Q: iPhone 4s Battery Life?

MY FIX

Settings > General > Reset > Reset Network Settings

I had the same issues most everyone has been discussing.  I too had a previous Iphone and transferred my settings to my new Iphone 4S.  Instead of taking all the steps that many people discussed I narrowed them down to one at a time.  I believe the above is all you need to do.  I'm half way through the day and still at 92%, yesterday I was at 60 something. 

I also do not send out diagnostics.

Any progress on getting to the bottom of this?  Sorry, I don't think there is a bottom to get to. The battery if one of the worst features on this product and dont' think there is any way around it.  Anybody gotten a response from Apple about this?  I was real surprised to find my 4s only gets 4 hrs of usage time over a few days on a full charge and am very sceptical to anybody saying they get more than that. I totally bought into the Apple specs saying 8hrs of usage per charge and was pretty bummed to find I was suckered on that hype.  Oh well, so they're no different than any other corporation...

Okay, so here's what I've done... NOTHING! I/we all spent hundreds of dollars on an advertised product and I swear I am NOT going to WORK for what I've paid for. I don't trouble-shoot for Apple, I have a job.

So, here's what's happening - I am showing my 4S off to everyone here at my office (all of whom know me and expect me to have the latest) and I'm being honest. I have many co-workers and many who were interested in buying an iPhone 4S now are not. That's how it goes. Same story with family and friends.

If this is not fixed they will all see me switch from being a 4+ year iPhone user to an Android or some such. I am being patient and waiting until return time nears expiration but I am using this $400 device as advertised, running it into the ground, and showing its failure to those around me.

Today they are seeing my battery at 40% and it's only 1:00 PM here. I will have to seek out charge soon like a junkie and yes PEOPLE WILL BE TURNED OFF by my experience. If asked what is being done, I have to honestly say Apple is not publicly acknowledging any issue as of yet, we are not being told anything. Netflix hemorrhaged many customers with a similar silence.

I'm also concerned that the over-use and over-heating then cooling repetition of this iP4S's battery will cause it permanent harm, so even a fix may come too late.

I did a backup to iCloud last night and then restored the entire phone to original factory settings and then restored using the iCloud backup. Battery life seems to have improved significantly. Standby is at 5 hours, usage at 24 minutes. Down to 97% battery.

okay you reset your network settings. im new to iphone and well urm never had any settings to transfer across

Go Figure!

i have nearly all useful stuff off.

couldnt have said it better myself. unfortunately i only have 3 days and them im tied in

I decided to call Applecare.  Since I did everything already on this thread, they are having me run to an Apple Store for diagnostics.  I am sure that will show everything is fine, but I am going to try anyways.

BTW, for those that are talking to Apple or others, I setup a simple URL for this specific thread, it is:

http://bit.ly/4s-battery

Intereresting thing happened to me today.

After playing around with the settings that people have described here and doing a battery reset it seemed like my battery was doing ok this morning. Then just before lunch I reached into my pocket and I could feel the back of the phone was warm. Checked it out and sure enough I lost about 7% battery life in about 15-20 minutes. I turned it off and back on again and now battery consumption seems better and the phone isn't warm anymore.

So does this say that something, I suspect email (I am set to fetch every hour), got "stuck" in the on position and just kept churning running down the battery?

I've been keeping a close eye on my phone battery to try to figure out what's going on.

Also, if I "reset network settings" what does that actually do?

If you reset the network connections, all that you will lose is:

- passwords that may be remembered for WiFi (so you will have to enter passwords again when selecting WiFi for the first time)

- If you use VPN, you will have to re-enter those.

I believe that is all you will lose.

I have seen resetting Network connections resolve problems before and I have tried that also - but didn't with my situation.

Another good write-up on why resetting network settings is a good idea.

http://www.theiphoneguru.net/2011/01/25/why-you-should-reset-your-network-settin gs-to-improve-iphone-security/

In my troubleshooting intermittent drain issues, I enabled status bar icon for system services. I've noted the following:

'Setting Time Zone' uses GPS after a reboot, but only until it gets a good fix (faster outside, up to a minute inside).

'Traffic' occasionally stays on after use of the Maps app. Earlier today it did so, but went away after a minute. As I type this now it is stuck on yet again (even with ALL background apps ended/closed, including Maps itself). This time, the Traffic service has persisted, even through a call I just received. It did finally shut off a minute after I unplugged power and changed location. Traffic may be keeping GPS going if it sees you are standing still so it can report how long you are stationary (for traffic reporting I'd imagine).

It's possible that the Traffic service may be going through battery if it thinks you are sitting still on/near a road, even if you are just sitting at home with the phone in standby on your desk.

While the above may be one of the contributing issues to acute battery drain, another known one is related to exchange accounts - usually ones where settings were carried across a backup+restore.

Aside from those above, I've noted that the 4S drains faster than the 4 even when doing 'idle' activities. Sitting at a stagnant email or web page ticks down the battery meter about twice as fast on the 4S as compared to the 4 (both phones restored from the same backup, pop only email, low brightness, connected to same wifi network, etc.

It's as if the firmware is not aggressive enough at downclocking an otherwise idle / mostly idle 4S CPU. If both cores are active when they don't need to be, that may add up to greater power draw when out of standby.

Hope this info helps.

Al

earthtoryaan wrote:

 

New iPhone 4S 16GB Black:

 

Usage 3 Hours, 8 Minutes

Standby 10 Hours, 20 Minutes

Battery 47%

 

Do you think this is normal or not? I've been doing light web surfing a 30 minute call over 3G using Viber and maybe 30 minutes of playing Real Racing 2. I used to own an iPhone 4 and I do believe the battery was much better on that device however after checking the battery time and time again I fear I may have become somewhat paranoid or even turned insane. Hence the reason I'm asking the forum if this battery percentage seems reasonable.

The rated life when the phone is in use is 6-7 hours (depending on how you are using it), and it will be less if your 3G signal is not 5 bars. So you've used it for about half of the spec'd battery life and your battery is about half. Sounds about right.

Standby time is rated at 200 hours, which means it will drop 5% in 10 hours just from the standby. Plus the 50% usage for about 3 hours.

I did a reset of my network settings and it helped. But after a while the problem came back.

I am currently doing home office only, so the phone sits next to me on the desk, doing nothing (lost my enthusiasm to play with it with this battery).

After doing a factory reset and configure as new, pretty much disabling a lot, and not using it, it stopped eating 5% charge per hour and is down to about 1.5% per hour (standby, no email push etc). This is much worse then my 2.5 years old 3GS and would amount to only about 70h standby.

I think i'll give up now and send the phone back before i am tied into the contract.

Sorry Apple.

loopy8 wrote:

 

Any progress on getting to the bottom of this? 

There isn't, unless you bother to read the posts from people who say they have fixed it. If you only read the posts that say how terrible battery life is that's the equivalent of getting your news from only one network.

Turning off useful stuff will not fix the problem. Reading the thread and TRYING things that fixed it for others will. Your choice.