Q: iPhone 4s Battery Life?

I switched off the icloud automatic back up and it seems to give me a better battery life i am using a iphone 4s and my serial number starts with DNP

My 4s doesn't hold a torch to my girlfriends 4 as hers lasts over 2 days.

Mine at the moment is running iOS 5.0.1 and has the following usage:

Usage 12 Hours 18 Minutes

Standby 22 Hours 16 Minutes.

I've certainly not been using it for for over 12 hours!!  

Pretty disappointed at the moment.   Hopefully we get the fix asap, as I'm sick of playing with my settings, hoping for improvement.  Saying that, mine clearly isn't as bad as some that are reported on here!

Common Apple, pull your fingers out!

Oz.

I had the same problem as tlr2011.

I'm wondering if any users that are having this problem have their emails set up through an exchange account?

When I first purchased my 4s about 2 weeks ago I was loosing about 30% of battery life per hour.  The phone would also get very hot to the touch.  Unacceptable!  My colleague has the exact same phone and is experiencing a very good battery life with his phone.  After comparing all of his phone settings with my phone to ensure they were the same (if not more restrictive) and after following a lot of recommendations from this forum on resetting the phone and changing the setting over from scratch, I was not making any headway in improving my battery life.  I was also regretting my purchase.

I felt like I had a defective product, so I took the phone back to my provider and had my phone replaced (this took a lot of work that I will not get into).  I set it up new again and within minutes was still experiencing the exact same battery drain and heat issue.  After going back to my provider a second time I got the following recommendation to try:

Do a Hard Reset (warning - this will reset your phone and all of your settings):

1 - Hold the sleep/wake (top) button and the Home button for 8 seconds until the Apple logo fades away

2 - Open iTunes an plug in the phone while holding the Home button down until iTunes "sees" your phone.

3 - Restore the phone in iTunes by clicking the Restore button (don't restore your phone from a back-up).

Once I completed this, I fully charged the phone before changing any settings and left it for an hour.  It was still at 100%.  I reconfigured my settings, then I added my email accounts one at a time and left it for about an hour or so after added each account.  I added a personal (POP) account, then a gmail account and still after a few hours my battery life was at 99%.  Then I added my Exchange account, and within minutes my phone started to heat up and the battery life started to plummet. 

Instead of doing a hard reset on my phone again and updating all of my settings, I just deleted my email accounts, restored my network settings, and added my two accounts that were not causing problems:

1 - Delete email account(s) in Setting > Mail, Contacts, Calendars >  Email Account > Delete Account

2 - Reset Network Settings in Settings > Reset (at the bottom) > Reset Network Settings

3 - Reboot your phone by holding the sleep/wake (top) button then sliding to off.

4 - Re-add the email accounts that were working in Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > Add Account...

Since my colleague was not having a problem with his connection to our Exchange account, I am still confused as to what the exact problem is, I verified all of the information needed to set up my exchange account and I am still having problems once I connect (so I delete again).  Our company is switching to a new exchange in less than a week so I'm going to wait it out and see if connecting to the new exchange will resolve my issue.

I forgot to mention that after I reset network settings, my current usage since last full charge is as follows:

Usage: 2 Hours, 32 Minutes

Standby: 23 Hours, 21 minutes

Battery Life: currently 44%. (running iOS 5.0.1, Bluetooth ON, Wi-Fi, ON, Location Services ON, emails set to PUSH)

Prior to the reset, my usage to standby ratio was never under 60% and I had to charge my phone every 3-4 hours.

same problem here, in Italy...Please Apple fix the battery issue!

Well at least you can go with carpaccio and pinot noir for lunch, and finish off with sorbet, almond biscotti, tiramisu and a real latte. You're not stuck with a deep fried o'henry as a delicassy and the ever so overrated "we can't stand bitter so make it light" californian - and a starbuck's mezzo catso mezzo...

amazing. i dont see why i cant get that battery life

i talked to Apple (on my iphone 4s) for 14 minutes to review the problem... the battery went from 34% to 24% on that phone call.   The support person acknowldeged that there is no battery problem - i just can't use the network wi -fi, close all the open apps, turm off all the push notifications, the locations services and understand that talking on the phone uses a lot of power.

