iPhone 4s doesn't charge to 100%

I have had my iPhone 4 since about August and never had the problem until last night. I let it charge for about 8 hours as I do every time I charge it. It has always been 100% when I woke up, but this morning it was at 97%. So I let it charge for about 20 more minutes and went back to check on it and it was at 96%. I just updated to the iOS 5.0.1 about four days ago and this was my first encounter with the problem.

Well at first I thought 5.0.1 had corrected this on my 4S but it has now reoccurred several times. Then I thought I had it narrowed down to one or two settings and/or iCloud backup, well that was wrong as well. The only consistent factor for me is wifi on or off. With wifi on overnight the less than 100% issue may or may not occur, but with wifi off it never occurs. Before 5.0.1 it always occurred with wifi on, now it's not as consistent, might occur might not. But before and after 5.0.1 if wifi is off it never occurs.

So for now I'm ignoring it, if I want iCloud backup to occur I'll leave wifi on if not I'll have it off overnight. I've wasted too much time trying to deal with this. I assume Apple will get this sorted out at some point. For what it's worth this has never happened on my wife's iphone 4, only on my 4S.

I'm having the same problem again. My phone charges to 97 percent. I thought maybe using the Battery Doctor app was causing problems, but I deleted the app and my battery issues continue to happen. It worked great after I took it to the Apple Store. I really don't think O should have to take my phone in every month for a battery check.

Does this indicate that the not fully charging problem is hardware: Several times I've powered my iPhone 4S down and left it charging. When I've powered it up (24 hours later), it's still not fully charged.

In other words, even with the iPhone 4S off, it's not reaching a 100 percent charnge.

Hmmm... I recalibrated my 4S's battery and it's been charging to 100% since.

I let me phone charge for about 18-20 hours (amazingly I didn't need it) and haven't had the problem since. This was 5 days ago.

Even when completely powered off, my iPhone 4Ss doesn't always reach 100% charge. I'll plug in my fully charged iPhone 4S, confirm that it's a 100% battery, and power it down. Twelve or 24 hours later I will have 98% or less. Again, that's with the iPhone 4S starting at 100% and being plugged in while off.

I've seen problems with the percentage meter being wrong at times since getting my iPhone 4S. I've had my phone since release day. I saw this problem after charging all night where the battery percentage was at 96%, but the battery status indicator showed the "plug" icon indicating that the phone was on a/c power, but not charging (see image at bottom). At this point I unplugged it and plugged it back in and it started charging. I did that again and it showed the plug again. Finally I just turned the phone off and on and it jumped to 98%. I then did a reset after that for good measure and it stayed at 98% so I charged it up to 100%.

Normally my phone charges to 100% without issue and is still at 100% in the morning. I've only seen this problem occasionally.

Currently I'm at 89% battery with 39 minutes of usage and 8 hours 29 minutes of standby. That seems about right.

I've also seen cases where the phone doesn't shut off when it gets to 1% battery life. It just sits there for about 20 minutes (even with active GPS) and then shuts off. I'm pretty sure there's a battery calibration/percentage bug in iOS 5.0.x

Ever since the update.. My iPhone 4s gets to 95 % then stops. And if I try to use it whilst still plugged in, it starts to go DOWN?! My betters life's getting worse, not better.

I've had this problem the last 2 mornings. Plugged in all night to an AC wall adapter and it doesn't charge to 100%. I wake up and it's at 94%. I'm gonna try recalibrating the battery. My icloud back up is off by the way, but wifi is on. Hopefully apple techs read this and are working on a solution. Software is up to date as well.

There have been several posts re: battery recalibration but no one said how to do this. How does one recalibrate the battery?

Totally discharge the battery until the phone shuts off. Then plug it in.

Smash1031 wrote:

I've had this problem the last 2 mornings. Plugged in all night to an AC wall adapter and it doesn't charge to 100%. I wake up and it's at 94%. I'm gonna try recalibrating the battery. My icloud back up is off by the way, but wifi is on. Hopefully apple techs read this and are working on a solution. Software is up to date as well.

Your situation may be similar to mine. Try turning wifi off at night for several days to see if this recurs. For me prior to 5.0.1 it always happened with wifi on. Now it's only occasionally. Something did improve. However just as before if wifi is off it's always 100% in the morning. From my experience and from what I've read here recalibrating the battery does nothing or if it does it's only temporary. After 5.0.1 came out I thought this was fixed because for several days wifi was on and it was at 100 in the morning but then it recurred. But again with wifi off it never happens to me.

My battery does not get up to 100% after a full nights charge. I'm gonna give the turn off wifi solution a try and see if it works. I'll report back in a week or so. Hopefully Apple fixes this bug in their next patch, turning wifi off every night to get a full charge is going to be extremely tedious.

Turning iCloud back up back on fixed it. Seems like apple really wants us backing up our devices.