Q: iPhone 4s Battery Life?

well, I always turn on the airplane mode and close all the apps in the task bar when I go to sleep.

and the battery still drops 3 - 4% through 7 hours.

while my iphone 3g (3.5 years old) remains the same percentage of battery even with the wi-fi turned on through out the night. (I check the battery percentage via the battery doctor pro).

and recently my 3g got 10 hours of usage and 4 days of standby before the battery died while at the same time my 4s just got 5 hours of usage and 1 day and 5 hours of standby when its battery dropped to 3% with a very very light use.

SIGH

Re: iPhone 4s Battery Life?

prkgs982 - You have 2 choices to achieve what you want to do. Either you can find a post if you know the exact page, go to that page, click reply to it specifically, then click the "quote" button (little cloud with quotes) in the editor, which will copy the content of the post you are replying to. So if you had done that to your post on page 372, you would be quoting yourself and you can edit out parts if you want...

You can also just add a link like I'm doing here by going to the editor, clicking the link icon (blue A with chain), selecting the "All content" tab, then adding some criteria, like the person's handle. In this case I added "prkgs982" to the "who" item, and I searched for the term "off topic" as I remembered you were saying that in the post. I found the item, and you have the possibility of seeing an excerp to confirm it's the right post, then you simply click "insert" and voila. Good luck with your future post editing!

Seems like the way mine has been acting as of late isn't that different from yours. Glad you're happy with the outcome of the restoration process, and that it worked out for you.

Dr Emil wrote:

 

I found a fix to the issues...ALL OF THEM!  This is my first apple product in 20 years (because I hate everything about the way they work, but I just needed to get the iphone for undisclosed reasons).

1. My battery life was crap.
2. My compass didn't know which way was north (it gave me 5 different points for north in 6 minutes).
3. Cellular connection crapped out repeatedly.
4. I couldn't get to my music library or play any music.
5. Rebooting the phone made no difference, and only compounded the issues.
6. could not sync with anything.
7. could not connect to icloud.
8. videos would not play.
9. sound quality was scratchy on calls.
10. text would not go through in a timely fashion.

(there were a couple more).

 

So after preparing to return my phone, I began to think: apple products are set up to control you, instead of serve you, a lot like the company itself.  So I went through all of the menus to find that hidden loop that started everything, and accidentally found out that exiting a program still keeps it OPEN!

 

THE FIX:

1) from your home screen, double click the 'home' button.

2) the screen will move up and show a line of programs at the bottom.

3) hold your finger on any one of the icons of the programs at the bottom, until they all begin to wiggle.

4) you will notice that there is a red 'minus' sign on the upper left corner of every icon.  CLICK ON EVERY ONE OF THEM UNTIL THERE ARE NO MORE ICONS LEFT.  THIS IS THE ONLY WAY TO EXIT THE PROGRAMS/APPS.

5) when there are none (icons) left, press the 'home' button again.

 

TA-DA! All problems are solved! (until the next update creates new ones, of course!)

 

My phone is now speedy and properly functioning.

 

Enjoy your new phone.

 

Dr Emil

Doc, RE: My compass didn't know which way was north (it gave me 5 different points for north in 6 minutes).

This is an electronic compass which uses GPS/AGPS/Skyhook to determine where you are, apply latitude variation and gives you compass bearing. Its neither a magnetic compass nor a gyro compass. So, take the compass bearing with plus minus error of 10deg either side.

Even if you go out and buy a military grade magnetic compass, you still need to apply corrections to latitude variation and environment deviation. Sometimes the error could be as much as 30 deg. If you need to know the absolute North.... try gyro compass. But It cost much much more than $199 and it wont make phone calls or get you emails.

On your other issues, perhaps you would like to make an appointment with a genius a Apple Store, sit down with them for an 8 hour crash course. Maybe your problem will all go away at the end of it.

lolrz wrote:

 

well, I always turn on the airplane mode and close all the apps in the task bar when I go to sleep.

 

and the battery still drops 3 - 4% through 7 hours.

 

while my iphone 3g (3.5 years old) remains the same percentage of battery even with the wi-fi turned on through out the night. (I check the battery percentage via the battery doctor pro).

 

and recently my 3g got 10 hours of usage and 4 days of standby before the battery died while at the same time my 4s just got 5 hours of usage and 1 day and 5 hours of standby when its battery dropped to 3% with a very very light use.

