Q: iPhone 4s Battery Life?

So I am having the same problem with the 4s (on AT&T) just eating up the battery at a crazy rate. I am losing about 20% per hour. I have turned off location services, siri, I have done a complete reset of the device and set it up as a new phone, following the advice of the Macworld column to a tee... twice... with no luck. Short of using it as an ipod with everything turned off, I can't seem to stem the insane battery usage.

One interesting note: I recieved my phone on Oct 14, set it up and flew off to Japan for work Oct 15-22 and had no battery problems whatsoever while in Japan... (and was making calls, using data, using location services, using siri a ton because everyone I was with wanted to see what it did, using wifi, using maps, sending texts, etc.)

I came back to the US on the evening of the 22nd, and went to bed (serious jetlag) and my phone had about 55% of battery remaining. I forgot to plug it in, and it was dead when I woke up about 7 hours later. I recharged it to 100% and have been suffering the same battery issues as everyone else ever since.

I don't know if it was just luck or coincidence that it worked fine in Japan, but it is interesting that my problems started when I returned home after having such impressive battery life when I was overseas (near Yokosuka if it matters.)

The only other difference between usage here (in the US) and when I was in Japan is that I also have an MCell that the phone connects to here in my home, but even when I am away from home the battery life has been terrible since I've been back.

C'mon Apple, offer an update already.

Why don't you read and do something about it instead of whine. Or wait for the update that Apple will issue.

Or go for a refund and wait for the update and buy a new one.

I've heard a lot of people that have already solved the problem by trying various options from the article below.

http://www.macworld.com/article/163200/2011/10/troubleshoot_iphone4s_battery.htm l

Hope this helps.

Ok went to bed last night 94% charged the phone about a hour before. Woke up 63% with usage saying 9 hours 15 min and time since charge 9hours and 15 min. Went in cleared everything by double clicking home button and then deleting the apps. Thought to myself this does nothing but I'm out of ideas. Checked usage 15 minutes later and I had te without usage. Cleared the tray of settings app. Waited for 30 minutes and my time since last charge 10 hours usage was only at 9 hours and 30 minutes. Anyone else try this. This is the only thing that changed phone usage in standby for me. Even turning off iCloud did not change this for me.

Actually I did try that, and standby time did improve, but talk time is still horrible.

Why does he not read something, why does he not just return it... good questions.

Why does not apple officially tell us its aware of the problem and is working on a fix,

Why do some in the geniuos bar say there are no battery issues at all... hmm good more questions.

Why do some people keep hate reading about whiners and decide to whine themselves about the whiners?

We are all different with different expieriences and all have a right to voice it.  I do admit it seems to be getting

reppetetive on here with more and more iPhone battery issues and 20 different things to turn off to improve the battery life, but if we really need to turn so much of the iPhone features off, then why have it?

I think a consolidation of the items that will improve the iPhone 4s would be welcomed.  I also think Apple needs to step up to the plate and tells us they are aware of the issue and that they are working on it.  This would calm a lot of people down.  Maybe we should all set a date on the calender for a mass iPhone 4s return for refund day!  This might prompt a comment or two.

Maybe we should just have fun with trying to figure out what does the "S" in 4s realley stand for.

Sucky Battery (Trying A PunHere)

Dr Jkll:

As I said in my post previously, I followed the various suggestions in that Macworld article since I've been back, including setting it up as a new phone and starting fresh with the icloud sync twice without any real success in stemming battery usage.

The reason for my post was not to whine, but to point out that I had no problems with the battery life while I was in Japan. My issues started when I returned to the US, which appears to be a somewhat different experience than what other people have been posting. 

Is it relevant? I am not sure.

Could it be luck that it worked fine there but not here in the US? Certainly. 

Might it provide some clue that will help identify the cause of the problem? That is my hope.

Did you read what I wrote before posting a response? It doesn't appear so.

Marc Posner wrote:

 

rs1n wrote:

... then power off your phone (press and hold the power button at the top of the phone until you see the option to shut your phone down). This will force all programs to end, ...

 

That is the behavior I would have expected. However, it is not what happens. Powering off the phone and powering it off (even after several minutes), the apps that were open at shutdown remain open following the power cycle.

Actually, they don't. The apps that appear at the bottom of the screen when you double press the HOME button are Recently Used apps. Just because they are in that ribbon does not mean they are open. There is no way to remove apps from the ribbon without restoring the phone as New with iTunes.

Did you read to whom I replied? I know for a fact you didn't.

But have you tried the solutions in the comments on the article? There are a bunch of different ones. Maybe one of those will work for you. I certainly hope so.

That is incorrect. You absolutely can remove apps from the multitasking bar. Just press and hold an icon and hit the red buttons. This will also kill the apps that are running in the background, so you don't need to reboot.

