iPhone 4S losing charge plugged in

I wrote, "An iPhone 4S that regularly discharges 5% or 10% in the charger (and that may be happening multiple times a day, too), will have a shorter life span than one that is behaving normally, and not discarging in the charger. Every ten 10% discharge is equivalent to one full discharge."

It is correct to say that ten 10% discharges is the equivalent of one 100% discharge as far as a lithium battery's life span is concerned.

A charge/discharge cycle is reached when the battery has discharged 100%, either all at once, or over a longer period of time though multiple, partial discharges.

If your iPhone 4S is partially discharging while in the charger, even if it's only 5 or 10%, that contributes shortening your iPhone battery's life span. Unfortunately my phone is one of those that discharges on its own in the charger.

It's definately a bug and not a feature.

Your phone is fully charged, it's just a bug. Not sure if anyone has tried this, but I figured out if right after a charge overnight my phone would say 96% BUT the battery icon appeared full.

So, all I did was shut off the phone "slide to power off" then turn it back on and bingo says 100%.

So, I feel this is just a bug with the "show battery percentage"

Why didn't Apple chime in on this?

Or am I the only one this works for...LOL

Just adding to the posts / reporting... I've been having this issue since i picked up our 64gb 4s phones (1 white, 1 black). Usually I'll wake up and the phone will be at 94-98%, however I would estimate that 20% of the time it will be at 100% full charge in the morning. This morning though, i woke up with it at 68% and the device was very hot (about 60 C). It's now reading 64% since I unplugged it and started to web search the issue (about 30 minutes or so).

My wife notticed as well on hers about a week ago for the first time and mentioned it to me.

I suspect that it has to do with what others have said - the phone reaching 100%, then going from charging mode to plugged in mode. I would say that most of the time when I settle down for the night and plug my phone in, the charge at that point is over 70% meaning it would take a few hours to top it up to full, then spend the rest of the night in plugged in mode. Last night I specifically remember that the phone was on full charge when I plugged it in for bed.

Looks like a fix is coming. Maybe Apple DOES read these forums.

w00t!

I have the same problem. I leave the phone plugged in, it reaches 100%, and then it drops to 97%. However, if I load a third party battery manager, Boost Magic, it says that it is actually 100%. So the 97% reported by the phone is bogus. A software bug. So, deal with it, and wait for a fix.

Your article references a different issue than what is being discussed here.

Seems like the update has not fixed this issue! Has anyone got any positive results with the new update?

I updated this morning and was very hopeful but, sadly, no change. In fact, iPhone (4S) was plugged in while it updated and the battery went down 3%!

I've been monitoring this for the last couple of weeks and am still not quite convinced whether it's a software or hardware issue.

One incident I had a few days ago. Battery was at about 56%. I had a long meeting later that day and needed to be sure I didn't run out of juice so I charged it up. It was plugged in for over an hour but still showed 56%. The symbol was the Plug icon, NOT the thunderbolt. It then crashed so I rebooted and it showed 100%. I suspect this is something today's update has fixed, though.

I'm on my 3rd iPhone 4S (1st was 32GB model which I returned to purchase a 64 GB, which had camera issues, so I exchanged it for my current 64 GB Verizon model). All three of my 4S's exhibited the loosing charge while plugged in issue (that is, loosing charge *after* reaching 100%).

Since updating to iOS 5.0.1, my iPhone 4S has not lost charge while plugged in, no matter how long it remains plugged in or how much it is used while plugged in. I have intentionally tried to run the battery down while plugged in by downloading several podcasts (video and audio) and playing a few games known to drain the battery faster, and the phone remains at 100% while plugged in.

I'm not sure why the update has resolved the problem for myself and others and not for everyone, but I'm 99.9% certain that the issue is indeed software related and not a hardware defect. Like I said in an earlier post, I think there may be subtle differences in the firmware shipped on the phones, perhaps due to production run batches, or where produced, etc. It makes sense that as Apple discovers precicely the factors coming into play on this issue (and the fast-draining battery issue, though I do not think they are linked), they will release additional patches that correct it.

For what it's worth, I chose to do my update via WiFi, without connecting to my Mac and iTunes. The update took only about 10 minutes or so and went without a hitch. A co-worker did his update (iPhone 4, not 4S) via iTunes and said his download was significantly larger than anything that would download in 10 minutes. I wonder if there might be slight differences in exactly what is updated/chaged depending on which method was used and what original firmware shipped with the phone (even though the original firmware is always listted as "5.0.0"). The way in which the phone is updated may not be relavent as to the final outcome, but without knowing one way or another, it is interesting to ponder.

As for my phone's battery life, it has not shown any noticeable improvement since the update. Of course, I was getting outstanding batterly life prior to the update, so no dissappointments here.

