Q: iPhone 4s Battery Life?

I'm gonna have to join the club here, had the 4S just a few days and at 1% the usage was:

Usage: 6 hours, 15 minutes

Standby: 8 hours, 3 minutes

Surely that can't be good?

I've noticed he battery goes down 1% like every 3-5 mins, will Apple ever do a fix?!

@Sylar2011

Sylar2011 wrote:

 

I'm gonna have to join the club here, had the 4S just a few days and at 1% the usage was:

Usage: 6 hours, 15 minutes

Standby: 8 hours, 3 minutes

Surely that can't be good?

It is pretty bad compared to iPhone 4!

I've noticed he battery goes down 1% like every 3-5 mins, will Apple ever do a fix?!

According to Apple and iOS 5.1 beta 2 and beta 1, Apple is not even working on it! Apple is busy adding new features to iOS 5.1!

@salvagoxo

salvagoxo wrote:

 

This is my first iPhone. Is a good performance?

It is pretty bad compared to iPhone 4!

My battery is draining more than 10% in just one night on standby. I have everything turned off (location, email, siri, etc...). When will apple release a fix for this?

I didn't reset my settings because its a brand new iPhone 4S, 5.0 OTB, the first thing I did was upgrade to 5.0.1, did not restore any backups or anything.

I've been monitoring the battery and it is better now, not perfect, but much better. I´m getting a solid 5%/h, enough for a full day without recharge. With normal usage, I'm not keeping the track of stand-by or usage of services times.

What I did was:

- Keep turning off Cellular data when wifi available, when not then turn off wifi and on Cellular Data. But never have both turned on at the same time.

- Turn off bluetooth

- On Location Services I only have "Find my iPhone" active, all the other Apps are off unless I need to use one. Siri will not work with location services here, so I just turned off that. But keep Siri enabled.

- On System Settings of Location Services I only have Cell Network Search and Compass Calibration ON.

- Brightness at 50% or less.

- 3 e-mail accounts configured as Fetch, every 15 mins. (Push is OFF)

I also keep the track of unused apps and shut them down.

I know 5%/h is still not the best result, but at least I can get to home to charge it over the night every day.

Now I have another issue, this morning (after a full night connected to the wall) the battery was 90%, I had to unplug it and connect it again, it got to 95% in 15 mins and I had to disconnect it to leave.

Any ideas?

whats the issue

i did this

took it out the box

turned it on and setup my email and apps and games and music

using the usb cable

then i turned off bluetooth and location siri and wifi 3g

and used it as a games and music machine till it went flat

and bypass the 20% and 10% warnings

ill cycle it again this way in about a month

i then fully charged it without disturbing it took about 2hrs

from the wall charger

i get more than 5days easy

the trick is to only use wifi etc network as needed

and music and games dont seem to impact it much 2-3% per 1-2hr session

push notifications are hungry

and 3g is very hungry together with bluetooth will make the battery go flat quite fast

a list of optimisations is a few pages back

but really there is no fault you just havent cycled the battery

i found grouping the main itop icons together saved some power...

Thanks for the tips.

Could you pleas explain again, step by step, how to "cycle" the battery?

Having battery problems with my brand new 4S. Doesn't even last the day, with low usage. And I make sure to fully charge and even "overcharge" using the wall charger.

Luis, Try the following procedure from Davidch in another thread. This helps a lot typically.  And the calibratation of battery is usually required for new phone. As for the drop in charge while plugged in, that seems to be related somehow to wifi being turned on. No definitive answer yet as to why but it seems to happen in early morning. The phone will remain at 100% until sometime in the early morning (6:50 to 7:00am in my case)  8 or so in others i have read, then drop to like 96% or 97% in like 15 to 20 minutes.. It can be unplugged and plugged back in and quickly return to 100%. If wifi is off this does not happen.

[credit to Davidch for this fix]

For anyone new to the thread be sure to go through these steps to address the battery after updating to iOS 5.0.1:

1. Reset all settings (settings app-> general-> reset)

2 a. Go through initial setup steps (lang, wifi, siri, enable location, etc) and choose setup as new phone (don't worry your apps, data, contacts, mail will still be there). Do NOT restore from iCloud or iTunes (It can copy back corrupt settings)

2 b. If you do not get the complete new setup screen with language setup and setup as new phone or restore from iTune/iCloud backup, be sure to go back to #1 and reset all settings again (it should happen the second time)

3. Turn off system location services timezone and iAd (settings -> location services -> system services)

4. Fully discharge battery (until you get the spinning wheel and it shuts off)

5. Fully recharge battery (overnight if possible)

In my experience this improves the Standby battery drain issue significantly in most cases.  It reduces drain from 2-4% or more per hr to 0.5% or less. It has worked for many, many users now. If it does not work after a few try's you may have a real battery or hardware issue and should contact Apple.  Good Luck!

dvoralai wrote:

 

Thanks for the tips.

