Q: iPhone 4s Battery Life?

That's happened to me too. But speaking of Mail, I just deleted my Gmail account setup (setup through Microsoft exchange) and had the weather app stop appearing in Notifications Center. At least I saw my battery percentage only drop 1% in 3.5 hours in standby compared to 22% in 7 hours over night (~3%/h). Although as I'm writing this my percentage has dropped 2%, so it seems it might only be helping my standby performance. Such a curious problem! Hope this gets addressed asap.

It's so nice to hear other iPhone users are sharing in my pain!  I'm coming from the Droid world, and was so excited to make the switch to iPhone, now I'm kicking myself!  Like many of you, I've turned off as many features as possible, but I'm still seeing the battery life decline at a fast rate.  The only thing I still have on is "Push" e-mail and I refuse to go to "Fetch" because this is a business phone, and I will not accept that the battery can't handle this when Blackberry and Droid handled it perfectly.  I've got an open case with Apple Support and they have been very helpful and professional, but unfortunately they have no answers to give.  One rep suggested I return the phone to Verizon, but also said there was a good chance the replacement phone would have the same issues.  For the record I'm using a Black, 16 GB 4s.

I'm very anxious to hear what Apple releases as a "fix".  I don't want to get stuck waiting for a fix that never comes and miss my window of opportunity to return the iPhone and go back to Android.  Does anybody know how that's handled with Verizon?

I'm on my second 4s, the first one had to be replaced as no-one could hear me when i was speaking on the first one.  Battery was rubbish on the first one.

On the second one, which i got on Friday 21st october, has now been full cycle charge/re-charged twice and the best i got was:

  Usage is 5hrs 51mins, standby 1day 18hrs

The usage was light usage, text, few calls, few simple games.

I'm not sure if this is good or bad, I think it's bad though as my girlfriend has an iPhone 4 and the battery on that seems to last forever, end of day two on it and she's on 38% still!!  That's with moderate usage?!

I've tried EVERYTHING on here, to no avail it seems.. Suggestions please?  Apple! If you are listening, please help?!

Regards.

I am running a:

Black, 32gb, ATT 4s.  It was delivered to my friend's door 10/14 (cross upgrade)

I have setup the phone as "new" and did not "restore".  I lost 40% in a 40 minute phone call.  Since the, I have turned off everything I don't need to surf and call, and I am still losing fast.  I lost 10% in one hour in Airplane mode, I lost 13% this morning from unplugging overnight to driving in the office and NEVER opening it once (Dallas area, so 3g is strong the whole way to work).

I have 39% now and a reported 3:36 usage and 6:12 standby, but I have not used it but maybe 45 minutes today.  I have all email and sync on manual or turned off. I have also turned off turned off iCloud, extra notifications (left phone, calendar, and messages), Wifi, location services, and Siri.  I closed ALL applications and still struggle.

I am hemoraging as I won't make it home today with any life left and I have not used teh thing.

Just thought I would give an account of my experience with my new 4s. Purchased it last Thursday, turned it on and set it up answering yes to all of the prompted options. I then connected to iTunes and proceeded to copy over music, photos and all the apps that iTunes recognised as historic purchases/downloads. I cloud did it's thing and off I went. I soon realised that the phone was heading towards a 10 hour standby time, it was at this point I found this thread. I wasn't particularly willing to systematically turn off some of the useful functionality so I tried a couple of charge cycles - same 10 hour standby time! I then did a restore but this time disconnected the phone from the pc, answered yes to the same phone prompted questions, connected the pc and copied over all content except this time - no apps. My phone has just turned off after 49 hours of standby.

Sorry to sound a bit simple, but what do you mean you disconnected it from the pc? was that different to how you did it last time, because that's a big improvement!!

I upgraded from a 3GS to the 4S. I've only had the phone for 2 days, but it seems that the batter life isn't what the 3Gs' was.

I'm at 65% after a full charge.

