Q: iPhone 4s Battery Life?

Definitely had improvements in battery life after replacing my DIY cut SIM (which worked fine) with a MicroSIM....

Go get one NOW if you have cut yours up and experiencing Battery drain!

Before

After

Wifi, email fetch ever 1 hr, notifications on, bluetooth off, location on.

Only change i made was removed my twitter settings. 

I have just done a battery rundown test of my iphone whilst using it as i normally would:

Wifi always on, 3G always on

Siri off, diags off, system services off except for traffic and compass calibration

These are my results with 6% battery life remaining:

33.2% (1 day 3 hrs) has been lost on standby where only 13.5% should have been lost.

16% (13 hrs) was lost overnight on standby.

59.8% has been used for** (6 hrs 20 mins).

3% has been used for calls over 3G (13 mins 2 secs).

**texts, browsing over wifi and 3G, reading emails, YouTube, e-reader app.

As you can see with the results above, my iPhone 4s 32gb 5.0.1 is running fine except for one thing;

The standby is half of what it should be. I am losing over 1% an hour where I should be losing only 0.5% an hour

So apple, please do something about the standby time!!!!

Note: 80% of the time I was in an area of full coverage (4-5 bars). And the wifi was also at 100%.

I believe majority of post is about the standby time, so there must definitely be something on when the phone is on standby!!!

I have just done a battery rundown test of my iphone whilst using it as i normally would:

Wifi always on, 3G always on

Siri off, diags off, system services off except for traffic and compass calibration

These are my results with 6% battery life remaining:

33.2% (1 day 3 hrs) has been lost on standby where only 13.5% should have been lost.

16% (13 hrs) was lost overnight on standby.

59.8% has been used for** (6 hrs 20 mins).

3% has been used for calls over 3G (13 mins 2 secs).

**texts, browsing over wifi and 3G, reading emails, YouTube, e-reader app.

As you can see with the results above, my iPhone 4s 32gb 5.0.1 is running fine except for one thing;

The standby is half of what it should be. I am losing over 1% an hour where I should be losing only 0.5% an hour

So apple, please do something about the standby time!!!!

Note: 80% of the time I was in an area of full coverage (4-5 bars). And the wifi was also at 100%.

I believe majority of post is about the standby time, so there must definitely be something on when the phone is on standby!!!

Since i got my iPhone 4s i am having battery problems.

I loose 3-4 % in standby. The other problem is phantom usage even when i don't touch my phone. I don't know what this phone is doing in background!

Message, phone, calendar, reminder are in notifications.

I have noticed a strange thing today. When i gott a message from Facebook (i was sitting in front of PC), i got a sound-vibrate alert but nothing appeared on the screen. Weird! This may be phantom usage and why battery drain is there!

Facebook and Facebook Messenger apps are installed but push is turned off for both of them.

The other thing are the settings. My girlfriend has also iPhone 4s, having no problems at all! I checked her settings and did everything same with my phone. Still battery problems.

Today i read in some web sites that ios 5.1 is not really solving battery problem. It is still beta and let's hope they solve it!

@Ankur_C

You have the exact same problem as me. I reported a bug on the apple bugreporter about this, and whilst the bug remains unresolved, they have figured out why our batteries are draining.

The problem lies with the SIM Reader / BASEBAND. For some reason, the baseband does not like certain SIM cards, and consequently it crashes and reboots every few minutes, showing phantom usage and draining the battery. Whether or not a baseband firmware update can fix this, is yet to be seen. A telltale sign of this baseband crash, is problems with an active SIM PIN code, and SIM Applications not working properly.

Unfortunately at the moment, the only solution is to keep getting your phone replaced until you get one that works. Some batches appear to have different SIM readers, which work OK. (I know this because I tried my SIM in a friend's iPhone 4S, and it works fine. Interestingly, his SIM also works fine in MY phone, but his SIM is a different network).

Hope this info helps

Just thought I'd throw my stats out there, too. I've seen some improvements since I got the phone... not sure what did the trick. I barely made it through the first couple days I had the phone without having to charge. Not sure my battery stats are as good as they should be, but it's definitely enough to make it through the day.

Yesterday to today I got the following usage stats (charged 100% and unplugged right before I went to bed two nights ago):

Usage: 6 hours, 15 minutes

Standby: 1 Day, 12 hours

Standby time includes two full nights... lost a pinch more than the advertised 0.5% on standby, but not too far off. I started charging at about 3%... so a few more hours could have been squeezed out of the phone I'd think.

