Q: iPhone 4s Battery Life?

I received my phone last weekend and experienced 5 to 8% battery drain per hour. IThe apple store wiped my phone and disabled some apps - however that did not resolve the problem. The rep blamed having an exchange email account as part of the problem. Don't get me wrong - I love the phone - however I hate having to keep the phone near a charger throughout the day.

Just returned fom an Apple Store in London where I met a very nice Genius. [He was very nice but I'm doubtful he was a genius].

When I showed him the screen captures from my overnight testing he was pretty convinced that something wasn't right. He went off to test it and said that a lot of apps were crashing, including Apple ones such as Safari, although the hardware tests came back ok. He admitted that virtually no phones fail that though. He said that Apple didn't really give them much training in deeper issues but when a phone has that many crashes and is obviously not performing as specified, they are told to replace it.

I'm going to do something that might appear daft to many here but I'm going to use my old backup initially on this phone, then test it vigorously as I did the last one. If I see similar usage/standby time ratios and/or poor battery, I'll do a virgin set-up. I want to see if the hardware makes any difference just now...

This new phone, for those interested in such things, has serial # starting 'C39G' [previous was DNPG]

To @bright raven, @InfiniteAffinity et al, I got a replacement sim from O2 earlier this week. Made no difference at all, as far as I could see, hence my next step was to get new hardware.

I'll report back any findings with the new handset...

Your n8 lasts 2 or 3 days under heavy usage? Wow Assuming it is two days i.e 48 hours?

http://www.gsmarena.com/nokia_n8-3252.php

It lasts for  6 hours on 3g and 12 hours on 2g calling*. Mine lasted the whole day, under HEAVY USAGE like

1. Gaming

2. Browsing the web

3. 2 to 3 hours of calling

4. Music most of the time

5. Watching a few videos now and then

6. Texting

Had an n97 mini before that which was not s good as the n97 but the battery was an issue. and Both the phones hung a billion times and in the n8 you cant even pull out the battery.  They were super slow compared to an an android s2 which i later bought in feb this year.

S2 again a brilliant phone, had to charge it every night like most other smartphones. So it will last me the next day too. But then again i fell in love with the iphone 4s. This was my 1st iphone and its awesome. Amazing interface.

Okay, may be not excellent. But pretty good considering my usage. I suggest you guys do a factory reset. Install all the applications again. And manually add in the contacts. I know thats pain in the wrong place. But hey give it a shot. It worked for a few people. Something to do with corrupt contact which is triggering something.

I  tried all tipps & hints - no improvement! That is the reason why i lose confidence.

My iPhone 4s battery life is erratic.  Some days holding a charge fine (minimal use of phone) and other days dropping to almost no charge (also minimal use).  I've spoken to Verizon and done the updates suggested by Apple and this group.  OS is the latest, time zone setting off, and email set to fetch rather than push, also reset the phone, drained to <10% and charged for 24 hours.  Verizon also had me do their dial-up update just over a week ago.

Things have been working well the last 10 days or so - until last night.  Went to sleep at 100% battery and woke up to 9% battery life.  The phone was not used at all during the night.  I had used the calculator prior to going to bed and then backed up to the main screen and pushed the top button to turn the screen off.  This morning with the phone at 9% charge I went back into the calculator and the total from yesterday was still on it.  I wonder if that app stays running in the background and drains the battery.  Seems like I had used the calculator one other time and left it on the screen.  The phone eventually times out, screen blanks out, but after a few hours it drained my battery.  This type of issue points to a software problem as being at the root of some users battery problems.  If a tiny app like a calculator can drain the battery I'm sure there are others Apple has out there that will do so too.  They need to start digging into this and get us a solution soon.

Bleeping,

Before you do anything, if you have the opportunity please test the battery drain on your new phone before making any changes.  When I first received my 2nd phone, I did a quick measurement (over 3 hour period) and saw about 1% drop per hour with default set-up and no usage.  It would be interesting to set a starting baseline for future comparisons.

http://www.yourdailymac.net/2011/11/zdnet-test-shows-that-iphone-battery-issue-i s-not-hardware-related/

So the solution would be to send this miraculos backup to apple - sorry but if both iphones had same iOS Versions, the difference can be only in the settings. This is ridiculous, because all of the users here try all combinations of settings and have no solution or improvement. I don't belive that this test is good enough - look, zdnet could make a real big thing, help apple and us...just showing us the settings.

zSkeptic:

Before you do anything, if you have the opportunity please test the battery drain on your new phone before making any changes

Yeah I dropped a ball there. Oops.