What i've done so far:

1 phone call for 12 mins

some SMS's

a few emails.

tinkering with some settings.

Does this seem right for a phone that was supposed to have a much better battery life?

justin269 wrote:

 

Just thought I would give an account of my experience with my new 4s. Purchased it last Thursday, turned it on and set it up answering yes to all of the prompted options. I then connected to iTunes and proceeded to copy over music, photos and all the apps that iTunes recognised as historic purchases/downloads. I cloud did it's thing and off I went. I soon realised that the phone was heading towards a 10 hour standby time, it was at this point I found this thread. I wasn't particularly willing to systematically turn off some of the useful functionality so I tried a couple of charge cycles - same 10 hour standby time! I then did a restore but this time disconnected the phone from the pc, answered yes to the same phone prompted questions, connected the pc and copied over all content except this time - no apps. My phone has just turned off after 49 hours of standby.

I'm also trying my 4S without any apps at the moment just to see if I can pinpoint the problem, as I've tried just about every other tip that's been suggested here.  I suspect Facebook might be causing an issue, as that's one of the few third party apps I actually use.  Most of the others just sit there and go unused for months.  As a result, I'm 100% free of any third party apps at the moment.  It's too soon to tell if that's yielding an improvement or not however.

Sorry, having just read my post, I see I should have said that I set the phone up as a new phone rather than a restore! 

Initially I turned the phone on and then connected to iTunes using the USB lead and allowed the syncing process to do as it wished. My 'set up as new process' involved connecting to the pc, clicking restore, let the process complete but instead of allowing a restore, I selected 'set up as new'. Once rebooted, I disconnected from the pc to ensure no existing data was copied over and navigated through the various prompts answering yes to all options. I then reconnected to iTunes, copied over all photos and music but did not allow any apps to sync over. Essentially, this is the only difference. I have installed apple remote, bbc news and tune in radio and since doing so battery drain has appeared not to suffer. 

For info my first three 10 hour cycles were all with virtually no phone use as I was waiting for my number to port across. My 49 hour cycle was again on standby, so a true like for like basis. In all cases I had wifi on with two active email accounts up and running. 

Hope this helps

"UPDATE FOR ALL

As I mentioned in my last update on Friday / Saturday; my local Apple Store replaced my 4S after their initial attempt to fix the problem failed.  Unfortunately, I'm having the same exact problems on my new phone.

The positive news is that Apple is definitely aware of this problem and is monitoring this thread.  I received a call from a tech this morning and he spent about 15 minutes with me trying to get a rough profile of how I was using the phone; trying to find commonalities between myself and others he had contacted regarding this issue.  As of now, they have not determine if it is an issue with the iOS 5 (enhanced features only available on 4S) or if it is hardware / firmware based.  They are actively seeking to resolve this issue.  (As someone who has developed software in the past; I realize that no matter how much you try testing something in advance of release; real world usage will ultimately poke holes in your best efforts to bulletproof the code.)

The tech asked; and I gave permission for them to send me a file / patch that will allow all of my settings / usage to be logged (annonymously; simply recording things like what apps are active, for how long, and I assume battery levels associated with individual app use.)  It seems a logical approach to track actual settings and usage on problematic phones and to let software search / analyze when/where the battery is being sucked dry the most on both an individual basis and where they find items in common among multiple users with this problem.

So; my best advice to everyone out there with this problem would be to continue reporting your experiences on this forum, but you might as well give your local Genius Bar Tech a break (for a little while at least).  If the iPhone tech staff doesn't know how to fix this yet; then your local tech or Applecare tech support won't have any better information available to them.

Hopefully; this latest effort to track and diagnose the problem will lead to a formal announcement of an iOS or Firware update that fixes the problem.

This is not the first time that a manufacturer has had to deal with such an issue after a product was released; but from experience; it seems that Apple is good at addressing and correcting such issues as soon as they can.

