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Scarface.

Q: iPhone 4s Battery Life?

My iPhone 4s battery seems terrible! Almost equivalent to my 3GS and it's terrible battery life. When I got my iPhone yesterday and restored from backup I noticed nothing really changed with minimal usage and standby! Is this normal or should I consider setting it up as a new phone because maybe something is running in the background that's causing it to drop a percentage every few minutes under light usage? Input would be great!

Posted on Oct 15, 2011 7:14 AM

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Q: iPhone 4s Battery Life?

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  • by Just_d_in_aus,

    Just_d_in_aus Just_d_in_aus Nov 29, 2011 1:29 PM in response to Scarface.
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Nov 29, 2011 1:29 PM in response to Scarface.

    So, I've had none of the major battery issues others have seen until a few days ago. I charge my phone overnight, wake up at about 7am, check weather, facebook, email while its still plugged in, then unplug get up and get ready for work.

     

    Previously I would have about 50-60% left as I left work and have about 20-30% by 10pm when I go to bed.

     

    But the last few days I'd only have about 30% battery left when I left work and it would be dead before I went to bed unless I found a charger. No usage pattern changes at all.

     

    No settings have been changed that I can think of, so I don't know why I now have battery life issues all of a sudden.

     

    This morning I've dropped 15% in less than an hour after unplugging it, and I've only used it for about 5 minutes unplugged to turn off an app from showing up in the notifcation centre.

     

    The only odd thing I can see is that its saying I've used the phone for 57 minutes since last full charge, and standby was at 59 minutes, but I've got nothing to compare this to because I've never checked before. I definately hadn't used the phone for 59 minutes since getting up at 7.10am.

     

     

    photo.PNG

  • by zSkeptic,

    zSkeptic zSkeptic Nov 29, 2011 3:27 PM in response to Just_d_in_aus
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Nov 29, 2011 3:27 PM in response to Just_d_in_aus

    Your location services icon is lit up in the screen shot above.  Are you running a GPS or a locations based app in the background?  If not, you could have a runaway app running in the background.  Some suggestion to kill the app if this is the case:

     

    • Close all apps
    • Perform a hard reset
    • Perform a soft reset (system reset)
    • Let battery drain to zero
    • Perform a full restore
  • by QUAZMANN,

    QUAZMANN QUAZMANN Nov 29, 2011 4:33 PM in response to zSkeptic
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Nov 29, 2011 4:33 PM in response to zSkeptic

    I COPIED THIS POST FOR ALL TO SEE. AUTHOR IS skORP10

     

     

    Dear all,

     

    I'm an Italian engineer and iOS developer, who recently bought the brand new iPhone 4S .

    As most of you who have bought such device , I'm experiencing poor battery performances , even after the latest 5.0.1 iOS update from Apple.

     

    Therefore I wanted to try to understand what was the real cause of such bad performances and - moreover - why does it seems that only certain iPhone 4S are affected from such battery inefficiency behaviour.

     

    By looking at the Internet, most of the hints lead to the conclusion that a particular mix of Apps - or even just one App ( you may find many pointing at Facebook or Fousquare Apps as culprits for the bad battery performances) may cause this huge power drain.

     

    The only way to match such apparently contrasting reports from users all over the world with the fact that at least one certain cause shall explain the power drainage exeperiencied by us all was - in my mind - to find a solution in what the Apps could do to make things go wrong.

     

    By using the Apple Instruments tool from Apple Developer suite (shipped with XCode) , I found this interesting thing :

     

    it seems that the very cause of battery drainage is a bug in the video card driver , which could be triggered by applications making use of certain iOS APIs.

     

    I found this by looking at the energy consumption graphs extracted from my iPhone 4S and comparing them with other information taken from the device.

     

    It seems that - even in sleep state - and when nothing should use the GPU, there is recorded video card activity. But the most interesting thing is that it seems the device does not recognizes this activity as a power draining activity, therefore my theory is  that iOS can't trigger power saving algorithms to shut down the video card since it can't detect the fact it is consuming battery power.

     

    I will attach here a screenshot taken from Apple Instruments tool which shows a 17% video card activity while energy usage is recorded as to be zero, and even when the Display Brightness is exactly zero, there's still video card activity ( near 1%) , but still no energy consumption is recorded by the iPhone.

     

    I'm writing all this here hoping that Apple will examinate my theory and - if confirmed - will soon release a fix for this annoying issue.

  • by Migara,

    Migara Migara Nov 29, 2011 5:10 PM in response to Just_d_in_aus
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Nov 29, 2011 5:10 PM in response to Just_d_in_aus

    This happened to me as well... Then I figured out that the IR sencer was on... I did a reset by holding the on and home buttons at the same time to reset the device.. And things were alright....

  • by sschmelcke,

    sschmelcke sschmelcke Nov 29, 2011 5:57 PM in response to QUAZMANN
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Nov 29, 2011 5:57 PM in response to QUAZMANN

    As great as this sounds I disagree. If I put the phone in airplane mode I get 0 battery drainage. Airplane mode still uses the video driver.

