Q: iPhone 4s Battery Life?

Did that several times...in fact, i've never used a former back up. Always set the iPhone as new, from a DFU Mode restore...

As we speak, i only have the apps that come with the firmware, nothing else...

Just ro remember a previous post of mine:

"I'm strongly convinced that i have something running in the background that is sucking out my battery's life... I only have the apps that came with the original FW 9A406 installed, nothing else...why am i thinking this?

I have a Usage Time waaaaaaaaaaay superior to the actual use i give to the phone. It' not the same as in Standby, but it's very high. Something like 16hours of standby - 10hours of usage time (when i've only used the phone for about 30/45 minutes!!). Yesterday for instance, in standby, the battery stayed for about 4 hours with 100%, with 4minutes of usage time..."Excellent!", i thought to myself...after that, without touching anything, the draining started!! Usage Time going up, battery going down!!

I've read hundreds of topics with tips, discussions, workarounds...you name it!

So far, and as we speak, just look at the changes i've made in order to (try to) achieve a better lifetime:

- Auto-Screen brightness Off, with dimmed screen (20% maybe);

- Location Services/system services ALL off;

- Notifications set to Manual, only having "phone and text messages" on notifications centre;

- Wi-fi off;

- Data off;

- Network Auto-detection set to off;

- iCloud off;

- Erased all e-mail acounts and set Push to off;

- Diagnosis off;

- Bluetooth off;

- Restrictions On (Ping and Facetime off);

- No SIM lockout;

- Auto lockout set to 1 minute;

- Closed ALL pages openned in Safari before exit;

- All apps mannualy closed in multi-task bar;

- I've done several restores in DFU Mode and already let the phone drain the battery to 0% 4 ot 5 times (which is more than i wanted!!) and nothing, REALLY NOTHING, seems to fix it!!

- Removed the iCalendar from the Notification Center (saw a video in youtube suggesting this might be the problem);

- Siri/"Speak to raise" off (after turning it off, turned the phone off and on because there was a known bug that kept the sendor working even after ticking it to off);

- Vibration on only in Silent Mode...

With these changes i only get one day of very light use (to 20%)!!

The question is: "What is for you, a very light usage?". Fair enough...

Sent 3 or 4 text messages, did 3 or 4 calls of 5 minutes each, turned on data to acess a forum (only for 5 minutes!!)...jeeeeeeez!! Don't tell me that this is an expected behaviour for a smartphone!!

Imagine that i want to see a movie, listen to some music or, GOD FORBID, play a game??!! Wil it last more than half a day???!!!

Up to 200hours on standby??? Just read the list of changes i've made and you'll see that the only thing that i can do to try to gain more battery lifetime, is to turn off the **** thing!!! Shouldn't i get near the 200hours with all of those changes in standby? At least near 100h??? I guess not...getting 24-30hours (mainly) in standby is already very good, it seems...(ironic mode OFF)."

Cheers!

I also have the battery drainage problem with my 4S and did a restore as a new iPhone. I think it improved it, but I still have the problem.

Did you test your phone without connecting to iTunes?

I never used the DFU mode restore. Can you try resetting from the phone itself ( So, not connected to your iTunes system ).

There is a difference between restoring/resetting the iphone. When restoring through iTunes, iTunes pushes stuff into the phone : it tries to be smart to make it easier for the user. That's why I always reset from the phone itself so iTunes does not have a chance to put something in it.

Regards.

I know you guys have had several pages of suggestions to fix this problem. However, if you want a pretty comprehensive list, I found one here. I'm pretty sure that if you follow the steps from start to finish, you will have a drastic improvment in battery life. However, Apple still needs to provide official support for this problem. Anyways, this guide helped me, so hopefully it will help you! Cheers!

If you set it up as a new phone and you have the wrong apple mobile device service files you can still get the bug. Remove those files and re-install iTunes to have them properly generated again, then do a complete wipe from the phone itself and only when that is finished connect it to iTunes : chose setup as new phone.

By the way : you won't lose any of your settings/playlists when re-installing iTunes.

Regards.

FIXED! Well maybe...I was having battery issues like most everyone on here. (iPhone 4s) I've tried everything that was suggestted on the some 579 pages in this discussion group. One thing that caught my eye was the Siri and it's proximety sensor, as I've noted in earlier posts. Anyway, taking the digital camera and just holding it in front of the sensor, on the front of the phone, I could see the ir sensor blinking away even if Siri was shut off. Amazing I thought. So Siri was off and of course raise to speak was off. Both work together but Siri has to be on to be able to toggle Raise to Speak on. Only after I performed a hard reset, Home and Power button pushed until you see the "Apple" did the sensor blinking go away. Once I restarted Siri, with Raise to Speak still off, I could see the ir sensor blinking away again. Had enough yet? So took it to my local Apple store today, camera in hand, and showed the "Genius" my findings. He was somewhat amazed. Checked his phone and Siri was on and rasie to speak off and his ir sensor was not blinking. I checked another phone in the store and found the display phone operated as badly as my original, with Siri off the blinking of the ir sensor kept on trucking. I swapped my phone out for a "new one" they say they are new, and this new one appears to be working normally. The version software that came with the new phone is 5.0 with a build of 9A334. I hestiate to do any upgrading of the software or firmware on this phone. Apple guy even said you might wanna wait on that.

Not sure if this post will help anybody, but it sure is worth it to see if that proximety/ir sensor is behaving badly. I will cross my fingers and check the battery life as the days go by.