I should say that I never had to manage background apps on my iPhone 4 to get decent battery life though.

Yes, true, but you cannot remove them by tuning off the phone, which is what the previous poster wanted to do.

BTW, killing them as you describe does not necessarily kill the background process. It will for 3rd party apps, but if you do it for a built in app (mail, contacts, calendar, ping, game center, etc) the background app is relaunched immediately.

Lawrence Finch wrote:

 

Yes, true, but you cannot remove them by tuning off the phone, which is what the previous poster wanted to do.

 

BTW, killing them as you describe does not necessarily kill the background process. It will for 3rd party apps, but if you do it for a built in app (mail, contacts, calendar, ping, game center, etc) the background app is relaunched immediately.

Interesting about the background app relaunching immediately.

So if I understand you correctly it is possible that something built in to IOS5 could get stuck and cycle constantly in the background until the point that the phone is reset with a fresh install.

Once this 'error/issue' occurs the only recourse is to create a fresh install?

angrywaiter wrote:

Interesting about the background app relaunching immediately.

 

So if I understand you correctly it is possible that something built in to IOS5 could get stuck and cycle constantly in the background until the point that the phone is reset with a fresh install.

 

Once this 'error/issue' occurs the only recourse is to create a fresh install?

Yes, and in my experience that is the primary cause of battery problems, going back 4 years. A built in app gets stuck trying to send data and failing, but it loops trying forever. However, if you can identify the app it is not necessary to do a fresh install.

The most common app with this problem is mail, especially with Push accounts like MS Exchange. The problem frequently comes up after an update, because the update process terminated a transmission in the middle. When the system comes back up after an update Mail, Contacts and Calendar open a new connection to the Exchange server, but the one that was terminated in the middle is still running in a separate thread. There are two ways to kill these "stale" threads. The most straightforard is to delete the push account, reboot the phone and add it back. A less drastic alternative is to go to the Settings for the account and turn off the switches for mail, contacts and calendar, then back out of settings, open Mail, then Contacts, then Calendar so they know the account has been deleted, and finally reboot and turn the switches back on.

While mail is the most common culprit, people have reported it with Ping, Genius, Game Center, iTunes Store and App Store. To test these just set a Restriction on them to shut them down.

The symptom that this is your problem is Standby and Usage will be the same.

Same here.  Charged it all night, unplugged and had my alarm on still in 4 minutes it eat 2% it came down to 95% with 31 minutes usage and 1 hours stand by, all I did was turn off the alarm and now typing this.  However, I reset network and before the phone showed 94% and after words it showed 97% very strange.   My phone was setup as a new phone and last Friday, I reinstall the iOS bred new again.

Hi,

I have read this thread with interest, esp Lawarences last post, my IP4s was fine for a week, nothing really bad, not great battery, but no terrible, similar to my IP4. There was def something odd going on with mail though, no matter what fetch duration i set (1hour) it seemed to retrieve much more often than that, infact sometimes it would not sync for 30mins then other work like it was on push and get everytthign coming through !. maybe there was a mail or calander retrive process running and keeps running until it is happy and in the mean time gets mail etc more often ?.

2days ago my phone for no reason got really hot and the battery went from 100% to flat in about 4 hours !, it was warm the hole time. I tried reboots and power cycles but nothing worked, i even tried turning on airplane mode, but i could still watch the % dropping !. I didnt however delete or touch the mail accounts (i have two exhange and 2 Gmail), which by the sounds of it would have worked. I have returned it to apple for a replacement as i was nervous it was hardware, i guess i still can't be 100% sure as my firends with IP4's dont have any issues but use the same exhange accounts. I cant be def but from the bevhour i have seen, Lawerence's explanations makes sense to me and it ties in with the macworld report... gutted, not i have to wait for my replacement to arrive, still better to be safe than sorry as i was within the 30days

I had the same problem with my 4s. The battery was toast by 9:00 PM.  So just for fun I turned off the calendar and contacts for iCloud and now the battery life is pretty much on par with Apple's advertised performance.  Interestingly, I had a similar problem with with my 3G but it turned out to be a problem with the connection to Exchange Server (as mentioned in a previous post) where the phone kept trying to make connection over and over in a loop.  Once I fixed the Exchange Server connection the battery performance was normal.  I'm guessing there's something similar going on with iCloud.  I hope that helps.

I'm having exact same problems. I had IOS5 on my iPhone 4 for a few weeks and it seemed to improve battery life.

Now with iPhone 4S for a week and my battery drops a percent every 2-5 minutes.  My settings are exactly the same as iPhone 4.

I also notice many more calls that turn to static and the drop. The iPhone 4 just dropped the call. Why does this seem like it is related to 2 antennas.

Please help.

Jeff