Q: iPhone 4s Battery Life?

I also use an exchange server and I have improved my battery life with some of the recommendations suggested on this forum but I also feel that the battery appears to drain quicker when the wifi is turned off.

Hmmmmm.....   I'm not sure I believe this statement.   Where do you get this info from?

enx23 wrote:

 

@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!!!!!!!!!

 

 

@Jameson!

That's easy! This is what the iPhone 4s shows! When one gets the iPhone 4s from standby mode one can see immediately on the screen how the 3G network symbol switches to Wifi symbol!!!

Another way to check this is to watch your celullar data usage over night while your iPhone 4s is in standby!!!

enx - I had no idea it did that. I'll be checking it tonight.

I recently bought a battery case for my iPhone 4S and would like to share it to all that are having problems with your battery. Check out http://www.ixtreme-accessories.com

Italy, don't feel bad...Apple basically did a diagnostic and said that I was lying. Their stats read differently. Ok, so explain this...NOTHING ON MY PHONE WHATSOVER except 2 apps which are turned off. "EVERYTHING" ELSE (Wifi-Spotlight-Push Notifications-etc. etc. etc. etc. etc.) IS TURNED OFF. EVERYTHING, YES. I have 3 bars at least lol

I have also noticed that it shows the 3G symbol, and not the WIFI symbol, I hope that it is not so, I cant see the point in it. I switch my phone of during the night so I have battery for the next day, I can almost keep it going for 2 days when I don't use it much.

Jameson,

I agree with you that the problem is more complex than just an email account.  However, Exchange servers can be set up differently and I believe this may account for the different experiences people are having.  Also, it is dependent on the volume of email traffic each user is recieving.  I am averaging somewhere between 10 to 20 emails per hour during the workday.  Even prior to the 4S and IOS 5, there has been a history of postings regarding iPhones and Exchange accounts issues.  Most of my co-workers haven't been monitoring their battery drain so it's hard to get a read on their situation. However, one other associate has changed his settings to manually fetch because of drain issues.  By coincidence, I just rescheduled a meeting on PC based Outlook Calendar but it didn't sync with iPhone Calendar.  Another bug?

I also believe there are runaway apps and other rogue processes that continue to run even after they are shut down through the multi-task bar.  Have you run any GPS based programs?  The reason I ask is that I have at least 1 program (INRIX Traffic) which will continue to run after shutdown and I think it was accelerating battery usage when I was traveling.  It took a hard reset to kill the process.  Good luck.

jwdean wrote:

[...]

 

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. 

 

The ultimate test would be using the same mailbox and contacts. I suspect it's about data, some field in some contact. But this is pure speculation.

Good luck!

This link may help ... In short, the author offers theory that there is a bug with the latest software.  It is suggested that turning off SETTING TIME ZONE within SYSTEM SERVICES within LOCATION SERVICES will minimize the drain on battery life until Apple comes up with a repair solution.  http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/oct/29/iphone-4s-battery-location-serv ices-bug

I hope someone will answer me, is this good stats? This is my first iPhone (4S) and i have no idea how long an iPhone should last. Pls tell me if it's good enough for an iPhone. Thanks so much!

-Irina from Philippines

Because usage specifications vary with the type of use, you must qualify what you did during those 9+ hours... use the following specs for reference:

Talk time: Up to 8 hours (12.5% per hour drain) on 3G, up to 14 hours (7.1% per hour drain) on 2G (GSM)

Standby time: Up to 200 hours (0.5% per hour drain)[at least that and up to 1-1.5%, depending on your settings, for every single hour since you disconnected the phone from the charger, on top of everything else]

Internet use: Up to 6 hours on 3G (16.6% per hour drain), up to 9 hours (11.1% per hour drain) on Wi-Fi

Video playback: Up to 10 hours (10% per hour drain)

Audio playback: Up to 40 hours (2.5% per hour drain)

Some people have huge drain during use... 1% per minute+ or heavy drains during standby like 10%/hour +. Obviously you don't have that as you have almost 30hrs of standby time which would be impossible otherwise.

Good luck!

I've tried everything and now the phone is good sometimes and horrible other times.  It drains erratically.  I could have a 50% drain in an 8 hour period of on and off use.  Then I have another 30 - 50% drain in 2 hours of standby.  It's crazy and it's driving me crazy.  I made an appt at Apple for Saturday.  This phone is frustrating the **** out of me and it's exhausting.  So I'll see what the "genius'" have to say.  Maybe it's just defective.  I've lost my calendar twice since the update and now I have no information at all under status and usage.  It disappeared a couple of days ago and never came back. 

Day 3:

Have done nothing except turn brightness up from 50% to 75%.

Still have most settings ON, including:

Location services ON

Notifications ON for standard apps and Hanging, Words and Chess with Friends (but not Calendar, it cuts my battery life for some reason)

Email on Manual

Bluetooth OFF, but was ON for about 10 minutes today to play Air Hockey

WiFi ON all the time, but only actually connected for 16 hours a day. Ask to Join Networks OFF

Cellular Data always ON

Usually around 4-5 bars of 3G reception (it improved from 3-5 to 4-5 with a restore)

Usually around 2-3 bars of WiFi when connected (it improved from 1-3 bars with a restore)

Usage:

50 minutes of videos

30 minutes of 3G browsing

30 minutes of Infinity Blade 2

10 minutes of Hanging with Friends on 3G

20 minutes of Fruit Ninja multiplayer over WiFi

10 minutes of Air Hockey 2 player over Bluetooth

Just keep draining your battery to full and make sure you unplug it as soon as it's done. Some people actually have a defect where the device doesn't charge to full, or does then loses charge. For me, a restore solved this.

I didn't really think too much of exchange being an issue for the battery discharge.  But then I added an exchange account to my iPad yesterday and today I noticed the battery draining about twice as fast as normal (subjectively - I wasn't measuring).

On my iPhone standby battery drain has usually been 2 - 4% (though sometimes as high as 9% unexplained).

I have better battery life from the iPhone than my HTC Desire Z (otherwise known as T-Mobile G2), but am not happy about it simply because I cannot achieve the .5% an hour stated by Apple.  But I don't know if that included Exchange push. 

So last night I turned Exchange to fetch every 15 minutes.  Everything else is enabled except a handful of non-standard notifications, and set time zone location service.

At 2122 my battery was at 54%.  Now it's 0520 and my battery is at 49%.  That's 5% in 8 hours = 0.625% an hour.   Pretty close to the fabled 0.5%.

So turning off Exchange push changes my standby from 20 - 40 hours to 160 hours.

It makes me wonder whether a lot of people who think they have a problem might not really, but just get caught up in the high battery life expectation and "battery problem" hysteria? 

Or should Exchange push not have this affect on battery life?  But like I said, it's still better or as good as my HTC phone with this turned on...

The real test will be to do a full charge tonight and then run the battery down and see if I really get the above battery performance longer term.