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Battery drain with iOS 5 on iPhone 4

Is anyone else seeing an issue with terrible battery drain after installing iOS 5 on iphone 4? I've read through a plethora of "possible fixes" on the net, but nothing seems to work. Full charge was completed last night at 0100 and now it's at 25%! I could easily go the whole day with "normal" usage prior to the iOS upgrade. Thoughts?

iPhone 4, iOS 5

Posted on Oct 15, 2011 10:22 AM

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147 replies

Oct 30, 2011 7:27 PM in response to AAAAACCCCC


Re: Battery drain with iOS 5 on iPhone 4Oct 30, 2011 5:09 PM (in response to JWDABEARS)


Update - After a visit to the Genius Bar today to let them take a snapshot of my phone they had me do a firmware level restore. This is different that just clicking restore in itunes. I have done this and set up as new phone then didn't let it sync apps automatically. I DID NOT turn off anything at all. i have turned on bluetooth and synced my favorite headphones. Everything in icloud is off except photo stream and find my phone. I will say that I immediately noticed that the UI is slightly different than it was after installing ios 5 for the first time. Implying that the first install was somehow incomplete and trying to use settings from ios 4 and 5 at the same time. I will start monitoring battery right now and post results.only app i added is iBooks and i synced all my books and a few songs.


Problem appears to be solved. 1 hour since I unplugged it and I'm at 99%. It took 44 minutes to drop that 1% and that would extrapolate to about 73 hours standby. I can live with that. The real teller will be if it is still working correctly after a few days. Tomorrow my IT department will be adding my new exchange settings to it so I'll keep my fingers crossed and keep you updated. If anyone wants instructions on firmware level restore let me know.


PPS. 2 hours and 26 minutes and I'm sitting pretty at 98% that's around 100 hours standby.

Oct 31, 2011 4:37 AM in response to JWDABEARS

My iPhone 4 with IOS5 drains about 8-10% per hour with 'normal' use, while this was maybe half that with the previous version of IOS. If I want the iphone to last all day, I really have to minimize use to just cell phone use. I'm afraid to be without a charger for more than about 6 hours.


I'm connected with Exchange, but only send and receive emails when I open the mail app. I'm also connected to the iCloud but only via wifi.


I would love to get an app that shows me exactly which apps use a lot of juice or an option on the iPhone that basically 'kills' anything that drains the battery in such a way that I can use it as long as possible for making phone calls.

Nov 2, 2011 6:42 AM in response to JWDABEARS

OK - good news on my iphone 4 that had terrrible battery life after upgrading to ios 5.0.

I spoke to a few techs at Apple and found the solution for my iphone.


First, he had me check, and my usage time (settings...general...usage), it showed that my usage time was virtually the same as my standby time. The phone was constantly running and draining the battery. Not good, the standby time should be much higher than usage time.


Problem in his estimation was that when I went through the process of loading 5.0, i did a restore, and old apps that are getting loaded back on at the end of the process are causing conflicts with 5.0. The solution is to restore the iphone "as new" during the process. You need to back things up because you are going to wipe everythng.

Here's the article Apple provided me about how to backup and restore the iPhone As New:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4137 My phone is now running 5.0 and my batter life is back to normal.


PS - I learned during this process that not everyone experiences these conflicts when they load 5.0, my wife didnt have any problem, so they will not experience these battery problems. But all of you "helpers" on this chat board who are telling folks that the software is fine and that problems must be from using the phone more or that people need to turn everything off dont understand the nature of this extreme power drain and should keep their comments to topics that they understand..

Nov 2, 2011 12:42 PM in response to dunnston

After about 4 days my iPhone 4 went back to normal, and the battery life has been really good since. It doesn't seem to overheat either. I looked around at the different settings, but did not turn anything off. I did uninstall Facebook and reinstall it for another issue I was having. Other than that the only thing I did was "Power off" my iPhone for about 10 minutes. I'm not sure what fixed it, but I am glad that it is working properly now. With all the issues I have seen I am hoping that they will release an update to the software soon that will address battery life.

Nov 2, 2011 6:08 PM in response to jamesfromwilmette

@jamesfromwilmet

That makes no sense. Most of the people having issues are 4S owners. So already that can't point to a bad upgrade.

Second, disabling some services seems to solve the problem for some users. I have done what others suggested: disabled photo stream disabled time zone updates and disabled Facebook. My battery is doing much better. During issues, I was having the same idle time = usage time as others. So "bad upgrade" doesn't seem like the right answer here.

Nov 2, 2011 8:29 PM in response to vmv890

What is the point of your email telling me that my detailed solution, to which more than 10 people have responsed to me and told me that my solution fixed their problem, make no sense. I dont have a 4g, the steing was for peor with iphone 4 and wouldn't pretend to know the answer to any problems that you may have. People who pollute

Message boards with speculative opinions and guesses make it very hard for people who need useful facts to get the info they need

Nov 4, 2011 4:55 AM in response to JWDABEARS

Hi,


Apple is working on an update...

For the moment, you can help your "battery".

You can desactivate the time zone.

ios5 try to be all the time connected to internet and GPS.

You can choose how many apps you want desactivate.

For example, you go in notification and you can desactivate some apps...

You can do the same thing with the gps, you found it in location.

Also, you can put manually the push of email. There is 2 settings in "mail" to do.

So, you can turn off the bluetooth when you don't use it.

Finally, closing apps you don't use.


Have a nice day.

Battery drain with iOS 5 on iPhone 4

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