Could you pleas explain again, step by step, how to "cycle" the battery?

 

Having battery problems with my brand new 4S. Doesn't even last the day, with low usage. And I make sure to fully charge and even "overcharge" using the wall charger.

See my last post just before this. But the cycle the battery (calibration) is basically draining the battery until the spinning star shows up and phone shuts down. Then a full charge undisturbed to 100% preferably overnight but maybe an hour more after reaching 100% should be ok. This really desired for a brand new iPhone and Apple recommends maybe once a month  to keep battery conditioned and calibrated.

I've just set up this very minute to also voice my problems. I've recently bought an iPhone 4S about two days ago now. It's my first iPhone so I just 'Set it up as new phone', I installed all my apps and music that I had from my old 2nd Gen iPod Touch and went along my day with my new iPhone. So, the past two days I've had it the battery drains like CRAZY, playing games is a no-no, I've even stared at the home screen with NO apps running and I watched the % bit of the battery go down infront of my very eyes in a matter of 1-2 minutes. This is unacceptable! My 2 year old iPod touch has lasted 2-3 days on standby with full charge (because I hardly use it now) If I leave my 4S on standby it loses maybe 1 or 2% every 10 minutes or so! I've done everything that has been mentioned in this forum with no avail! I've got until the 9th January to send it back to Apple if i'm not happy with it. If they don't release an update before then I might just get my money refunded back to me instead of asking for a replacment. NOT IMPRESSED APPLE.

Thanks sbailey,

I will do the procedure tonight, and get back tomorrow with my results.

0.5%/h is a dream! I really hope I can get to that.

I will also turn off Wifi tonight to see if it gets 100% charged.

luis144 wrote:

 

Thanks sbailey,

 

I will do the procedure tonight, and get back tomorrow with my results.

 

0.5%/h is a dream! I really hope I can get to that.

 

I will also turn off Wifi tonight to see if it gets 100% charged.

BTW, you can do the reset anytime. No iTunes needed and your data stays intact, just have a few settings to set back up like wifi connections, your email signature, who u are to Siri, and stuff like that. Takes probably less than 10 minutes. Follow procedure exactly. Good luck hope it helps!

ashsimmo wrote:

 

I've just set up this very minute to also voice my problems. I've recently bought an iPhone 4S about two days ago now. It's my first iPhone so I just 'Set it up as new phone', I installed all my apps and music that I had from my old 2nd Gen iPod Touch and went along my day with my new iPhone. So, the past two days I've had it the battery drains like CRAZY, playing games is a no-no, I've even stared at the home screen with NO apps running and I watched the % bit of the battery go down infront of my very eyes in a matter of 1-2 minutes. This is unacceptable! My 2 year old iPod touch has lasted 2-3 days on standby with full charge (because I hardly use it now) If I leave my 4S on standby it loses maybe 1 or 2% every 10 minutes or so! I've done everything that has been mentioned in this forum with no avail! I've got until the 9th January to send it back to Apple if i'm not happy with it. If they don't release an update before then I might just get my money refunded back to me instead of asking for a replacment. NOT IMPRESSED APPLE.

If you have followed the reset and battery calibration, turned off some offending notifications and locations (not EVERY app needs to use location and notification) and have a good cell and wifi signal and pretty much out of the box apps, then most likely you need to return and exchange. You mentioned you installed all your old apps so then I would start looking at those. Apparently there are some apps that are not behaving with iOS 5 and creating battery drain. That seems to be the #1 cause of poor battery is from folks restoring backups from older devices. Also if it was 5.0 out of box and you updated to 5.0.1 then the reset all settings process should be followed.( Its outlined above) Also then battery should be calibrated on a new iPhone.

Thanks for the reply, I have downloaded all my old games and apps from my old iPod touch but the problem is how do I know which one is causing the problems? I'm not sure whether it was 5.0.1 out of the box or 5.0. When I bought the phone they helped me set it up and when I got back home I immediately synced it with iTunes and chose ''set up as new phone'' I could try and do the reset from phone option but exactly what settings will I lose? (I need to know so I can put all the setting back again straight away. Thanks again for the reply.

I find it quite unbelievable that you claimed that during gaming- only 2-3% drain per 1-2hr

If I assume the worst case scenario for you - 3% drain per gaming hour - it mean u'll get about 33hrs of gaming time on ur 4s

As far as I gathered, no company has yet able to achieve that kinda battery

sorry mate, am not implying that you're lying- but what you say kinda shocked me up abit.