iPhone 4s doesn't charge to 100%

My opinion is, as ever, unclouded by knowledge. But how does your "large number of people" who are having the no-full-charge problem compare with the four million sold in the first weekend, and goodness knows how many since?

As regards the usability of a phone charged up to 96% compared to one charged up to 100%, I know that I would not be able to spot the difference.

Wait. There are other solutions given in the various threads regarding charging which you might like to try, such as a restore, but i would wait, as no discernible difference in actual usage is likely, beyond the number at the top right corner of the screen.

Battery problems take over these forums as soon as every OS update arrives, only to fade away.....

Regardless of the fact that the "not fully charging over night" issue might not being wide-spread enough... the battery life in general is terrible. I have only ever owned iPhones and not one has had this sucky of battery life (especially in standby). All family members and friends who also purchased this same iPhone (in different states) have the same problem, so I don't think it's just a cooincidence that every single person I know that has an iPhone 4s has sucky battery life... I'm pretty technologically saavy so I have done everything on my iphone to help the battery (disable location services, push notifications for apps that don't need them, etc) and while it improved a little bit, my battery does not last even one whole day even if I don't use it that much. As it is a new operating system there are bound to be glitches, so I hope that Apple will have a software upgrade that fixes any battery issues.

I still don't think some ppl understand the issue. The battery does charge to 100% but overnight it will lose some of that charge. About 6-8% that is due to the phone stopping charging I know this cause when I woke up this morning my phone battery wasnt displaying the charging image

We understand the issue, if you look at previous posts in this thread I explained I had the same issue as you did. I later explained that I restored my phone and that issue was solved... I've had 3-4 nights of charging since I restored and every morning have woken up with 100% charge. Try restoring to factory settings and then you can use a backup so everything is the same.

yup mine charged to 100% for the first couple of days but now I am noticing in the morning its at 97 or something like that. I dont know if this has been said before, but my guess is that once it reaches 100% at some point throughout the night it stops all charging instead of what I presume it used to do and that is that once its done charging the source of power for the phone switches to the outlet. So I been skimming the replies what should I do? Restart, restore, what? Thanks.

I too am having the exact same problem; I leave it on charge all night but it only reaches 92% battery life. I have only had the 4S since Friday due to delivery issues so I have only had 2 full cycles however.

I hae read through the other posts and will try the various suggested fixes, and report back.

On a slight side note, even when I do top it up to 100% it has lasted <9hours with just under 6hours of usage, surely this can't be normal?

It depends what you were doing for the six hours. The specs from Apple are:

Talk time: Up to 8 hours on 3G, up to 14 hours on 2G (GSM)

Standby time: Up to 200 hours

Internet use: Up to 6 hours on 3G, up to 9 hours on Wi-Fi

Video playback: Up to 10 hours

Audio playback: Up to 40 hours

I've now been experiencing this no-full-charge problem since October 15th, the day after my iPhone 4S arrived. More than a few days have passed, so I think it's safe to say that this is not a "calibration" problem: There is a problem with the iPhone 4S' software, or possibly its hardware.

What I can't tell is if the phone is actively discharging after it reaches 100 percent, if the phone has stopped charging and is naturally discharging, or if something else is going on.

I hope that through these posts Apple's engineers are aware of this battery problem and are designing a solution.

I got the 4S the day it came out and it seemed to have a faulty install from the very first minute that I turned it on. Every app I launched crashed the first 3 or 4 times, and then after a week the charge stopped lasting me more than 5 hours and the phone would constantly lose both wifi and 3g connection (even though it showed that it was connected, there was no internet)

after replacing that phone with a new one I got the faulty battery issue (it's just me with crappy luck I guess) where it would not charge to 100 percent, it reached 99 percent and got stuck on it for 2 hours, then jumped to 100 but right when i unplugged it it dropped to 99 again

I was tired of going back to the apple store to ask so I just did a complete restore through iTunes and it actually worked. It now charges to 100 percent.

I have noticed that the 4S has a particular problem with factory installs. I would recommend that as soon as you get it, go home, register it and restore the phone with your iTunes and it should fix most of the problems.

iOS5 is still fresh out of beta so it's expected to have a lot of problems until the first update comes out.

4s seemed to get 100% carge the past few days only to 81%, also I notice no battery appearing when charging starts. Usually had the screen with picture that showed amount left of battery charge, was this removed with new software.

I have been watching this discussion because I was also having the problem with it not charging past 95%. Through an interesting chain events, I canceled my contract with Sprint, sent back the phone and got a new 4s on Verizon. The Verizon iPhone charges to 100% with no problems and the battery lasts the whole day without any problems so maybe its just quality issues at the factory.

BTW, don't use Sprint! They have the worst customer service and don't enable their employees to solve simple customer issues.

i can confirm even after 5 restores and three 0 - 100% cycles charges. i still have problems

my batter does charge to 100% i woke up at 5 this morning to see it on 100% i went back to sleep for an hour and when i got up at 6 it was on 97%

it has done this for the last three days now. i cant seem to find anything to get it to completely charge to 100%

what im going to do this weekend is use my battery doctor app and charge it. when i did that last time it said 2hours til full charge complete... it got to 96% so i had a look at the time remaining. it said 1h 52 mins

so i dont know whether or not it will actually get to 100 but im going too see this weekend as i dont need the phone.

This is also happening on my 4S. It's only happened twice and I couldn't tell you whether it inially charged to 100 and then subsequently dropped, I'm not getting up in the middle of the night to check it. One thing I've noticed, both times the indicator was something less than 100 I had left wifi on over night so that the iCloud backup would take place. I don't believe that it is everytime I leave wifi on but I do believe the times that it did occur wifi had been on overnight. For now I'll chalk this up to some kind of software calibration error that will hopefully be fixed in a later update.

It's happening to me too. I wonder, though, if it's like with macbooks. When we first got our macbook (white) we were worried that, while plugged in, it would hit 100, but then start draining slightly and would hover around 95% or so. When we asked about it, they told us that was a function of the charging technology because it's bad for the battery to constantly start/stop charging, which is what would have to happen for it to stay at 100%. If the battery is allowed to drain a bit before the charging is switched back on, it won't damage the battery.

At least, that's what we were told. Maybe this is like that.

I've now realized that this never happens when I have wifi off. So far with wifi off overnight it's always at 100% in the morning. Whether this is an issue with wifi and iCloud backup or just wifi only I don't know but I assume it will be figured out eventually.