Q: iPhone 4s Battery Life?

All who have still problems with battery install the newest ( build 9a406 of iOs 5.0.1) this build has fix my batterie problem. My battery kepps now 3x longer. Do an factory restore on itunes to install it.

I just got my first iPhone 4s.  I personally love the fact that the phone just works.  As to battery drain my wife raved that her iPhone 4 could last a couple days without charging however that is not the case with the 4s.  I came from Androids (super sucky battery life) and BlackBerrys (awsome battery life) so I don't mind pluging the phone in from time to time but I thought this phone would be better.....

Well i can see what's gona happen here we are all going to get fobbed off with a **** bumper pack with built in battery just like apple fobbed us off with the iphone4 signal problem they gave everyone a **** bumper to put round it........ fuming im on my 4th phone now still the same think ill get myself a samsung sod apple

Disgusted with the fact I'm getting 35-40 hours on 'standby' and having spent the 2 months since i bought the phone at great expense, just to fiddle around with settings, turning off features and doing god knows how many resets and restores. Visited the (so called) genius bar in Glasgow last week. Not happy at all. Last iPhone I'll eveer buy. Here's the feedback I left them...note the comedy excuse i was given to counter the complete LIE about 200 hours of standby time.

"just generally disgusted with the fact I'd taken the time to travel to Glasgow (I don't live there) after being told I'd definitely be given a replacement iphone after describing my problem over the phone (am getting 20% of advertised standby time on iphone 4s). On arriving in Glasgow though and speaking to the 'genius' I was told that this is 'normal' (despite the fact that looking through the forums there are numerous users who don't experience the issue at all) - and also being given the hilarous excuse that 'standby' actually refers to the phone being in airplane mode after being shown website text that said it's when 3G is off (err, yes - that would be STANDBY in 2G though). STANDBY maans it's ready to receive a phone call. i.e. being in S...T...A...N..D...B..Y. The clue is in the wording."

Hi. I returned my iphone 4s for battery issues. The the battery life was terrible. I have to tell you the Apple support was very fast and I will have a new iphone 4s on Tuesday.

Has anyone returned their iphone 4s? If so, what about the new one? Same problems as with the previous one or not?

Thank you. Happy holidays to everybody.

I'd have loved to have had my phone replaced for a new one and been able to tell you, but after being promised a replacement, was then refused one after doing a 3 hour round trip to get it. My iPhone has 'normal' battery life apparently at 3-4% drain per hour - oh yes because 'standby' means it's in airplane mode. Lol. &£@%ers

I honestly think its the built (firmware) problem.

My sister's iPod Touch 4th Gen was 100% with extra hours of trickle charging c/o Battery Doctor at around 18:00. Today at 00:46, she's now at 35%. @_@ She has the 9A405 build.

I'll post my usage tom. I still have 8%, will take screenshot at 1%.

Today I released my third workaround for the iPhone 4S wifi sync battery drainage configuration bug.

This workaround should work if you are suffering from the infamous WiFi sync bug on your iPhone 4S.

Details can be found here .

Regardless if it worked for you or not, I'd appreciate it if you'd fill in the poll here.

In short, here is the Problem , Cause, Solution with regards to the WiFi Sync battery drainage configuration bug :

Problem :

The iPhone 4S has been plagued by battery drainage issues since its launch together with IOS 5. This solution will only deal with the so called WiFi sync configuration bug : if an iPhone 4S would be used together with iTunes and the WiFi sync function would be enabled, the battery would drain very fast when idling : the battery would typically drain 30 percent when idling for 8 hours and show several hours of so called 'phantom' usage. These are rough numbers. During the testing sometimes the phone could be configured in such a way that the drainage could be about 10 percent/hour(!) Normal drainage overnight with a fully charge iPhone typically stays within 8 percent in about 10 hours.

There are still more problems as reported by users that have nothing to do with the WiFi sync configuration bug, but they are not reproducable by me : if you own one of these plagued devices and would like to help solving the issue, please contact me so I can help.

Cause :

(NON technical explanation )

Some routers don't properly communicate with the iPhone. The iPhone tries to communicate but fails and keeps trying : the WiFi sync bug is born.

(technical explanation )

The iPhone uses something called multicast DNS -> this feature is part of Apple's bonjour networking. Normally there is no problem with this, but some routers are not communicating properly with the iphone 4S. Everytime you connect to a WiFi network, the router not only gives you a unique address ( IP ) but populates the DNS entry in your iPhone : this DNS is needed to resolve website names to IP's. Without it you would not be able to use names to point to something on the web.

Some routers use something called DNS forwarding -> they act as a DNS server within the WiFI network and forward all traffic regarding DNS queries to the proper DNS servers ( Typically outside the WiFi network ). Some routers who act as DNS forwarders aren't doing this properly : the iPhone 4S continuously tries to resolve a name using multicast DNS but keeps failing to do so because the router won't comply. These retries are causing the excessive battery drain : the iPhone won't go to sleep when it is supposed to and stays awake.

