Q: iPhone 4s Battery Life?

True, but what else is he going to tell me? It's not like he's going to say: "Why don't you try a blackberry...I hear they will last upwards of three days with regular usage on a single charge."  Anyways, I already had a blackberry...battery was great, but the rest of it sucked.

Seriously.  I could barely contain myself.  I was livid when that snotty little hipster told me to reset my expectations.

Nope, this shouldn't be the problem. I always left 3G active on my iPhone 4. When I went to work with 3G and wifi enabled, six push apps, 3 push email accounts, I still got 55% battery left after an twelve hour day with light usage. (No Fotostream, no iCloud backup, Siri enabled)

Today with my 4S I came home after 9 hours, very light usage, same settings as above, two minute call and I was down at 12%. It says I used it for 7 hours 19 minutes with a standby time of almost 12 hours. How can this be possible? Full charge was only 12 hours ago?

Are my expectations too high?

Jason. Simply print this:

http://www.apple.com/uk/iphone/specs.html

Especially the Power and Battery section, highlight this line:

Standby time: Up to 200 hours

Then mention that even with no use, you are a fraction of that. Then tell him to reset his expectations :¬)

You have the right to take it back. It's not fit for purpose or as advertised. Do not take no for an answer.

Alright peeps, ok I shall enlighten you of my experience.  I too have had the dreaded batterygate effect on the iphone 4S since I had it brand new. 

I restored it off my original Iphone 4 backup which in turn was from my Iphone 3G which was my first iphone.  I too tried every thing I could to try and extend the battery life, I tried battery conditioning software, process killers, memory boosters, turned practically everything off, charged it from dead every couple of weeks...there ain't nothing I didn't try.

Almost two months down the line and I was ripping my hair still barely getting between 14-16 hours at best!!! The final straw was when I went to bed with 25% battery and after 6 hours sleep it had evidently died meaning my alarm did not go off, luckily it wasn't an important alarm but the phone was dead as a dodo!!  So I phoned Apple and complained and they came up with an ingenius suggestion!!  They told me to restore my phone back to factory settings and set it up as a new phone.......if that didn't work they were going to get me a new phone...as dubious as I was I did just that, I backed everything up and because of my icloud account I didn't lose any contacts/calenders notes or photos, but you do lose any settings on your phone and apps/games, which was a minor inconvenience.  BUT....it has done the trick....it has worked a treat and now it is VASTLY improved!!!  I finished the setup, put all my apps back on, music and stuff on left the settings cos I was knackered and went to bed with it fully charged.

I woke up and I couldn't believe my eyes....my battery was still well in the 90's with everything on full whack, all settings and on Wi-Fi etc!!! whether as before I would lose between 25-30% and that was with fine tuned battery saving settings.  I have adjusted the settings and now almost 12 hours on with quite heavy use (tethering/light text/facebook and a 5 minute phone call) is still the best side of 50% a first!!  By now I would be lucky to have about 20% left and that was with light use!!

So I urge you to try this little trick before righting it off!!!

process: transfer purchases, back up on itunes/icloud, back up all your photos/videos and then erase all contents and settings off the phone.  When it resets setup as new phone, resync your icloud account which should restore your contacts etc, and then resync your apps and music!! All done!!

if it is makes no significant difference claim a new handset!

It looks like another 5.1 beta was released to developers according to BGR:

http://www.bgr.com/2011/12/12/apple-ios-5-1-beta-2-now-available-for-developers- heres-the-change-log/

Hoping they are moving closer with the 'battery fix'

Adding myself to the long list of unhappy iPhone BatteryGate users. I've done just about all I can and the battery drain is not acceptable.

I am noticing that it is draining faster when connected to 3G than WiFi, and that is drains very little when in airplane mode. I've got excellent coverage here and never had a problem with my 4. Now, once I unplug the 4S from the charger, it immediately drops to 99%. I've turned everything off that I can and still there is a noticable drop. But this seems to happen more when I'm not on my wifi network. There's some hidden data being exchanged that I cannot put my finger on. I'll go out and tuck my phone in my pocket and not use it at all for an hour, and my usage meter tells me the iphone has been in use for over a half hour.

Really, what is taking Apple so long in acknowledging and fixing this problem?

