Q: iPhone 4s Battery Life?

Ok,  whoops I see it.  Email notifications stopped!  Thanks Xabbess!

I got a 4s because after upgrading to iOS 5 on my 3gs, battery life went to pot.  My 3gs was 16g, my wife's is a 3gs 8g.  She has not had a problem with battery drain after upgrading to iOS5 about a month ago.  We upgraded the same day.  My 4s is 16g also.  Could the problem be related to memory size?

Well, I wiped my 4s 32gig, and  restored from backup. No improvement.

Flattened the phone and put it together as a new phone, no restore. No improvement.

Flattened it again and restored from backup again, and so far I'm seeing 1% drop an hour light use and 3% heavy use. Only change was I didn't enable Siri as it's not something I need anyway.

So I'm keeping everything crossed and touch lots of wood, holding my breath and any other good luck charms I can think of.

buxbuster wrote:

[...]

That means it is wrongly configured since the drainage is too fast.

A phone with a 'good' setup only looses about 8 percent in 14 hours when idling.

[...]

Following our little discussion, I acknowledged that 0.47% drain per hour was possible. Who cares what I acknowledge, but it would be interesting if you would disclose what a "good setup" is for you i.e. yours for instance... like standard settings, mail push/pull and notifications. What is the bracket of acceptability for standby drain... 0.47%-?? - In summary my implied question is: "is what you consider a good setup... a good setup or a restrictive setup"? I mean, I can see a phone with no app, all off, no mail meeting 0.47% but it must be a setup with more features can still be good and it must surely drain more than 0.47. Anyways.

Regards,

SHADYZZ wrote:

 

LIked I posted in here time and time again and got flack from people for saying it. There's NOTHING we can do to fix this, it's up to Apple to address it.

 

All these chumps think that they're going to fix it by spending some time tewaking apps settings, etc... As if APple is going to develop a proprietary product that can be completely altered in it's functionality by the end user...

 

Those people do not understand Apple, I've been using their products for 20+ years and Apple NEVER EVER allowed, nor will they ever allow ANYONE to modify their products or the functionality.

 

Look, even their app developers have to meet the most asinine regulations and 40% of their revenues get sucked up by Apple.

 

All these people are just wasting their, and YOUR time.

 

Sit back and wait, if Apple doesn't address it, which I sure hope they do, then get rid of the phone and Apple products altogether.

A sign of intellectual rigidity and lazyness. "Chumps"? You're the chump, pal. Your condescending remarks have no bearing on what has been done here. The product is serviceable in terms of options and configurations. This is not about software development, which Apple does, this is about alleviating symptoms, and this realm is open to anyone. In many cases, whether there was an actual drain or simply a misunderstanding of the specs, many of the tips provided have helped many users get better and more optimized usage out of their phone. Maybe indeed you've been using Apple's products for too long and System7 made you cynical - I can understand. A nice beverage will make it better for you.

danpickard wrote:

 

My 4s was absolutely fine until 3 days ago, synced with itunes, did not update to 5.01 and did not install new apps and now the battery will not even last the night sat next to my bed.  Absolutely useless.

 

Made sure no apps are still running, fully charged but cannot last 8hrs.

 

No idea why this has started now when it was fine before, is it worth contacting Apple?

 

Dan

dan, check out if contacts are in a sync loop! 

This can be seen only when you open contacts or phone. You will see the busy icon spinning. This was a current occurance glitch. To clear the loop, turn off contacts iCloud sync, select Not to keep contacts on phone. This should clear all contacts on the phone (your back up is still on iCloud). Now close all apps, shut phone off and do a HARD RESET (press/ hold the power and Home button, let the open Apple screen flash 2 times then let go) Phoe will reboot. When up turn on iCloud contacts sync with backup save to phone. Your contacts will be reloaded and the loop drain will stop.

I have created this thread to group some of the best stuff I've seen here in terms of background information and procedural support for the first time user. I'm not saying I'll keep it up to date but it includes buxbuster, davidch, miless and a few other people's stuff, which they have to constantly repeat here. A long thread is a poor tool for consolidating infos so I wanted to do a sort of a knowledge base article, since this hasn't been done... by Apple, as it should be. So this is my Christmas present lollll.

iPhone 4S Battery Life: Best solutions and procedures for 1st time user: 1-Do you have a battery life issue (learn first what the usage time spec is about) 2-What can you try to remedy the situation without reading 500 pages of posts

Good luck!

A phone with a 'good' setup is very simply a setup of a phone that was bad ( 3 percent battery drain/hour while idling ) and has had one of my tested workarounds fitted to it :  it does not matter what apps are on it or anything else for that matter ( so, I quit tweaking location settings etc. a long time ago since I noticed this did not matter ). On a 'good' setup phone I can turn on anything, run anything, do anything and the battery drop while idling will stay well under 1 percent / hour. I only have bluetooth off ( since I never use it anyways ) and push email off when doing my measurements. But even if I would set those to ON it would not matter for the standby drain.

