Q: iPhone 4s Battery Life?

I have read almost all these posts.  I am very frustrated and can't believe how many people are having trouble with the phone.  Considering it is the first new phone I have had in 6 years, I'm not a happy customer.  I have done so many things that people have suggested here to try....turning things off or on, letting the battery drain completely.....nothing seems to work.  I have not tried to restore and which was suggested to me by Apple les then 24 hours after buying the phone.

Someone said it is probably the iOS, but that too makes me wonder.  I know people that are having absolutely no problems,so maybe I just got a bad phone.  Not only does the phone drain fast but I am finding my iPad is having the same problem....not quite as bad, but I am still doing the same things I did before updating but still more drainage then it should be.

Also having trouble with Lion on my iMac.  But that's a whole other issue.....thanks for letting me vent.

After I discovered that the WiFi permanently disconnects and re-connects while in standby i made some more observations: this stopped immediatly when I removed the SIM from my phone, i.e. disconnecting the phone from my carrier and started again when i reinserted the SIM - so apears to be some event coming via carrier.

I did then a Factory-Reset of the phone (again) with everything left on default setting (incl. iCloud-Account) and added my IMAP account: WiFi still behaves as expected - disconnects shortly after standby and stays disconnected.

I will now observe power consumption an see if the undesired behavior comes back (and when)

ejm3 wrote:

 

On my new 4s I've tried most of the battery saving suggestions in this thread and I think its somewhat better but still not nearly what my 4 was prior to iOS5.

 

As an experiment last night I ran it down completely and charged to 100% about 6.30pm. Was at 95% when I went to bed about 11.30pm. At 6.30am when I woke up it was at 89%. Not terrible but not great.

 

But interestingly when I looked at the usage in the morning it said nearly 1 hour of usage. What is causing that? I have email on manual, iCould off, yadda yadda. I used it maybe 2 minutes to check a score before bed and that was it. Any idea what would have cause an hour of usage while I slept?

 

While I was intentionally running the battery down I was streaming music and got about 7.5 hours of usage before it died, which isn't bad.

 

So in my case at least I believe the problem is something running in the background that's killing my battery life.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

I've had a lot of phantom usage as well.  In some cases, the phone is reporting usage that is 3-4x higher than my actual usage.

Iv got a 4s which i got on release day and ever since that day i have charged the phone all night get up and go to work for 8 hours pretty light usage checkin facebook and sentin few txts when i finish work i have to charge the phone to get it to last the evening!.. And then it still needs charging again when i go to bed!! Its worse than my iphone 4 that i traded in for it and i did update that to ios 5 before i traded it in!..

Some good news.

I also received a call from an Apple advisor last night during which they asked a number of questions about my phone, settings, usage, etc. They confirmed that my battery should be working better and assured me they are working hard on a fix. I was told I might get a follow up call. I got that follow up call today from an Apple engineer who wanted to get some more information. Bottom line, they're working on it.

True, it would be ideal if we weren't having to deal with the issue, but I give Apple credit for being responsive, for working on it and for being in touch to get "real" info from customers experiencing the problems.  Kudos to Apple. 

I think tonight before I go to bed I'm going to kill all open apps and see if anything is running in the morning. If something is running that may be what's accounting for this mystery usage.

Also I have an original iPad that I upgraded to iOS5 and my battery life is fine.

I have noticed these problems from day one and as such have been searching for a fix. I've done everything suggested, even a DFU restore.

I called Apple today and still the representative that I spoke to said that he had heard nothing of the sorts. He tried giving me the 'Have you closed all apps in the multi-tasking tray?' which of course I responded yes.

After explaining to the man that my battery was far worse than my previous iPhone 4 with the same if not less usage he came back and said that being a new device my iPhone 4S should surpass my expectations especially as it features a new bigger battery. As such he offered me a replacement handset which I refused, instead I opted for an appointment at my local Apple Store.

I'd like to see what diagnostic tests they run and what their results are.

I also find it strange that both the Apple representatives I have spoken to have said that they aren't aware of any battery problems with the 4S. I would have thought that by now they would have issued a statement for their staff to issue to it's customers: apparently not.

ejm3 wrote:

 

I think tonight before I go to bed I'm going to kill all open apps and see if anything is running in the morning. If something is running that may be what's accounting for this mystery usage.

 

Also I have an original iPad that I upgraded to iOS5 and my battery life is fine.

An app won't start up on it's own.  There are tons of "processes" that run in the background that aren't considered applications.  Similar to Windows or OS X.  If you bring up task manager on a Windows machine, you'll see tons of running processes and only a handful of apps.  iOS is no different except you can't easily see the running processes.

I don't know if you ever noticed this but the first 80% of the charge takes less time than the last 20%... It is hard to saturate the battery to its full capacity.

If it is like many people are saying, maybe you have a connection which is constantly active preventing your phone from charging all the way up...

This might explain the heat issues while charging too.  I have experienced my cell phone heating up dramatically when I have used it while it was charging.

Has anyone tried the recommended 'leave to discharge fully until shutdown - charge on mains power til full' routine that Apple recommends form new devices?

I have done it twice yesterday and today and the battery 'appears' to have stabilized for now - not perfect but much better than before.

Before that I tried EVERY single fix suggested on these boards to no avail.

Currently I have everything enabled - location services, brightness to full, exchange, notifications etc etc and my charge dropped form 100% at 10AM to 83% at 16:15 with light usage.

I booked a genius appointment for Friday so will monitor until then - if it doesnt get better I will try and get a new phone.

I had an odd battery drain problem over the weekend.  I turned off wifi sync to itunes.  It turns out there was an open connection that wouldn't die.

a further piece in the puzzle: after my last reset I charged to 100%: The WiFi reconnect abnormality is still gone, as well as the increasing usage-time during standby - so these behaviours are at least correlated.

I still have not determined how I get the phone into this state again - I managed twice without noticing, but not this time...

For those that received a call from an Apple Engineer, can you post what questions they asked or what settings they had you look at?  I think that may help everyone else experiencing this issue.

Out of curiosity, how is your wifi signal strength?  How many devices do you have connected to your wifi?  Do you know if you have a dynamic ip for your phone or static?

An observation: I have my ip address as static on my phone and I don't have these reported issues/battery drain.

P.S. If this is a software issue and you have tried everything else, this might be a work around until there is an official fix.

Everything you could think of related to battery/power.  Lock interval time. Bluetooth on/off.  iTunes WiFi synch.  Location based reminders (if any exist).  Email accounts, calendar, address book accounts.  iCloud stuff.  In short, everything that has been discussed on these pages.