Iphone 4S / iOS5 - Battery drain / issues - An idea Ihaven't seen anywhere yet (17th October 2011)....

I was having serious battery drain issues with my 4S. After trying everything else, I finally broke down and did a full restore (did NOT restore from backup, set up as new phone) and my battery life is fantastic now, perhaps even better than my 4.

G

I've been having the same issue of my iPhone 4S draining too quickly. So I tried to remedy it by draining the battery all the way down (less than 20 percent) then fully recharging it. The battery seems to last longer but it is still draining bit too quickly than my old iPhone 4 with iOS 4.3.5. Maybe Apple needs to release a software patch to solve this problem?

Did you try doing a restore?

I agree with the usage comment. After fulling charging my 4S last night, I noticed my phone was reporting 3 hours 57 minutes of usage earlier today despite making (1) 24 minute call and sending/receiving a few texts and checking a couple of emails. Less than 1 hour of ACTUAL usage for sure. So where is it getting the claimed 3 hours and 57 minutes of usage from?????? I am pretty sure this is what's causing the battery issues. Over on MacRumors everyone keeps posting screenshots of their usage numbers but no one seems to be paying attention to the fact that "usage" seems suspiciously high when the phone is in standby and not being used.

Definitely not adding up!

I finally ran the battery in my 4S down to 0% this morning. It took a LOT to use up the last few percent of charge. I think I ran 3 races in Real Racing 2 even after it reported only 1% remaining. It is now almost nearly charged back up, and I have noticed that on this charge cycle the time to charge from 90% to 100% has taken longer than any previous charge. Just for good measure, I think I will drain this charge completely and see if I can notice any improvements.

Oh yeah, 16GB white AT&T, pre-ordered through Apple and activated on Oct 14.

I have had my 64gb iPhone 4S for just over a week now (upgrade from 3GS) and I was getting a very consistent battery drain when at home and so connected to my own wi-fi network. When out and about and with general moderate use it was much better (not as great as I had hoped it would be, but acceptabe).

I had most things switched on on account of the fact that I paid a lot of money to buy the phone in order to be able to use the features advertised. If I wanted a phone that I could just make calls on I would have got an old Nokia 3310 with a battery that lasted me a week.

I understood with all the new processing power, notifications, location hunting etc etc blah blah blah, I wouldn't get close to the 'up to 200' hours Apple talk of, but I at least wanted to get a days worth out of it with moderate use.

I have been running overnight tests throughout this week charging my 4S up to 100% before bed then leaving it idle for 8 hours while I sleep, switching various things off each day to see how they affect the drain I was getting. Also tried everything suggested in these forums - ie run the battery down to empty, restart the phone as new etc. Nothing seemed to make any difference.

I was getting at least a 60% loss of battery life in 8 hours of the phone being idle! That cant be right!

Anyway, I have pinpointed the exact problem now after my final test last night. Wi-fi sync! I have my mac on and itunes open 24 hours a day so with wi-fi sync on my iphone always shows in itunes. I switched wi-fi sync and a few other things off on Thursday night and only lost 10% through 8 hours of being idle (still not great but much better that 60%). I have all icloud sevices on and 2 email accounts set to push and a few location services on so can understand the loss of 10%.

As I had also switched a few other things off on Thursday when I did the test I tried again last night by switching just wi-fi sync back on and sure enough I had a 62% loss of battery in 8 hours of being idle so it is most certainly that!

I completely understand that with wi-fi sync on, the actual sync will only take place when the phone is connected to a power source and my understanding was also that just having the phone connected to itunes over wi-fi but not syncing shouldnt cause any battery issues, but in my case it does. Just having the phone constantly connected to itunes and my computer via wi-fi drinks my battery juice for fun. I have no idea why and it does go against the nature of the actual sync only taking place when connected to a power source, but that is what is happening - in my case. It may well be different for others.

If you dont already, leave your computuers on with itunes open with wi-fi sync on and the phone left idle and not connected to power one night then try again the next night with wi-fi sync off. It would be interesting to see if others experience the same thing.

The strange thing is, my ipad 2 doesn't seem to lose any major battery juice with wi-fi sync on in exactly the same situation, just my iphone 4S.

