Q: iPhone 4s Battery Life?

I got it now. I can see it activating all the time. I will follow your advice and try to reboot my phone. My phone right now is constandly losing about 1% /hr standby. If I use it, it will depend and lose more. I will test it again.
Thanks,

I hate to be the bringer of bad news, and tbh i am not happy with my battery life either, but i really dont think there is going to be any more fixes on this battery issue from apple. They have been working on and testing ios5 and the 4S for over a year. To think they have missed something fundemental is unlikely to say the least. As we saw with the Iphone 4 antenna, we all hoped for a software fix, what happened, nothing came... but the phone still sold record numbers. my guess is nothing more to come, this is as good as it gets, i hope i am wrong !

i lost >5% every hour with nothing go on under ios 5.0.1, it's shorter than my Landline phones!!

Terrible Battery

To add to my previous message

Guys, I've already posted my problems about battery life with the new 4S. I've been a loyal apple customer for the past 5 years and owned almost every single apple product. When I called suppor yesterday, they were so rude and asked me to just go and get a replacement. They also sent me an email with iOS diagnostics. When I run that, I get a "Ticket Number not found" error. Such is the quality of Apple now.

Couple of days ago, I had my battery charged at 100% before I went to bed at 10 pm. I woke up in the morning, grabbed my phone and drove to work. Due to the cold (-32 degrees) my car stopped and I took my phone out to call AMA to find that there was just 5% of battery remaining. By the time I called AMA, the phone went dead. What happened after is my sad story

.

But the point is, After waiting in line to buy the new Apple products, I dont think we have to put up with this battery and other crap.

Sad to say this, but I am going away from apple to find another reliable, working phone. Something that will really be useful.

MattyEss wrote:

[...]

 

BTW Thankyou Mods for deleteling all the inane posts that were in the last page or two of this thread

You should note that this includes your post of yesterday. I guess the moderators cut the apple in two so to speak - and some "users" must have leveraged lots of efforts to achieve such a limited result. Many of my posts remain, yet unfortunately not the huge one summarizing my contribution - my bad it contained some superfluous flaming elements - but intellectually honest people know about my contribution, have acknowledged it, and I feel entirely vindicated in that respect. I'm always supportive of moderation decision making though, as I don't set the rules in here. But neither do you or pals!!!

That being said, in terms of support, well, some questions remain for me. One I can't answer is what type of usage one can get in terms of word processing with a full charge i.e. plain typing of text within an app. Someone made a joke on that yesterday but in the end I find it's an interesting question - especially since some people compare a smartphone to a computer and an important function of a computer is word processing.

Also I note people always come back to the idea of "phantom usage". It's important to remember that this shouldn't be confused with "standby drain" i.e. 0.5% per hour - which can become more in low coverage situations(which cannot always be controlled by the user, even within the same location) - nor with definition based "usage" which includes background processing such as auto-checking of mail - so this can also extend to normal background polling for network centric apps. In summary someone having mail push/pull and network centric apps with notifications and such will always have usage "without touching the phone" (and most likely which would be added on top of the 0.5%) - yet this is not phantom usage, which should cover everything else i.e. out of spec. You can't have your cake and eat it. I think Apple should allow an option for log based notifications i.e. trapping of events like crashes that generate a visible notification as how can someone debug apps when he has 200 of them without removing them all and starting from scratch? Even that cannot be conclusive because an app can behave well at first and bug afterwards and also there is no account for possible app interaction. This is another way of saying that the Apple "experience" shouldn't hinder support.

Another question also remains in terms of charge cycles. Whether this is required only of a new device or whether this is required each time an OS update is applied. In the first case scenario, I think it's time Apple installs batteries and charges/discharges them at the factory level as to "burn them in" so to speak. In the second case, well, that means this variable is always relevant after a patch and posters should be constantly reminded of that...

If I don't use the phone AT ALL, at the end of the 10 hr work day, there's a > 0.5% drain and "usage" is reported as 30-45 minutes.  eMail is all on manual.  Background apps are cleared.  Ping and time zone off.  For that matter, just about everything I can think of is off, short of a few notifications so as not to make this a completely 'dumb' phone.

Are you trying to say that sort of reported 'usage' is normal?  I'd consider it 'phantom usage', as the phone is effectively in standby mode if I'm not using it at all.