I took a screen cap as I left the store and one before I sync'd. Of course that camera roll didn't survive the restore. So now who's the 'genuis? Not me.

Anecdotally, it was roughly 15:00 when I left and it was at 70%. when I got home by 17:00 it was maybe 64%. 3%/hour maybe. That was out-and-about. And it was a boxed charge, so there's completely no comparison worth relying on.

If I'd have had the choice I'd have charged it and then left it overnight, straight out-of-the-box, to test its usage before loading it up. I can't do that, it is my business' most important tool, after the laptop.

Your n8 lasts 2 or 3 days under heavy usage? Wow Assuming it is two days i.e 48 hours?

http://www.gsmarena.com/nokia_n8-3252.php

 

It lasts for  6 hours on 3g and 12 hours on 2g calling*. Mine lasted the whole day, under HEAVY USAGE like

 

1. Gaming

2. Browsing the web

3. 2 to 3 hours of calling

4. Music most of the time

5. Watching a few videos now and then

6. Texting

 

I guess people's impression of heavy usage may vary, so maybe mine's only moderate. However, I do listen to podcasts, check email regularly, play some games, use Whatsapp and make some phone calls on it, and I NEVER turn WiFi or Bluetooth off, and I virtually never get less than 2 full days between charges (it obviously varies a bit from one time to another). The point is, if an OS is efficient (which Symbian is, whatever its other flaws), then battery life should not be the massive issue it is with many other OSs and devices...

Wow. That is really terrific battery life. My wifi and bluetooth are always switched off. May be i got a defective battery? anyway I am getting two more iphone 4s, i just hope they dont have the battery problem being faced by many here.

That will also be a factory unlocked phone. Set up new!

is there an IOS 5 update released today? My I4s is synced with my MBP at home and only the calendar and contacts are synced with my Windows 7 Laptop at work. On Win 7 I have Itunes 10.5.1.42 installed. When I plug my Iphone 4s into the Win 7 machine I get prompted that there is a IPhone update and do I want to download and install it. However, when I unplug my phone from the Win 7 machine and go to Software Updates in the phone it says there is nothing available. I can't find any referrence to an update online either. Am I just catching the update as they roll it out or is my Win 7 machine playing tricks on me.

@SirJ4ck

There are software bugs in iOS 5.x.x. Nobody denies this. Also it starts to look to me like there might be some hardware issues too. If one combines these two then one has a very nasty combination like for example phantom battery drain. The test done here:

http://www.yourdailymac.net/2011/11/zdnet-test-shows-that-iphone-battery-issue-i s-not-hardware-related/

just proves that indeed there are software bugs but still does not exclude the hardware issues.

I find really strange that iOS 5.0.x does not have any battery drain issues on iPods and iPads! My iPad with iOS 5.0.1 with everything turned on has the same battery life as with iOS 4.X.X!!! Is it because iPods and iPads have different antennas then iPhones?

If it is indeed only a software bug in iOS 5.0.X and already passed ~2 months and still there is no software fix/update for it makes me wonder how long will it take to get a decent version of iOS 5 which would work fine on iPhones? Years?

I truly believe this is a hardware issue, and here is why:

I bought the 4S shortly after it was released and was shocked at the poor battery life. I turned to this forum (and others) to get tips about improving the life while waiting for a software fix. Turned off location services, wifi, lowered brightness, all the usual suspects. 5.0.1 did nothing for me and I was surprised to read that it did something for a handful of users, but not for others. This made me start thinking that it was a hardware issue. Three days ago I made a genius bar appointment in the early afternoon (1:50) - by the time I arrived, the battery had 8% left. It had been on standby for around 7 hours with 3 hours of use - obviously not a workable phone if it can't even get to the afternoon. I wanted to swap phones, hoping that in the luck of the draw I might get a unit that didn't have a battery problem, and the Apple store was happy to swap. My new phone still has a shorter battery life than ideal, but it can get me through A WHOLE DAY! That's a miracle from where I was a week ago. I have all the same apps, all the same configurations, all the same usage - the only thing that has changed is that I leave wifi on, I have location services enabled, and my brightness is about in the middle. In other words, I've started using the phone the way it was intended. Right now I've got 66% power and the phone has been on standby for 9 1/2 hours with 2 1/2 hours of use. That's night and day from my original 4S.

If I were having significant battery issues, I would RUN to my Apple store and insist on swapping the phone. My guess is that there are only a handful of bad units - most every other 4S user I know has "crappy" battery life, but not unusuable battery life.