Shame as I really liked the way wi-fi sync worked, but I cant have it on if that is the case. I am hoping it is something that Apple recognise and can be fixed with a software update, as apposed to being something actually wrong with my phone.

I've tried all the things mentioned here. The one thing that finally worked for me was to disable Calendar in Notification Centre. I have lots of calendars (29 of them, Exchange, Mobile Me, Google). My 3GS was sluggish, SysStatsMon reported CPU 90-100% and the battery was draining in 8 hours. I turned off Calendar in NC and the CPU dropped down to 5-6% and my battery percentage hasn't budged in 30 minutes. Before it would drop by 4-5% every 20-30 minutes. I would prefer to have notifications, but not having the phone die on me early is more important at this point. Until the problem gets fixed.

Perhaps iPhone users have gotten to used to Apple dumbing down their products for them ;). The phone will require you to get in there and do some tweaks. The notificatiion center might be new to iPhones but Android phones have had it since the beginning. You cant just leave it all on, is unrealistic to expct the battery to handle it well.

Like I said earlier, my 4s battery seemed to suck initially, but once I poked around and set everything to the way I want it, it seems ok now. I have location and notifications on for things that need them, off for things that dont. All those banners and stuff are useless to me, so I turned that all off too.

Right now Im on 4hrs 34mins of usage and 29 hours of standby since my last charge and by battery is showing 39%. My usage includes phone calls, browsing, texting, email, bluetooth, navigation, geofenced reminders ... pretty much everything youd do with the phone.

BigJimmy D wrote:

I have had my 64gb iPhone 4S for just over a week now (upgrade from 3GS) and I was getting a very consistent battery drain when at home and so connected to my own wi-fi network. When out and about and with general moderate use it was much better (not as great as I had hoped it would be, but acceptabe).

I had most things switched on on account of the fact that I paid a lot of money to buy the phone in order to be able to use the features advertised. If I wanted a phone that I could just make calls on I would have got an old Nokia 3310 with a battery that lasted me a week.

I understood with all the new processing power, notifications, location hunting etc etc blah blah blah, I wouldn't get close to the 'up to 200' hours Apple talk of, but I at least wanted to get a days worth out of it with moderate use.

I have been running overnight tests throughout this week charging my 4S up to 100% before bed then leaving it idle for 8 hours while I sleep, switching various things off each day to see how they affect the drain I was getting. Also tried everything suggested in these forums - ie run the battery down to empty, restart the phone as new etc. Nothing seemed to make any difference.

I was getting at least a 60% loss of battery life in 8 hours of the phone being idle! That cant be right!

Anyway, I have pinpointed the exact problem now after my final test last night. Wi-fi sync! I have my mac on and itunes open 24 hours a day so with wi-fi sync on my iphone always shows in itunes. I switched wi-fi sync and a few other things off on Thursday night and only lost 10% through 8 hours of being idle (still not great but much better that 60%). I have all icloud sevices on and 2 email accounts set to push and a few location services on so can understand the loss of 10%.

As I had also switched a few other things off on Thursday when I did the test I tried again last night by switching just wi-fi sync back on and sure enough I had a 62% loss of battery in 8 hours of being idle so it is most certainly that!

I completely understand that with wi-fi sync on, the actual sync will only take place when the phone is connected to a power source and my understanding was also that just having the phone connected to itunes over wi-fi but not syncing shouldnt cause any battery issues, but in my case it does. Just having the phone constantly connected to itunes and my computer via wi-fi drinks my battery juice for fun. I have no idea why and it does go against the nature of the actual sync only taking place when connected to a power source, but that is what is happening - in my case. It may well be different for others.

If you dont already, leave your computuers on with itunes open with wi-fi sync on and the phone left idle and not connected to power one night then try again the next night with wi-fi sync off. It would be interesting to see if others experience the same thing.

The strange thing is, my ipad 2 doesn't seem to lose any major battery juice with wi-fi sync on in exactly the same situation, just my iphone 4S.

Shame as I really liked the way wi-fi sync worked, but I cant have it on if that is the case. I am hoping it is something that Apple recognise and can be fixed with a software update, as apposed to being something actually wrong with my phone.