I hate to be the bringer of bad news, and tbh i am not happy with my battery life either, but i really dont think there is going to be any more fixes on this battery issue from apple. They have been working on and testing ios5 and the 4S for over a year. To think they have missed something fundemental is unlikely to say the least. As we saw with the Iphone 4 antenna, we all hoped for a software fix, what happened, nothing came... but the phone still sold record numbers. my guess is nothing more to come, this is as good as it gets, i hope i am wrong !

If this turns out to be the case, and I'm not sure it will be, then Apple will really have messed up.

The antenna situation was extremely embarassing, and was not helped by some crass finger-pointing in their hastily pulled videos, but it was also relatively easy to work around; put a bumper on, and you'll be OK.

This battery issue is much more subtle, and probably, as has already been pointed out, relates to much internet activity going on in the background. If this is the only cause, and the only solution is either to de-activate many or most of the fancy new features, or put up with pathetic battery life, this will be extremely hard for Apple to come out of with any credibility... let's just hope they don't try and make out that all other phone manufacturers have phones with a standby battery consumption of 10% per hour...

Well, it depends by what margin you're over the 0.5% and what setup you have and what coverage you have and all. Often I've quoted this link... http://www.apple.com/batteries/iphone.html:

• Usage: Amount of time iPhone has been awake and in use since the last full charge.  The phone is awake when you’re on a call, using email, listening to music, browsing the web, or sending and receiving text messages, or during certain background tasks such as auto-checking email.

Further down that page also read the comment on "airplane mode". As you've updated your post with further info about your config, maybe try airplane mode during standby or set the "cellular data off" and make comparisons with the % of drain you were having...

• Usage: Amount of time iPhone has been awake and in use since the last full charge.  The phone is awake when you’re on a call, using email, listening to music, browsing the web, or sending and receiving text messages, or during certain background tasks such as auto-checking email.

My phone is not doing any of that, including checking for emails (all on manual), so I guess by their definition, no 'usage' should be happening. 

I do get the sense that when I'm on Standby at home on WiFi, things are better than when I'm at work on Standby and with no WiFi (only 3G) available. 

• Use Airplane Mode in low- or no-coverage areas: Because your iPhone always tries to maintain a connection with the cellular network, it may use more power in low- or no-coverage areas.  Turning on Airplane Mode can increase battery life in these situations; however, you will be unable to make or receive calls.  To turn on Airplane Mode, go to Settings and set Airplane Mode to On.

While this may be an interesting experiment, it's not a viable solution. 

Hi everyone,

This is my first post.  I'm new to apple and bought the 4s.  Like many have said, my battery life is the worst I've ever experienced on a phone.  Are they or are they not goof to fix this?  Does anyone know for sure?  Thanks

Sorry *going to fix this

You're totally off base here.   There are two faces of this battery problem out there.   One, where users are seeing extreme battery drains with little or no use.   Any then others (like me) who see drainage, but to a livable degree.   I can easily go through an entire day with my 64gb 4s, and moderate usage.   I have yet to see the warm phone, high drainage issues that others are reporting.   I have EVERYTHING on except for Siri "lift to activate".   I have push on for office Exchange email and Yahoo mail, with Fetch for Gmail.   Location services on, Notifications on.   I decided early on that I was going to use what came with the phone and not be turning everything off.   BT is on and connected while in the car.   Wifi on and connected both at home and in the office.

Right now as of this writing, I'm at 88% with 50min usage and 6hrs standby right now.   I charge every night, like I did with previous iPhones, so I'm completely capable of living with this.

pedalpower7 wrote:

 

I hate to be the bringer of bad news, and tbh i am not happy with my battery life either, but i really dont think there is going to be any more fixes on this battery issue from apple. They have been working on and testing ios5 and the 4S for over a year. To think they have missed something fundemental is unlikely to say the least. As we saw with the Iphone 4 antenna, we all hoped for a software fix, what happened, nothing came... but the phone still sold record numbers. my guess is nothing more to come, this is as good as it gets, i hope i am wrong !

ftlum wrote:

 

My phone is not doing any of that, including checking for emails (all on manual), so I guess by their definition, no 'usage' should be happening.

No offense but your logic is flawed. "such as" means that auto-checking of emails is one of those things, but they don't give an exhaustive list of what constitutes background processing for them (they should) so in fact you just can't tell. It may not even be something in the user space - it may even not be network centric... who really knows.

"While this may be an interesting experiment, it's not a viable solution. "

Cellular data off will allow you to receive calls and texts by the way...

terrible battery ! Im the biggest fan, but this is just terrible. on 5.0.1 and still getting half day battery, runs out till lunch time, no voice calls, no browsing, simply whatsapp. Terrible.

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