  • by Scarface.,

    Scarface. Scarface. Nov 29, 2011 5:59 PM in response to Scarface.
    Level 1 (86 points)
    Nov 29, 2011 5:59 PM in response to Scarface.

    Topic creator here, I hate to be the harbinger of bad news but after reading around google off numerous blog/websites, the successor to 5.0.1, 5.1. Does not seem to improve battery life at all! I know it's still in beta and just rolled out yesterday but that isn't reassuring at all and almost infuriates me knowing I'm depleting my batteries life cycle with frequent charges. Hardware problem anyone?

  • by franky932,

    franky932 franky932 Nov 29, 2011 7:09 PM in response to bwulfe
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Nov 29, 2011 7:09 PM in response to bwulfe
  • by xenocea,

    xenocea xenocea Nov 29, 2011 8:31 PM in response to Scarface.
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Nov 29, 2011 8:31 PM in response to Scarface.

    Battery life is still pathetic even after doing countless restores, setting up as new phone, turning off location services, resetting.....etc

     

    I can't believe Apple still hasn't got off their a**** to do something about this wide spread issue.

     

    photo.PNG

  • by 3dmac,

    3dmac 3dmac Nov 29, 2011 9:04 PM in response to xenocea
    Level 1 (9 points)
    iPhone
    Nov 29, 2011 9:04 PM in response to xenocea

    xenocea wrote:

     

    Battery life is still pathetic even after doing countless restores, setting up as new phone, turning off location services, resetting.....etc

     

    I can't believe Apple still hasn't got off their a**** to do something about this wide spread issue.

     

    photo.PNG

    ok let's see : 6.07hrs usage in 25.78hrs.  What was calls, internet, music ? And was any on WIFI or all 3g data. Also remember that specs are best scenario limits. 

    Then one more thing you need to consider is  Carrier Signal Strength !!  Right now you ARE at 2 BARS, Very low signal strength. This WILL Cause phone signal to increase along with battery drain.

  • by xenocea,

    xenocea xenocea Nov 29, 2011 9:16 PM in response to 3dmac
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Nov 29, 2011 9:16 PM in response to 3dmac

    Usage consist of 30 to 40 mintues of internet browsing, wifi is pretty much always on, bluetooth off, no calls, no text, no music, and mostly playing casual games every now and then.

     

    Battery doesn't drain isn't as bad during on standby. However as soon as I start to do anything on the phone at all. Even if it's just simple navigation. The battery would start depleting 2% to 4% every few mintues.

     

    In comparison on my old iphone 4. I can browse the net with wifi for 2 hours, make a dozen phone calls, play a few hours of intensive games like Infinity Blade, listen to some music and would still end up with 46% left on my battery.

  • by 3dmac,

    3dmac 3dmac Nov 29, 2011 9:33 PM in response to xenocea
    Level 1 (9 points)
    iPhone
    Nov 29, 2011 9:33 PM in response to xenocea

    wifi on just tells me "set on", thats good.

    But are you Always ON WIFI when doing all DATA tasks, OR are you ON 3G DATA (cell data usage ) LET"S SEE That DATA pic From your Phone. Under Cell usage you will see data sent and received in MB's

     

    You can test DATA Drain by1: turning wifi off, Note current cell data usage #s

                                                2: Turn WIFI on and Cell DATA OFF

    Now do ALL the SAME things for both tests, and note drain% each 30min.

     

     

    30-40 min just calls, That Leaves over 5hrs of GAMES. THIS IS THE LARGEST of Battery power using. A5  AND GPU are running in high gear.

     

    Your #'s are In the limits from what U are Playing.

  • by Calistograph,

    Calistograph Calistograph Nov 29, 2011 9:28 PM in response to xenocea
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Nov 29, 2011 9:28 PM in response to xenocea

    that's actually not too bad. Not anything like iPhone 4, but tolerable.

  • by Calistograph,

    Calistograph Calistograph Nov 29, 2011 9:28 PM in response to QUAZMANN
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Nov 29, 2011 9:28 PM in response to QUAZMANN

    Good work!

  • by AMRosario,

    AMRosario AMRosario Nov 29, 2011 10:05 PM in response to Scarface.
    Level 2 (165 points)
    Nov 29, 2011 10:05 PM in response to Scarface.

    Seems like I'm having the battery issue too. New iPhone 4S, just off the plane from China, and battery drains while I watch it. I followed every battery saving tip I could find and it still drains visibly. I'm expecting another 4S in the mail in the next couple of weeks. I hope Apple fixes this ASAP.

     

    Antonio

  • by 3dmac,

    3dmac 3dmac Nov 29, 2011 11:06 PM in response to AMRosario
    Level 1 (9 points)
    iPhone
    Nov 29, 2011 11:06 PM in response to AMRosario

    Amr,

    AMRosario wrote:

     

    " New iPhone 4S, just off the plane from China, and battery drains while I watch it. I followed every battery saving tip I could find and it still drains visibly."

    Antonio

    Did you do at least 2 Full discharge to blackout/recharge overnight to full100%. This conditions the LIPO which brings it to it's full capacity !!!

    Out of the box ANY NEW Lipo has ONLY a storage charge and Has not been Fully excited in order for full capacity.

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