If there isn't any news from Apple in the next week or two; then I'd be concerned and start complaining again.  In the mean time; I'll just keep a charger nearby and let the tech's do their work.  It's the price one must occasionally pay for being on the leading / bleeding edge of technology.

(Just my own humble take on the situation - If you disagree - no flaming please.)"

THIS IS GREAT NEWS.... BUT ONLY IF APPLE MAKES IT OFFICIAL!

I am glad that Apple contacted you and gave you this information, and I understand that they can not possible

call all individuals.  However if they do not acknowledge it on their website it is NO OFFICIAL.

They took forever before they offered the bumpers from Antenna Gate to those that "are not holding the phone right", now it is those that "don't have the settings right".  Baloney, I am not falling for it.  If this is something that they are truly aware of it then make it official on the website.

Incredibly fast battery drain here in the UK on Vodafone's GSM network. Got my iPhone 4S on the first release day and have been letting it run down and fully recharging every day to see if it slowly improved the power retention with zero improvement. Ive turned off wifi, brightness down and turned off location so i'm trying to give it an easy life. I'll be taking mine back before a month is over and declaring it unfit for purpose and trying to get another blackberry that lasted 3 full days and not 10 hours. Didnt they test this phone at all?????? Absolute rubbish product compared to my old blackberry.

T Mobile is the same!!!  My blackberry was amazing compared to this - I could keep bluetooth on, have my emails constantly, make phone calls and still have loads of battery left to do other stuff!!!  Was going to get the new touchscreen Blackberry and decided to defect to the Iphone! 

Ok so after a full week with the phone, the most ive gotten:

11 hours of standby

6 hours of usage.

Im not sure if this is goood because some people are just getting horrible battery life. I would consider this bad compared to the other iPhone models that people have. My friend has a 3GS and she recharges every other day and has iOS 5 already on her phone. 

As long as week keep in contact with Apple, we hope to get an answer and fix this issue promplty.

Hi I recently upgraded my IPhone to 4s on Vodafone and have to agree the battery life is actually worse on this one than the 3gs !

  I have a 32g model which I am always having to plug in here and there in order to get a good operating day out of the phone and I am not using its features that much at all.

Main things I use are mail, messages and some forum apps but I did notice that using the Camera and calls seriously drain life expectancy.

Not good at all Apple, Not good.

Add one more to the list.  I'm on my second 32GB White AT&T 4S in the US-northeast area.  First one had a problem with the vibrate making noise so I swapped it.  Same poor battery on the new one.

- Exchange (mail, contacts, reminders and calendar) with push enabled

- iCloud (bookmarks, photostream and backup) with push enabled

- Siri on (no raise to speak)

- a few apps with Notifcation turned on -- very few noticfications though

- a few apps with Location Services (and shut off for everything iOS related except cell search)

I tried DFU restores, calibrating the battery multiple times, hard resets, setting up as brand new phone, closing out all apps, changing from push to fetch every hour.  You name it, I've tried it.

I thought maybe there was a problem with the fact I use an M-Cell at home and it is trying to constantly switch to decide whether to use that or the local AT&T tower.  But it happens offsite as well.

Something is definitely wrong in iOS 5.  I checked all the running processes for the suer account and all seem legit and only Apple iOS installed and still get 15-20% drop overnight while sitting idle with no apps running.

I was on a strong wi-fi signal yesterday starting from 100% battery life and got to 50% after 2 hours of wi-fi surfing while watching football.

Today, I'm at 30% with 2:43 usage and 10 hours of standby.  I definitely did not use it for 2:43 minutes. Maybe 1-1.5 hours TOPS!  So there is a lot of background stuff going on.  None of the usage was high powered (e.g., GPS navigation or large downloads or streaming videos) -- just email, a text, 30 minutes of phone calls and some basic browsing using Safari.

I have less installed than my iPhone 4 (since I setup as new didn't bother to install stuff I rarely use), use it approximately the same as before and I would rarely get to 50% by the end of the day.  So nowhere close to the battery life.

I want to love the phone but it's hard.