I have a typical workday... phone travels through various patches of service to no service on my 1 hour metro commute to and from work. At work, I do some light 3G browsing... usually stemming from Facebook notifications or emails. Push notifications enables. Occasional messages, a few calls, listened to music for at least an hour. iMessage was on, too.

Here are my stats too:

Time since last full charge

Usage        2 hours, 13 minutes

Standby     9 hours, 56 minutes

Battery percentage is at 58%

Note, honestly, I dont know what the phones considers 'Usage' but I KNOW I have not used it for 2 hours. Maybe half an hour the whole day AT MOST, and I'm still pretty sure it was a whole lot less than that. I've used it twice during the whole day, only to check email and Facebook and watched one YouTube video.

HOW IS THIS NORMAL?

And then I read about how long iPhone 4 battery lasted. This is a so-called 'upgrade'? Please... I agree with these people here. Why have so many features if we cant use them due to this annoying battery issue??

I'd agree that "usage" is a little misleading. I definitely did not use my phone for the full 6 hours and 15 minutes that mine stated.

Hi FiniteAffinity,

Your case also seems a good reason, and more so coz Apple acknowledged the issue (as i could gather from your post).

Are you using a MicroSIM or just a normal SIM which has been cut-down?

I am currently using a cut-down SIM, so that could also be a possible reason, may be due to compatibility issues.

Guys, however i realized an important thing today, i.e.

Always keep the "Usage" option enabled in the phone, this way it shows the actual battery  %age on the TOP RIGHT corner of the phone. Earlier i used to have this option disabled and used a downloaded APP to see the battery %age capacity that was left. Today when i did a Reset of Phone settings (as suggested in the first post of this chain by Davidch)  and drained my battery to NIL and then started charging again to 100%, it took around 3.5 hours to get FULLY CHARGED.  Is this normal??

Infact i realized that possibly i didnt charge my battery completely earlier, as the downloaded APP might not show correct data. But,yes,probably...

Guys,

One question:

I purchased my iPhone from a Telecom service provider rather than an Apple Store.

Can i return it citing the battery problems? Or should i go to an Apple store?

Will any of these replace my phone??

Actually, I am very doubtful about this...

Your explanation sounds very reasonable. My phone is experiencing battery drain and has a case of 'mystery usage'. However, I havent had any crashes with SIM related apps. I wish I could exchange my phone until I reach one without the battery problem, but, it would take a while and be very time consuming. And who knows how long it would take for a new phone to arrive. Are there still orders backed up? It would be such an inconvenience. I can only hope that an update will come out that fixes this issue, or they begin to make 4S's with the issue fixed, so I can exchange it once and be done with it. Until then, I will have to endure this battery draining issue.

Yes, maybe you should get your battery checked. Even the hardware issue was small, but it happened. I returned my phone because of the defect of the battery. It was hot like the oven no matter what I did. My second one doesn't have that issue. So it is good to let it checked out.

However, the battery is no where near Apple specs. I wait for next update.

Thanks

Earlier this evening, I had decided to go to Sprint tomorrow and purchase an iPhone 4S.... my very first Apple purchase.   My Blackberry Curve (3 years old) died yesterday.

With all this talk of battery problems, now I don't know what to do.  I'm low tech (senior citizen), so I don't want a phone that won't work without me becoming a tech wizard.

It should work as advertised straight out of the box.  This sounds awful and a very very very poor reflection on Apple.  I'm afraid to buy an iPhone now....  Maybe I should stick with an upgraded Blackberry or look at a Samsung instead......

SusanMcL wrote:

 

Earlier this evening, I had decided to go to Sprint tomorrow and purchase an iPhone 4S.... my very first Apple purchase.   My Blackberry Curve (3 years old) died yesterday.

 

With all this talk of battery problems, now I don't know what to do.  I'm low tech (senior citizen), so I don't want a phone that won't work without me becoming a tech wizard.

 

It should work as advertised straight out of the box.  This sounds awful and a very very very poor reflection on Apple.  I'm afraid to buy an iPhone now....  Maybe I should stick with an upgraded Blackberry or look at a Samsung instead......

Ma'am, if you are comfortable with blackberry, you should go and buy another blackberry and I am sure you will be happy. Since you are not tech savvy, you probably won't miss the bells and whistles of an iPhone or Samsung android phones.

If you are considering Samsung android, you could have more problem figuring out how to use it.

Maybe you should consider giving Nokia's windows phone a try.

Notwithstanding above, iPhone is probably the best option for you if you want somethig that just works. Just remember to buy AppleCare.