There is an inconsistency in the way the iphone syncs with iTunes and/or iCloud over USB, WiFi or 3G. It is trying to sync again and again and this is waisting energy. I'm still investigating this( Turning on all the knobs : USB sync, WiFI sync, 3G sync etc. ).

I'm still confident I'll find a workaround for all users, but like you said : I'm a hopeless romantic ;-)

Regards.

Fair enough lolll. So in summary you say that the 0.5% per hour standby drain spec shouldn't increase to more than 1%, whatever the setup is under good working conditions. I hear you. Do you think that the 0.5% is also ongoing during usage? i.e. 1 hour heavy 3G internet should drain 16.6% + 0.5%? I should think so, as the 0.5%, even though it's qualified as "standby drain" is nothing more in reality than what could be called "normal operation drain"... right? I'll concede this is of limited interest but I'm curious and you have detailed numbers.

Good luck with your testing!!

Regards.

buxbuster wrote:

 

A phone with a 'good' setup is very simply a setup of a phone that was bad ( 3 percent battery drain/hour while idling ) and has had one of my tested workarounds fitted to it :  it does not matter what apps are on it or anything else for that matter ( so, I quit tweaking location settings etc. a long time ago since I noticed this did not matter ). On a 'good' setup phone I can turn on anything, run anything, do anything and the battery drop while idling will stay well under 1 percent / hour. I only have bluetooth off ( since I never use it anyways ) and push email off when doing my measurements. But even if I would set those to ON it would not matter for the standby drain.

 

There is an inconsistency in the way the iphone syncs with iTunes and/or iCloud over USB, WiFi or 3G. It is trying to sync again and again and this is waisting energy. I'm still investigating this( Turning on all the knobs : USB sync, WiFI sync, 3G sync etc. ).

 

I'm still confident I'll find a workaround for all users, but like you said : I'm a hopeless romantic ;-)

 

 

Regards.

Bux,

While I appreciate your efforts in trying to identify a workaround, I disagree with your definition of a "good setup".  If you have heavy email traffic and are connected to weak to a moderate 3G signal, multiple calendar events, etc, your stand-by battery drain will be much greater than a low volume email period on WiFi with the same set-up.  This is based on my observations of battery usage at work and at home. A couple of people that I work with have also seen a similar effects although they are not tracking their battery as closely as I am.  I also believe some apps have bugs that create problems with 5.0.x and continue to run in the background even after they are shut down.  For example, I noticed the INRIX Traffice app continued to use location services not only after I shut down the app but also after doing a hard reset.  I will post more of my experience later when I have more time.

Good luck.

Randy

I'm at 29%, and I've not been using this phone excessively.

Usage: 2hrs 49 mins

Standby: 1 day

NOT what Tim Cook promised us.

Please FIX

Oh, and since the last post, now i'm down to 27%!!

mac2112 wrote:

 

Oh, and since the last post, now i'm down to 27%!!

So call it 30 minutes so the math is easy, and round up 29-27 to be 3.

Assuming the drain rate is constant and that you weren't in total Standby, then that works around 16 hours usage.  Seems pretty good to me.

1AppleADayNoWay wrote:

 

buxbuster wrote:

[...]

That means it is wrongly configured since the drainage is too fast.

A phone with a 'good' setup only looses about 8 percent in 14 hours when idling.

[...]

Following our little discussion, I acknowledged that 0.47% drain per hour was possible. Who cares what I acknowledge, but it would be interesting if you would disclose what a "good setup" is for you i.e. yours for instance... like standard settings, mail push/pull and notifications. What is the bracket of acceptability for standby drain... 0.47%-?? - In summary my implied question is: "is what you consider a good setup... a good setup or a restrictive setup"? I mean, I can see a phone with no app, all off, no mail meeting 0.47% but it must be a setup with more features can still be good and it must surely drain more than 0.47. Anyways.

 

Regards,

not really surprising, if you look at the apple "official" specs of 200 hrs standy time (i.e. w/ no usage).  that would suggest 0.5% per hour, again not considering any other usage (i.e. you just let it sit in standby).  my current stats after a lot of standby and little usage the last 2.5 days are:

Battery: 46%   Standby: 2 days, 6 hrs (or 30hrs)   Usage: 2 hrs, 30 min

system settings are the following

mail: push for iCloud, hourly on imap account

iCloud: mail, reminders

notifications: phone, messages, reminders, calendar, cnbc, mail, twitter, find friends

location: maps, siri, weather

sytem services: all on but location based iAd and setting time zone turned off

network (typical day): 75% 3G, 25% wifi

Really, that's good?

Not according to what the specs are. And my wife has an iphone 4, and it gets much better milage than this 4S