 

SIGH

This is what i get from my 3GS with 5.0.1 OTA delta update,... sitting in the drawer with SIM card in it. 

This is my 4S with 5.0.1 full update via iTunes, restore, reset and everything.... difference is, im using my 4S the whole day with bluetooth on.

I think both phones battery life are acceptable. 3GS' batt life certainly improved after 5.0.1. But 4S' got worse, but not ridiculously bad. Still last a whole day.

I don't know if this will help everyone, and I did not read all of the post. However doing a Reset Network Settings, has seem to repair my issue. General->Reset->Reset Network Settings, then hard reset on phone.  Hope this helps.

Peace and blessings,

Azeke

Apple is sending me a replacement phone.  What a fiasco at first!  Because I ordered the phone online, I couldn't return it to an apple store.  That policy is seriously flawed.  When someone orders things from best buy online, you can return to the store.  Not so with apple's iPhones.  Ugh.  But to make a long story short, I went home and called the 1-800 number and they could not have been more helpful.  I will not be without a phone thank god because they offered a return exchange where they send me the new phone and only after I have my stuff transferred to the new phone do I send my old one back.

I'm hoping my battery issues will be nonexistent on the new phone.  Of course there are no guarantees, but I'm glad apple accommodated me.

My phone had almost drained completely by one o'clock today and even the apple rep at the store noticed it dropped three percent within just a few minutes of standing there doing nothing on the phone!  Crazy.

Wish me luck!

iphone 3g 3.1.3 no sim card airplane mode with wi-fi turned on:

iphone 4s ios 5.0.1 with 3g on wi-fi off location service on:

the reason why i still keep my 3g is that I can use it to read books continously for 11 hours.

but with 4s? huh..when I open up good reader and the phone's battery just drain at 1%/3~4 mins.

big SIGH.

Robin-Berlin-Germany wrote:

 

Apple is reportedly working on two updates to the iOS firmware.  iOS 5.0.2 which will hopefully provide a resolution to battery issues and iOS 5.1 which will bring new features to Siri, reports Macerkopf.

iOS 5.0.2 coming very soon, solving the battery bugs. Should arrive before the end of next week. Apple is working hard on the update. In addition Apple is working on the first big iOS 5 Update (iOS 5.1), bringing some siri-extensions. Also the Siri hardware-control is in work "take a picture", "make a video", "switch on/off WiFi", "switch on/off BT" and more.

The new 5.1 update is also expected to bring Maps integration with Siri to additional countries.  We'll bring you more information on these updates as it becomes available.

 

 

 

BUT WITHOUT THE MISSING 3G/UMTS SWITCH the Battery Drain will go on! I guess

You have a switch to turn off cellular data ... no internet, no push notification, no emails... but you will still be able to make calls and send/recv SMS. You should save a lot of batt by turning cell data off.

I came from having the iphone 4 and yes the battery is horrible on the 4s. I have tried all the suggestions of turning things off and of course non worked. A reset and draining to zero didn't do it either. ios5.1 well I don't see a change after that either.

fiman wrote:

 

Hey folks.

 

Already made a post in a similar thread, but I figured I'd just copy and paste that one in here, as well, as most of the people on that thread, and a whole lot more, are probably more active here.

 

Hope all of your phones are making some progress at the very least, as we await some remedy to all of this down the line, in hopes of it getting resolved. I hadn't turned to any discussion boards, seeking things out as this is my very first iPhone, so I don't have a great sense of understanding about the operability of iphones, much less the functional aspects of its battery life.

 

I figured I'd throw my two cents in to the ever-expanding sea of the comparing of notes. All I've done, ever since I got my 4S is a complete battery recalibration (starting from a 100% charge only to run it all the way down to a brick and then recharging it up to 100%) as well as a resetting of settings because there was a glitch in iOS 5 with push notifications not working with iCloud, which didin't make thinks any better until the update rolled around. Other than that, I've got all kinds of stuff turned on on my phone, and looking at my stats ever since my last charge this is was it has logged down as of now, at 72%:

 

Usage: 2h 10 min

Standby: 18h 40 min

 

Now, should it stand at way more than 72%? As noted earlier, I have no experience of owning a portable iDevice, so I wouldn't know as to whther or not this performance seems ideal or not. For the sake of validation, I'd appreciate it if anyone, who thinks they have a healthy device, would give their input toward these stats.