Antonio

3dmac wrote:

 

Here is my latest stats:

3hrs on 3g web and EBAY app shopping, 48 min calls,text and system usage.

25min of the 3g I was streaming music from my fav Hawaiian radio station plugged into my cars interface.

(Note the plugged in since last full charge: This only topped off 5%charge while streaming 3g web)

As far as % use per hr I was pacing at about 1.5%/hr use + standby

I can actually go one more day before full charging. But this is were I usually plug it in % wise.

I don't have any batt issues EVER since 14th release enabled.

1Apple hope this is a little more info than my previous.

Mahalo

Nice qualified stats... under the best scenario, it's really 6hrs use/24hrs standby or 3hrs use/48hrs standby or 1.5hrs use/72hrs standby. I'm sure you'll acknowledge that 48 mins of call on 2 days is little. I mean, a business user or a teen or someone who replaced his landline with such will use much much more than that - at least 2 hrs per day in my opinion. When you couple that with 2hrs 3G internet, plus 1% drain per hour from charger disconnect, well (2x12.5%) + (2x16.6%) = 58% + 24x1%(I don't fully believe in the 0.5% spec drain with setup), then you end up in the 80%+ zone. And with mail autochecking and apps, that will eat the rest. As I had said before, I qualify the phone as a "30hrs day" phone (usage + standby). I mean it's not bad.

If the phone was given to me for free, I might consider using it with NO 3G data i.e. voice+text only + wifi spots, hereby surely extending the battery life by some hours. Or I may indulge myself with the Nokia N8 (old symbian with 12mpix cam) and a 30$/month voice+text only plan - going ios/android -less is the way to go for real battery performance. Looks AND economy. Or I may simply use skype and google call on my cheap laptop and pay nothing, as I usually do. With the money I would spend on the phone and plan, I could buy a DKNY shirt per month for the "look" factor lolll.

p.s. Indeed I am curious if anyone uses the phone with no 3g data plan or is it possible to have a sim that would yield 2G call and no data - and the corresponding impact on battery use.

jasonsan1 wrote:

 

I know...can't really escalate it, so what other options do I have? I already emailed Tim Cook

If you thought the Genius's response was unacceptable (which I believe is the case) then you should ask for his supervisor.  If you are not satisfied with the supervisor's response then ask for the store manager.  If you are unhappy with the store manager then ask him for the district manager's name and contact information.  If he is unable to give you this information then ask the store manager how you can launch a formal complaint to his senior management.  In addition, you should get the store number and all of the names of the associates that you spoke with.  I have seen a link in the these forums where you can post complaints directly to Apple.  Also you can call the Apple Care number and ask for customer relations.  There are plenty of paths for you to pursue and if you are persistent, I believe Apple will eventually respond with a replacement. 

AMRosario wrote:

 

 

Really, what is taking Apple so long in acknowledging and fixing this problem?

 

Antonio

Three words - holiday season sales

Im going to be completely honest. i have a C39GJ model 4s. and i have been experiencing terrible battery life as well. ive been following this thread for about 30 pages. and out of nowhere i have been getting amazing (compared to what i have been getting, and i dont know if this is good life or not) battery life. i dont know how it happened. i have 3g and wifi on all the time. If anyone has questions about my settings i will give a rundown, feel free to ask. But here are my results for the past two days the phantom left my room.

Once again, the battery seems to be holding up just fine. This is a mix of 3D gaming, WiFi and 3G browsing and videos pretty much nonstop for 2 and a half hours. Just keep persevering people, hope isn't lost.

Usage on my iPhone 4 running 5.0.1 has been all over the place since the upgrade.

I get anything between 15 hours of standby to 2+ days with very similar usage.

This is a 32 GB AT&T iPhone 4 with Wifi ON, 3G ON and email set to manual fetch and location system services off.

Noting in notifications center.

Acualy usage was emails, texts, music, photos and browsing.

lollllll

Nice stunt guys

Here's mine!!!!

I just bought my 4s two weeks ago and Imbvery disapointed because the battery life. I hope Apple fixes this problem because I was expecting so much about this generation iPhone and it is a really important fact to decide buy the next cell phone, probably the next time I'll a Samsung.