My battery is currently at 1% after its first full charge with my Usage: 5hrs 56mins & Standby: 1Day 3hrs. Even from what iv read on this forum and on others i cant seem to figure out if this is good/normal or not. The usage was mainly me browsing the app store, testing some games, watching a few videos and the random text. Can anyone clarify if this is avergae, good or bad?

I was having the same problem on my new iPhone 4s.  Called Apple Support.  Unbeknownst to me, I had EVERY SINGLE APP RUNNING in the background. 

Use the task setter (double tap on one of the icons in your dock...they'll wiggle).  Close any you don't need. (I closed them all except phone.) 

Also, try turning off WiFi, unless needed. 

Hope this helps.

I don't think you'll be telling me to speak or not nor when, friend. It so happens that I've been reading the thread on and off since it hit the 100k views mark. The times of Coppernic are long gone, and I know the earth is round. You're not Marco Polo either. I mean, that restricting data to wifi can alleviate your symptom is one thing - but implying you can make 30-50hrs of calls per charge is plain stupid. You were not interesting to the point of me reading all your prior posts... I was commenting on your ignorance of the specifications for the device, as it is an 8hrs phone for calls, and that means 12.5% per hour of call. Even with cellular data off, the overhead for the phone is basically 0.5% per hour. You've basically turned your phone into an iPod Touch but the fact remains. At 40 mins of calling you used 8% plus 5hrs of standby means at least 2% so you used 10%, whatever your indicator might say - down the line you will realize that. Also, you don't even seem aware that Apple counts background processing such as auto-checking of emails towards "usage" as per their definition, which explains why you have usage without "touching" the device. I think it's you who should read a bit more, like the definition of usage here: http://www.apple.com/batteries/iphone.html

In the meantime I'll be commenting your posts as I see fit.

Please read this: http://speirs.org/blog/2012/1/2/misconceptions-about-ios-multitasking.html

I've seen a lot of people here thinking the same about the task switcher. They should all read it too …

For heaven's sake people need to STOP suggesting this. Not only has this been beaten to death and proven false, its one of the first things people try, and DOES NOT FIX THE ISSUE.

Elfnwoods wrote:

 

I was having the same problem on my new iPhone 4s.  Called Apple Support.  Unbeknownst to me, I had EVERY SINGLE APP RUNNING in the background. 

 

Use the task setter (double tap on one of the icons in your dock...they'll wiggle).  Close any you don't need. (I closed them all except phone.) 

 

Also, try turning off WiFi, unless needed. 

 

Hope this helps.

Okay, okay, okay.  So I'm new to this discussion.   What do you suggest?  And btw, battery life improved doing this, so what's up with that?  And thank you, baze81, for an enlightening article.

Don't worry, those guys make the same mistake as you do aka having a clear cut vision as to what helps or not. As there are many problem vectors, so there are many solution vectors. Fenil claims closing "background apps" does not fix the issue and he's right but also wrong. He links this interesting article which contains:

"I said earlier that "the user never has to manage Background tasks on iOS". The only exception to this is when one of these Background-running apps goes berserk and will not terminate properly. That, however, is an exceptional situation and not a normal part of being an iOS user."

This scenario is then possible and you might have had that. He also forgets the scenario of such an app behaving properly after having claimed background status yet being intense on network polling and the user not really being aware of that. It may just be for most users they simply don't have such apps that claim background running. It is not even certain than "closing" it through the taskbar will work. Usually a soft reset of the device will terminate such a rogue process. Which explains in part why some users have successful results after resetting and discharging/recharging. Contrary to what the guy in the article wrote, with iOS 5+ an iOS user often has to do more to further extend his battery life and maintain sanity of the phone - and of his own mind.

To make a long story short, as I had said before, poor development of some apps is a contributing factor to some issues some users have been experiencing. Which is why a user should make the effort of perusing forums to see if such and such an app he uses behaves properly under the new OS and if not it should be removed and the device should be reset (and by the way this must account at least in part as to why restoring from a pre-iOS5 backup can wreak havok and hence why restoring to new has helped many) - this is akin to what happens with desktop OSes. A further example which I will not get into is related to notifications i.e. how you can set the notifications for an app in such a way and yet that app will poll the network in a completely different way. iOS has to be more forceful with apps in the future and its settings should supersede any app setting. Anyways.

Good luck.

Overall I believe the STANDBY drainage issue has been resolved. But there still is a serious issue when the phone is BEING USED.

I see. Well, I haven't been tracking your issue so I wouldn't know what to advise. A target should be 5-7hrs mixed use with 22hrs standby but if your standby drain is under control then most likely there's not much else you can do.

Common stuff is mail (fetch method, delay, types and number of accounts - ultimately malformed data in contacts) - apps of course (unfortunately adding one app at a time and checking individual app settings and analyzing usage is tedious but it's the only way to identify a culprit) and all the stuff apple talk about in their battery page (brigthness, bluetooth, airplane mode during non use, and all that stuff). I guess if I had usage time issues I'd start with a restore to new (preferably with full OS reinstall) with no apps/no mail and browse the web to see if I can hit the 6hrs mark with only that and lower brightness and trim location and the rest and build up the device from there, also trying to gauge if I can differentiate performance between wifi and 3G. I guess you've tried all that... It's about method - and periodical soft reset for device sanity purposes. If you can't hit the spec barebone, then it's time for support/exchange/refund.

Anyways, good luck!