 

Appreciate your comments

 

Edit: As it has been a few hours since that post (14:39 according to the post), I've had it locked in the hours leading up to now, and it now stands at the following at a percentage of 69%.

 

Usage: 2h, 22 min

Standby: 21h, 50 min

 

 

 

fiman,

looks fairly normal in my opinion.  enjoy your iPhone!

My battery drains at about 1 percent per minute while I'm on a call.  Even after I've done the 5.0.1 upgrade.  This is very frustrating, I've tried everything...closing aps, shutting the screen when done with a call or email or message, etc.  Nothing helps.  Apple...please debug this!!!

lolrz wrote:

 

well, I always turn on the airplane mode and close all the apps in the task bar when I go to sleep.

 

and the battery still drops 3 - 4% through 7 hours.

 

That seems OK to me. A 4% drop over 7 hours with most things "off" i.e. on "standby" would mean expected full drain after 7 * (100/4) = 175 hours. Which is pretty close to the figure of 200 hours I've seen mentioned for standby life.

Should I be expecting more? Actually, I suppose it depends how "standby" is defined.

I think I'm on to something.  I've had a 4s since the first day they came out, and I've had all kinds of heartache over this battery issue.  I've read about 25% of the posts on this forum, so I've seen the patterns of complaints and the common fixes.

Back on page 343 of this forum, I spoke of a theory of a dual antenna issue on the iPhone 4s.  While some agreed with some of my findings, the biggest argument against this was that the problems also happened on other iOS devices.  So, I think I now have a revised theory, and I strongly believe in it based on patterns I've seen.  The issue has something to do with how iOS 5 handles networking, both wifi and 3G.  Whenever my phone is able to access the network, I can experience issues.  But the ephiphany for me today was a pattern over the past 2 days of my usage, combined with other things I had been seeing and spoke of on page 343. I haven't charged my phone in 2 days.  Yesterday, I attended meetings all day in a conference room in one building and lost 32% of my battery life over the course of the entire day, with light actual usage and mostly standby drain.  My standby drain tends to be pretty decent after a few full cycle discharges and charge back up and following lots of tips that people have put forward like resetting networking settings, turning certain features off, etc.  But, my phone still drains like crazy on phone calls and most usage of apps.  Then, today, my meetings moved to a different building and different conference room where I had a much weaker cell signal.  The signal is there, but just weak.  After only 4 hours of meetings, i had lost a staggering 48% of battery life, and I never once used the device!  This was all standby drain.  Then, when I started using the device, I was experiencing the infamous 1% loss every 2 minutes situation.

What this tells me is that iOS 5 is somehow managing networking very inefficiently.  People talk of many things that cause drain, but they are always related to network or GPS access in one way or another.  I believe that if you don't have a 4 or 5 bar type of signal or very strong signal on wifi, you are at high risk to experience battery drain.  And, since most of us don't experience these ideal conditions, we are at risk.  The risk is obviously also related to your device's configuration.  Devices configured in certain ways or that run certain apps are experiencing severe drain, and the problem apps or services are those that hit the network.  This makes me really wonder... Do I have apps or notification services that I can't tell are running that are trying to go get updates from the network?  I shutdown all my apps earlier today, I don't run push email, and I have most synching type things disabled, but I still saw the drain.  Maybe it was notification center or some other app that was running in a background process but not visible in the running apps list.  When apps try hard to get to the network, and they can't, the battery drains excessively fast.  I notice this in active usage, but it would stand to reason in standby as well.  Maybe iOS 5 also tries to work harder when trying to get an update from the network, whereas perhaps there were fewer tries being performed within a time interval or quicker attempt by the device to give up when the signal was less than ideal under iOS 4. Maybe iOS 5 tries to boost antenna signal more actively than iOS 4 did... 

I don't have any solutions other than those already recommended, but I do have these observations, and I just wanted to share what I'm noticing as I experience it.

Phone:  iPhone 4S 64GB
Provider:  Sprint
Homebase:  Raleigh, NC

Has anyone had any luck talking to Apple support employees? I don't know if this is something they plan to fix or if they're replacing phones...in which case, I need a new one. This is ridiculous. I can sit here and watch the battery drain in front of my face with zero apps running in the background. I have ONE email account on the phone, 10 apps, location services off, all other settings set to help the battery life, and nothing helps. This is my first iPhone ever...and I regret the switch.