turned off the"Cellular Data Network"  with him disconnected and 3G.... In the end, with an average use, calls, messages, Internet browsing within 1.5 hours video (at night the phone was switched off completely):

I Iphone 4 was fine after the first software upgrade but now after the upgrade that apparently fixed the battery problem, my phone losses battery like crazy. Even if my phone is locked and I don't touch it for a while, the battery will still go down significantly.

katelyn68 wrote:

 

I Iphone 4 was fine after the first software upgrade but now after the upgrade that apparently fixed the battery problem, my phone losses battery like crazy. Even if my phone is locked and I don't touch it for a while, the battery will still go down significantly.

I have personally seen the problem and corrected it on numerous models now including the 4S, 4, 3GS and iPad 2s.  Corrupt system level settings created by an iOS 5 bug in the original release that caused battery recalibration issues, etc.  Just installing the update does not fix the issue in most cases (sometime it initially can be worse).  You need to clear out those settings and recalibate the battery.  For those still having the "standby battery drain" issue follow the procedure below in order.  It does fix the problem in most cases.

Go through these steps to address the battery after updating to iOS 5.0.1:

1. Reset all settings (settings app-> general-> reset)

2. Go through initial setup steps (lang, wifi, siri, enable location, etc) and choose setup as new phone (don't worry your apps, data, contacts, mail will still be there). At this point, Do NOT restore from iCloud or iTunes (It can copy back corrupt settings)

3. Turn off system location services timezone and iAd

4. Fully discharge battery  (tilll it shuts off with the spinning wheel)

5. Fully recharge battery (overnight if possible)

In my experience this improves the Standby battery drain issue significantly in most cases.  It reduces drain from 2-4% or more per hr to 0.5% or less. It has worked for many, many users now. If it does not work after a few try's you may have a real battery or hardware issue and should contact Apple.  Good Luck!

More details on my thread here if needed:https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3484755

I am seeing some interesting changes.  As part of my testing, I have been fully charing my 4S to 100% and see how much it will drop during the night (7 to 9 hours).  Here is a brief history of my overnight stand by:

• On OS5 with everything turned on about 3% per hour
• With mutliple settings turned off  - about 1% per hour
• After 5.0.1 install - about 2% - 3% per hour
• No improvement after resets, restore, battery drain to zero
• 3 days ago did one more restore, reset and battery drain and got  about 1% per hour
• 2 nights ago did another full battery drain and had about .5% per hour
• Last night did another full battery drain and had 99% after 8 hour standy-by

However, when I pressed the home button to light up the front screen just to look at the battery percentage, I dropped 1% within the first 15 second and another % within 10 to 15 minutes.  Also, even with bettery standby time, my phone will eat up the battery when using it for 3G email, web, etc. but this could be within 75% to 80% of the spec.  I haven't monitored my usage that closely.  I also will lose 5% per hour in standby when I am driving which I have stated in multiple posts.

I really can't conclude anything from any of this but wanted to share my results.  However, I am starting to believe that the battery indicator may not be very accurate which will contribute to the problem and confusion.

It appears that my phone battery life has decreased after the newest 5.0.1 upgrade.  It definitely was losing battery quickly before but now it's even worse.  I will try a couple of the mentioned fixes but we will see.

Just thought I would throw in my 2 cents.

davidch wrote:

 

melissa162 wrote:

 

I disagree. This is my first iPhone.  I did not migrate from another device. At this moment, since last full charge, my usage is 40  minutes and my standby is 1 hour 12  minutes.  My battery is at 83%. I can't get through a morning with this phone.

It does not necessarily matter if you upraded or not. Corrupt system level settings created by an iOS 5 bug in the original release that caused battery recalibration issues, etc.  Just installing the update does not fix the issue in most cases.  You need to clear out those settings and recalibate the battery.  Follow the procedure below in order.  It does fix the problem in most cases.

 

 

Go through these steps to address the battery after updating to iOS 5.0.1:

 

1. Reset all settings (settings app-> general-> reset)

 

2. Go through initial setup steps (lang, wifi, siri, enable location, etc) and choose setup as new phone (don't worry your apps, data, contacts, mail will still be there). Do NOT restore from iCloud or iTunes (It can copy back corrupt settings)

 

3. Turn off system location services timezone and iAd

 

4. Fully discharge battery  (tilll it shuts off with the spinning wheel)

 

5. Fully recharge battery (overnight if possible)

 

In my experience this improves the Standby battery drain issue significantly in most cases.  It reduces drain from 2-4% or more per hr to 0.5% or less. It has worked for many, many users now. If it does not work after a few try's you may have a real battery or hardware issue and should contact Apple.  Good Luck!

 

More details on my thread here if needed: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3484755?start=0&tstart=0

This seems to have fixed my 4S battery standby life.  I would love to know what all this resets.  I have always wanted a way to reset everything but my 3rd party app data(as that never seems to cause issues).  Reset All Settings seems to be darn close.  Thanks for the tip.

Now, I still think there is room for improvement on actual usage battery life.  Hopefully apple with resolve some of that with updates down the road.

Unplugged my phone at 7:30 AM after charging 100%

Talked on the phone this morning for about 30 minutes

Checked email

Sent about 20 text messages

exactly 3 hours later, the charge is at 95%.  I think it's pretty good for what I used it for.  Again, I have a lot of the notifications turned off, but still have email, siri, facebook, messages, calendar, reminders, messanger, and phone turned on.

No one really has replied to any of the things that I posted here about, but I was just trying to find out what people think as acceptable discharge.  In my opinion, 4S is working without any issues even after the 5.0.1 udpate.

I've had an iPhone 4s since last Friday. I have kept it at stock iOS 5.0

Here are the results of battery performance:

After the 2nd charge cycle with all services turned on except bluetooth (only used it in the car for 20-30 minutes) and also visiting places with very poor cell signal:

After the 3rd charge cycle with cellular data, wi-fi, location services and bluetooth turned off for 5-6 hours in a place with poor cell signal:

I can live with that performance for now, but it's not acceptable methinks. I hope there's a proper fix out soon.

Also, I have noticed that in places with poor signal there's a significant battery drainage whilst the phone is constantly switching between antennae and I very often get the "No Service" indication.