I wish that I was at 60% battery loss after 8 hours on standby. The other night before going to bed, I was at 100%, put my 4S in AIRPLANE MODE, and I woke up 7 hours later and my phone was completely dead!

Seems like Apple needs to address this ASAP! While I applaud your efforts who seriously wants to disable most of the useful and innovative features to get the phone to do what it is advervised to do!

By the way, SERI will not work tonight! Keeps awking me to repeat, says something is wrong, later cannot connect to the network. ANyone know about this?

Thanks

I am having some issues too, but I must note that these are highly inconsistent. Here is a brief chronology of events:

Settings:

iCloud syncing photostream, reminders

location services turned on for find Siri, iCloud

2 mail accounts on fetch every half hour. iCloud is also on fetch every half hour.

Bluetooth off, Wifi on. Strong cellular reception

10/14:

Get iPhone 4s via UPS (pre ordered AT&T iPhone 4S white 32GB)

Unable to activate phone all day, finally activate phone in the middle of the night

10/15:

Phone works okay, notice battery drain towards end of the evening

10/16:

Notice large battery drain. Set up genius bar appointment for Monday evening

10/17:

Start the day with 100% and get to lunch with about 40%. I noticed that the battery dropped 25% during 1hr of idle.

Go to apple store in the evening, and he recommends that I set up the phone as new.

10/18

Moderately poor battery life again. but I get home with around 20%, I drain it all the way down to 0

10/19

Good battery life. Get home with over 40% battery with usual usage, some music, some texts, email etc,

10/20:

terrible battery life again.(Now since the battery life is good and then bad, i begin to suspect a s/w issue)

10/21:

Bad battery life, had to charge twice during the day

10/22

Go to apple store, and he replaces the phone with another unit.

I go home, set it up as a new phone (i am getting tired of this now, re-organizing my apps into folders they way i like them is a pain in the wrong place)

charge it up to 100%. Take it off charger at 4:30 pm.

10/23

At 4:30 pm, after 24 hrs of moderate use, some calls, some browsing etc, the pone is at over 50%. Very acceptable batter life. My wife's iPhone 4 with iOS 5 on the other hand, which was charged the previous evening had over 75%. At this point, I am not very ****** with my phone's battery life as 50% in 24hrs with what i feel is my normal usage pattern is more than acceptable

Now begins the battery issue. The phone starts heating up while sitting idle, and starts draining rapidly. I kill all apps and restart the phone, the phone cools down. I use it for a minute or two to browse/facebook, and it begins to overheat again, and very soon (4 hrs) it drops from 50% to 3% sitting on my couch. I also see that the usage meter shows many hours of usage, which is not true, i did not use it that much. S/W issue perhaps?

10/24

Took the phone off the charger at 8am with 100%. Down to 77% at 11:19 am, basically sitting and doing nothing.

I am going to calibrate the battery meter today, and again tomorrow. If that does not give me consistent battery life on wednesday and thursday, this sucker is going back for good, and I am going to revert to my trusty 3GS.

My experience is pretty much the same thing as yours bchavali. I too am on my second iPhone 4S (white 64GB) and I'm still having identical issues with heating up while on standby and very short battery life (the two are obviously related). And my wife's iPhone 4 with OS5 installed has gotten noticably shorter battery life since upgrading it to the OS5.

Looking forward to the patch which will fix this issue.

Heating up while on standby - check.

Draining battery when not using - check.

Happening some times, not others, in exactly the same situation - check.

Power cycled more than 3 times (not because I wanted to but because the battery ran out and I was forced to!) - check

Basically there is something going on (software related I feel sure) which shouldn't be. I have turned off all notification services, mail only downloads when I open it, bluetooth is off (wifi on)

This morning, I had my phone in my pocket, not being used, forgot my headphones so no iTunes. I took it out of my pocket after 40 minutes and it was really hot. Checked the battery and down to 73%. I'd used the phone to check my mail once and download about a meg of news on an app. That was it. I think something is closing down or stopping working properly but haven't the time to investigate properly.

I swear I remember a similar problem either with iOS3 or iOS4 when first released. feels like patch time.