Q: iPhone 4s Battery Life?

Exactly my point Z.

enx23 keeps quoting a Korean news paper article that polled 10 people and 8 of them said they had static. So that turns into "80% of all  iPhone 4s have problems."  I was making a point with my 10 acquaintances stating it could say 100% of all iPhones 4s are completely fine which is also a false statement.  In your words, its utter nonsense.

I'm having strange battery drain issues with my 4s. With basically everything off, at times with no activity, the usage climbs rapidly while the battery drains accordingly. Then if I check an hour later, there is no further usage or battery drain. I know a few here have reported incorrect usage time stats and others use the same stats to judge the battery performance. I'm a light user and at the moment my reading is: USAGE 1hr 25 mins and STANDBY 19 hrs 15 mins and the battery is at 80%. I don't think I've used it for more than 15 minutes. I think we are being cheated into believing our phones are achieving the amount of usage Apple claim they produce. 

Is this normal battery life?

Almost everything is OFF and I will switch it ON if I needed.

Wifi turned ON: estimated 2hours

3G ON: estimated of 1hour

Location ON: estimated of 1hour

iCloud: not setup

Brightness: 55-60%

Push OFF: manual

Email: 1

iMessage: OFF

Facetime: ON

And most of the time usage is texting..

That seems like pretty good batter life to me.

I realy appriciate this thread, lots of useful hints etc... but after reading it there is only one question that I would like to ask:

WHY ON EARTH AFTER PAYING SO MUCH MONEY FOR A PHONE WE HAVE TO END UP SWITCHING EVERYTHING OFF???

We bought that phone to enjoy all these functions non stop, not to have them switched off.

THIS IS SAD!

mine is the same problem, battery problem brand new right out of the box nothing on it, on all 4 of my replaced iphones.

Gentlemen, this is 100% related to Cellular Data being enabled or not. Yesterday my phone barely lasted 8 hours standby with 2 hours usage, mostly music.

Last night I switched cellular data off , wifi of, had it on the charger till this morning and now it's 3 hours standby with 10 minutes of calling with 100% on the battery, not even 1% dropped.

I think that speaks enough. It's mobile data usage that kills the thing.

Yeah I noticed. When cellular data is on, it drains the battery, even when not in use. When using it, about 1% drains every 2 minutes. That's a lot. I previously had a BlackBerry 9700 and I NEVER turned off 3G. It stayed on 24/7. The battery used to stay for at least a day on a single charge, with constant usage (about 6 hours). The iPhone 4S can barely stay on for 5 hours with 3G on and on moderate usage. This is bullsh*t.

OK, so I changed two things yesterday and my 4S is at 97% after a full charge last night before I went to bed and letting it sit there over night. Usage stats are also in line with that (10 minutes usage an 11 1/2 hours of standby). It has stayed at 97% for the last hour or so where before it would have gone down at least 5-7% and usage data would have shown much higher values.

The two things I changed:

- Disabled WiFi syncing in iTunes (connect phone, uncheck option on first tab)

- Per the instructions in this video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mwpRotYS78) set the DNS for my WiFi connection to 8.8.8.8 (Google DNS).

I don't know which of these changes made the difference, or if it's the combination of both. But I'm assuming WiFi sync at least something to do with it since I only turned on that option a week or so ago and the battery problems began shortly after that.

As always, YMMV. But for me this seems to have solved the battery drain issue.

Edit: Another thing I just noticed is that with WiFi sync disabled, it takes a couple of seconds after waking the phone for the 3G icon in the titlebar to change to the WiFi icon whereas with WiFi sync switched on the icon immediately changes to WiFi upon waking. I'm assuming this means that the phone is permanently on WiFi with WiFi sync turned on and also prevents the phone from sleeping. This could be either by design or a bug.

I just ran off battery on my phone4s and the usage was 1 day 4 hours and standby 1 day 9 hours, This is ridiculous! i didnt even touched the phone, it was just on standby. Its either the antennnas/3g or whatever it is  draining on standby to. Fix this asap APPLE!! i

Turning all the wonderful features of ios 5 off is NOT a solution, perhaps a temporary one at best, the real problem is with the OS and it needs to be fixed. You can't sell people the most expensive phone on the market and tell them to turn everything off. It's a known issue and Apple is reported to be working on ios 5.0.2 I just hope they get it right this time.

tutin12 wrote:

 

Gentlemen, this is 100% related to Cellular Data being enabled or not. Yesterday my phone barely lasted 8 hours standby with 2 hours usage, mostly music.

 

Last night I switched cellular data off , wifi of, had it on the charger till this morning and now it's 3 hours standby with 10 minutes of calling with 100% on the battery, not even 1% dropped.

 

I think that speaks enough. It's mobile data usage that kills the thing.

5h+ standby with 20 minutes talk time, just turned down to 99% a few seconds ago. Cellular data is disabled.

Any doubts left?

This is a complex problem without a single solution for everyone. In your case it might be cellular data, in my case (read my post above) it was WiFi sync, in somebody else's case it might be trouble with the SIM card. There may even be cases of defective hardware, but for most people my guess (and it's only a guess) is it's more likely a software problem that causes the phone to use one or more of the radios excessively.

@MKZA

There won't be any iOS 5.0.2!!!!!

Apple is working on iOS 5.1 beta now which has no mention battery problem! Therefore Apple is not working officially on the battery problem!

lollllll

This simply means your battery indicator is flaky. As many people have experienced, the drain is not linear. If your device operates good it will drain about 0.5% per hour on standby and calls will drain about 12.5% per hour.  When you reach 1%, you'll be able to draw some valid conclusions. Your 30mins of calls have drained 6-7% of your battery whether the indicator shows it or not lolll. There is no magic involved. At 1% for 30 mins of calls you'd be making 50hrs of calls on a charge lolll.