For those still not remaining fully charged to 100% while plugged in, I'd sit tight and wait it out for a bit. We've all got a 1-year warranty on these things. If future software patches do not resolve the issue, I'm sure they will be happy to swap out your phone with a replacement within that time frame.

ascii-T wrote:

Since updating to iOS 5.0.1, my iPhone 4S has not lost charge while plugged in, no matter how long it remains plugged in or how much it is used while plugged in. I have intentionally tried to run the battery down while plugged in by downloading several podcasts (video and audio) and playing a few games known to drain the battery faster, and the phone remains at 100% while plugged in.

Seems that I've spoken too soon. I'm not sure why, but apparently my phone is back to loosing charge while plugged in again. It really doesn't make much sense, but I've had my phone plugged in longer than usual today (since about 10 PM last night), and I just noticed it dropped down to 97%. I used it minimally today - just checking email a few times and a couple of quick browsing sessions.

All I can guess is that maybe the phone never remains charged to begin with, and when it *seems* like it is, all that is really happening is that the phone is indeed loosing charge, but not too much before it starts recharging itself again, all the while just displaying100% if/when the process is within a small enough percentage zone. Total guess work, but I'm not sure what the deal is.

The other day, I intentionally tried to drain the phone battery for a while, and it never budged from 100% while plugged in. Today, it's been mostly just sitting there plugged in, and it's down to 97% between last hands-on (it was at 100%) and now.

I don't like this, but I'm not too concerned. I just unplugged it and plugged it back in to put it back into active charging mode. Hopefully whatever is going on will be addressed in a future update.

This is my first post in the apple discussion boards and frankly im a little upset. I am now on my 3rd yes THIRD iphone 4s and having a range of issues one of which is the battery not staying fully charged. 2 of my phones have been to as low as 85% while pluged in and in the battery ICON would show the plug in the battery icon not the charge symbol. aside from the battery issue i have had connection problems with my USB cord. I never had any problems with my Iphone 4 or my 3s for that matter.

when exchanging my phone the apple store even pulled a dead phone out of a new box and wouldn't turn on or wouldnt charge. My friend even had a phone he just got 5 days ago and when he looked at the usage infomation under Cell Useage it sayd he had allready racked up 12 days of talk time...thats over 288 hours of talk time in 5 days...that can't be done... The fact of the matter is they released this phone way to early and has more bugs in it. I'm taking mine back and going back to my Iphone 4 They can keep the 4S

I suspect Joeyjojo may be correct. I will be trying that in the morning. Most days i awake to 97 to 98% after being on the charger all night Have woke up early a few times and its at 100% then back to 97 or so when I actually get up. A couple of times I have come down and plug into USB on computer in an effort to top off and it goes back to 100% pretty quickly, however if I leave it plugged into USB it seems to stay at 100% even while using it for several hours. I am thinking the indicator may be buggy or something different between AC and USB charging options. Leaning more toward the % meter just misreporting. That would explain Joeyjojo message that 97% shows 100% after a quick reboot. The iphone is not charging 3% or 4 % while rebooting I can assure you 🙂

Try this: Turn off your iPhone and leave it plugged in. I did and I have the same problem of not getting a full charge. Even with my iPhone 4S turned off and in the charger for 24+ hours sometimes it won't reach 100% when I power it back on.

Not reaching a full charge even when off is troublesome.

OK As stated I tried Joeyjojo tip and it does seem to work. However let me add this: due to the battery issues there was a post in another forum regarding fixing that. https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3526981. In particular the info about resetting and draining battery and recharging from DavidCH. After doing that process. While I recharged the phone it reached 100%. I left it plugged in most of the day and it remained 100% and the plug icon not the lightning bolt. After removing and using a little, of course battery dropped so when I went to bed I plugged in. It made it to 100% and I woke up early and it was still on 100% Great right!. Then when I actually got up later in the morning it was back to 98% . Dang and it was doing so good. Anyway a quick turn off/reboot with sleep button and slide to off and back on made it 100% immediately. So apparently the battery is in fact charged just the % meter is having issues. As I said earlier, rebooting will not make the battery charge 3%. If anything it will drain it a little more to get all loaded again. The reset mentioned seems to have fixed various issues after 5.0.1 update including battery life for a lot of folks. May be worth trying for any of you with battery problems or other strange issues. So maybe turn off the battery percentage meter and just watch the icon and dont sweat it til the iOS 5.1 update fixes it 🙂 (we can only wish right).

Bill37, I suspect if you run a battery calibration, drain the battery all the way til it cuts off with the spinning star, then fully charge it and leave it a while after reaching 100% your issue will be solved. If you never make it to 100% I would supect its a battery calibration issue.