Solution :

Find your DNS entry for you WiFi network and check to see if this holds a valid IP for a DNS. If it only shows your router's IP you have the chance of the WiFi drainage bug showing up. Either configure your router in another way so it uses a proper DNS or change the DNS entry in your iPhone to something else ( For instance the Google Public DNS : 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4  : they both can be added in your iPhone by using a comma -> 8.8.8.8,8.8.4.4 ). Remember : everytime you reset your phone your router will populate this field again with it's DNS so you have to redo the action.

Regards.

How do you (or someone else) explain that the excessive 4S battery-drain is completely gone after replacing the 'old' microsim card for the latest 9-pins from Vodafone?

Note that this 'old' simcard gives no battery-issues with my 'old' iPhone 4 but only with the 4S

No other software changes were made.

Eddy

I don't understand why they didn't just use the iPhone 4's battery in the 4S...? I would have much preferreed 300 standby hours rather than 200 hours for an extra hour of talk or so and there wouldn't be all of these problems.

Wow great job Bux!  While I have not really had a major battery issue I have noticed that people resetting the network settings  (or the process described by DavidCH) helped. Perhaps this explains why. And also why it comes back. I have a DLINK Dir-655 and do have dns relay enabled and it seems to work fine. However I have seen a lot of recommendations  for general home networking that for best performance NOT to allow your router to provide DNS as it may not have the power to support many connecitons. That having your ISP's dns be distributed with your DHCP settings. Actually I did have it set up that way but a recent router reset it defaulted back to DNS relay. Anyway I did notice a slight improvement a while back by simply turning off wi-fi sync. Figured why not because I have to fire up iTunes on the machine so not that big a deal to plug in when need to sync (not that often). In doing so it appeared that wifi goes to sleep when phone sleeps and fires back up quickly when hit lock screen. If I remember when wifi sync was on, the wifi seems to have always been on ( i didnt see the 3g change over to wifi when i woke up phone). Anyway this makes since, I suspect DLINK  model i have is ok either way, explains why multiple replacement handsets dont fix anything and why only  certain folks have the issue.  I have been in these forums for a while myself and I am convinced that the 4s is not a faulty device (hardware wise) so returning 5 times is not the answer. It most certainly appears to be iOS 5 issues, certain apps, and now certain routers or configurations of them. Interesting that the 5.0.1 (9A406) version update seems to be helping folks with the battery too. Perhaps your discovered bug was addressed with that version as well as SIM card issues.

Thanks for taking the time to do all this work but more importantly  for sharing your results and information!

Hi Eddy,

Like I stated before : there seemingly are several issues. One of them is the wifi sync issue which didn't work for my particular setup and I propose a solution for that. Other issues might still be there. Apple also pushed a new 5.0.1 ( 9A406 ) for new phones which seemed to address a SIM issue.

Regards.

It is funny to see that the make of the router that isn't working well with my setup is the same as yours ( D-Link ), only your setup doesn't show the problem.

I also found that it is the combination of the router and the iMac that makes the drainage appear : if I disconnect my iMac from the network there is no more battery drainage on my iPhone 4S.

Regards.

I forgot to post a link to the workaround youtube video : here it is....

Regards.

To make long story short first: my 2nd replacement device suffers from NO battery issues. I'm happy. Now read on...

I'm on my 3rd iPhone 4s 64GB. I had the first one for a month, waiting for Apple fixes, trying out things. I never believed in hardware defects, since these things are produced by robots and looked down on people not wanting to wait for Apple to fix a software flaw and eagerly returning their phones and being very vocal about it, etc. Then i saw the drain on a year old iPhone 4 we have in the family and a two year old iPhone 3Gs and finally understood: something was really wrong.

I returned my first iPhone 4s at that point. My second iPhone 4s was identical in terms of battery issues. It drained 30% in the time I slept. The vibrator had a different sound and feel, too and unlike the previous iPhone, time zone [bug] didn't set the time properly. I did the restores, turning off services and a few more tricks, but basically nothing worked and I got very frustrated. The chances of my battery issues being resolved by a replacement just got way way smaller since this was already a replacement! If the second iPhone had it, then it clearly couldn't have been hardware, I thought.

But I sent it back anyway. I was sad, sometimes mad, but very frustrated for this very expensive little computer.

My third piece arrived a few days ago. As I set it up I had zero issues with activation, this and that. Every single step worked as it should. I played with it a few hours in the evening and went to bed with about a half of the battery used up. In the morning this half was still there! I couldn't believe my eyes! No issues with time zone, and the vibrator alert sounded like on the first 4s, too. Wow. A perfect piece?

I believe it might be hardware. Don't give up people. I didn't turn off anything! I'll say it again, I didn't mess with the settings AT ALL! DID NOT. Did not turn off any location services either. I simply left everything at its default. I didn't even connect it to my iTunes and I'm weary to do so. I got my music through iTunes Match and all else syncs via iCloud anyway. I didn't restore any of my backups from iCloud either. I started from scratch.

After that morning when the battery didn't loose any of its 50% charge, I used the phone normally throughout the day. I went to bed at 1 am that day and the battery was under the 10%. Yes. True story.

Don't give up people, the working 4s exists.

Good luck and Merry Christmas!

Roman