I'll take my Blackberry back - thank you.

Shame on Apple.

jwdean wrote:

 

I had the same problem as tlr2011.

 

I'm wondering if any users that are having this problem have their emails set up through an exchange account?

 

Yes, I believe my company's Exchange account has been a major contributor to my accelerated battery drain.  To improve performance, I changed the setting to Fetch Manually.  I found that any of the other Fetch options (15 mins, 30 mins, 1 Hour)  were not working correctly and the manual fetch did help significantly.  I also do not sync contacts and reminders which I think also helped the battery.  I anticipate turning off the calendar sync may even reduce battery drainage more but I need that functionality.  It would be interesting to see if your colleague had modified the Exchange email settings.

I followed the settings laid out by Thomasgrox on page 476 of this forum and I have gone from losing 40% of the battery power, over night while 4s was just on idle, to 2 hour 28 minutes of usage (wifi on all day, maunal email, 1 hour of calls, texts and emails both sent and received) alongside 12 hours 55 minutes on stand-by and still have 69% of the battery left. I am wondering if the 'ask to join networks' setting is causing a problem when you are in an area of multiple wireless. I had tried most of the tweaks previously.

Called apple to and they said my battery was normal. But i dont even have music on it because of how fast it dies.. is this normal running verizon, ios 5.0.1 and only texting..

I'm not challenging your belief by any means, but your post makes me further believe that different combinations of settings can have drastically different results.   I also have a corporate Exchange email account set up.   I have that set for PUSH and everything on except Siri lift to activate.  

If I am attached to Wifi, either at home or at the office, my battery drain is non-existent.   My problem ONLY occurs when I am away from Wifi and getting data via 3G.   I drain at 0.5% per hour attached to wifi.   During my one hour commute, with strong 3G signal all the way, but no wifi, I lost at least 5% and up to 10%.   That's with no real usage, maybe a short phone call.   So, in my case, Im convinced the problem is with iOS5 handling of 3G data signals........   

64gb 4s from day one of the release.

Everything ON except Siri lift to activate

Push Exchange and Yahoo Mail

Fetch Gmail

zSkeptic wrote:

 

Yes, I believe my company's Exchange account has been a major contributor to my accelerated battery drain.  To improve performance, I changed the setting to Fetch Manually.  I found that any of the other Fetch options (15 mins, 30 mins, 1 Hour)  were not working correctly and the manual fetch did help significantly.  I also do not sync contacts and reminders which I think also helped the battery.  I anticipate turning off the calendar sync may even reduce battery drainage more but I need that functionality.  It would be interesting to see if your colleague had modified the Exchange email settings.

@Slingajo03

The battery is probably fine. The problem is with iPhone 4s and/or iOS 5.x.x! I suggest that you tell them that the problem is your iPhone because you have to charge it every X hours instead of 200 hours as it is in the specification! They are just playing with words!

zSkeptic wrote:

 

It would be interesting to see if your colleague had modified the Exchange email settings.

He did not modify his settings and was using full functionality, set to push (i.e. how it should work).

I think there might be some kind of user setting with my account on the exchange server itself that is causing the issue, as we both set up the exchange on our phones using the exact same domain and server exchange info.  That's why I'm leading in the direction that it is not a problem with the phone itself, but rather a problem on what the exchange is sending to it.  I might be able to provide some more insight once we switch to the new exchange. 

It doesn't make sense that you would have to turn all of your settings off on your phone in order for it to be usable for more than 3 hours.  With all of your settings off, what use is it?

@Jameson!

First, when iPhone 4s goes to standby mode always it disconnects from Wifi and connects to 3G (even if you have excellent Wifi coverage and bad 3G coverage)!!!!! => all the syncs in standby mode are done over 3g even if one has very good wifi coverage!!!!!!!!!

A big help for the battery life would be if the iPhone 4s would switch to Edge/GSM network instead of 3g network which ***** a lot of energy. For some reason iPhone 4s always uses 3g network (3g network <> cellular data) even if the 3g network coverage is bad or even if it is very crowded.