Battery life for iPhone4 after ios5 update

@wowproducer - Just in case you don't find instructions:

1 - Make sure iTunes is up to date. 10.5

2 - connect your phone to your computer with a sync cable and allow iTunes to finish syncing.

3 - Hold down both the lock button and the home button until the phone resets, release the lock button while STILL holding the home button. If this works correctly the screen will stay totally blank. no logo, nothing. at this point iTunes should report that it has detected a device in recovery mode.

4 - Choose to restore the phone and when prompted select set up as new. DO NOT restore a backup as this IS why people are having trouble.

5 - I chose to select which apps to sync manually so i could take this opportunity to un-clutter my phone. I have been adding back apps one at a time. (so far i have added Pandora, Music Dock, Apple Remote, Talk to Schwab and set up my exchange email.) I wanted to be sure that a rogue app does not bring the problem back.

6 - Enjoy ios 5 and be reminded of how amazing the iphone 4 really is.

Let me know what happens.

I'm joining in ... I'm having the same issue. I always had to charge by the end of the day, but now it is imperative that I do so and I have had the phone die while out. I am not a power user by any means.

I don't think it is reasonable to ask me to restore as new ... I don't have the kind of time it will take to start all over again and I shouldn't have to. I already manage my apps manually, but this isn't about app use, the battery is simply draining with minimal use regardless which or number of open apps.

We need a reasonable fix. I'd also like to be assured that it hasn't caused permanent damage to the battery.

Thank you, but the only problem with this is that if I do as you suggest, I will lose all of my sms history and phone call history!

If there is a way to only restore this, than please let me know!

Also, I don't understand Apple releasing this software. I have developed many software/hardware products over the years and when you develop something you know when it has major bugs like this. Obviously smaller ones crop up, but this is really bad in my opinion.

The problem will all of us including me, is that we put up with it because we love our Apple products, but we really should be asking for a discount from Apple since their updates and products are not 100%. In fact, we should do that for any company including wireless companies who provide inadequate service and still charge us full price.

It is time we stand up as a larger group and say enough is enough. If you purchase a car and it does not run correctly you ask for them to fix it or give you your money back. If you buy a product in a store and it does not work right you return it. But we don't do that with our sacred Apple products because we are so happy to have them we don't want to return them.

That's my rant for the morning....If anyone knows how to restore just the sms and phone history and voicemail let me know!

@originalmacbabe - You can sync your contacts to your mac's address book, then set up as new, then sync your contacts back. I have over 1200 contacts and was done with the whole process in less than 10 minutes. Less time than you've probably spent trying to find a different solution.

@wowproducer - I agree that losing SMS and call history is inconvenient but this fix will only need to be done once and the battery was way more inconvenient to me that losing my txt messages. Let me know if htings work our for you.

Thanks. I am less concerned about contacts and calendars than I am about app settings, and reloading all the apps/folders/docs back in (which I do manually). But, I'll keep it in mind if I throw in the towel. My personal preference is to understand the issue and know how to troubleshoot my phone.

In that vein, I did try changing the Location Services settings as suggested and there is some improvement (although not even close to my previously not-so-great levels) ... I haven't had a chance for a real "day out" so I'm still waiting for the next software update.

I courious on this battery issue, On my 4S I didn't think my battery life was too bad as I got though the day with reasonable use. Now I switched over to show % battery life and it seems to be dropping fairly fast. Those of you with fast drain issues, do any of you have you battery meter set with the % turned off and still experiencing fast drain? Turn on % about 30 min ago and have lost 7% on my battery, seems like it's draining faster with the % turned on. Maybe the problem is only the percent monitor program mis-calculating the battery level.

Tried doing that. seems to work.

Except that , when the email is setup (2 gmail accts & no other app downloaded or synced) the same problem of the battery draining fast crops up again.

Am going to try to download a few apps without setting up the email accts. Lets see how that works.

Will keep you guys posted !!

I'll add my experience to this thread. I got an iPhone 4 in fall of 2010 and all was fine until the release of an OS upgrade last September/October. The battery issues started then. I was able to resolve it by rebooting a couple of times. Then all was good until last month when iOS 5 was released and it all started again. Both times, not only was my battery draining by my data usage suddenly spiked, to the point where I exhausted by plan and had to pay for additional service. This time rebooting didn't work so I took it to the Genius Bar. The tech told me it was my fault, because I wasn't turning the phone off fully once a day before recharging the battery. I'd never heard of this before, and was given no explanation of why this would result in data spikes. But she did a factory restore and all was fine.

Then a week or two ago I saw the iOS 5 update that was released, that was supposed to address battery drain! I installed it and things were going well until yesterday evening. I had my phone in my pocket and noticed it was feeling warm (a sign in the past of increased battery drain), and sure enough the battery had dropped from 50% charge to about 20% in a couple of hours. It's been draining like this ever since. I've tried changing my mail push settings and my time zone setting and rebooted, but can still watch the battery meter tick down by about 1% every couple of minutes. Guess I'll be doing a restore tonight.

After restoring / hard reset like raid runner said, the battery seems to be working a bit better ! Hopefully the next patch / update will fix the battery issues !

Charged to 100 % at 11 pm last night. This morning at 6 am the charge is down to 60 % already. The funny part iis that in the ''usage'' tab, the standby time shows as 7 hrs, which is fine, But the actual usage time shows as 4 hrs !! Incredible considering the fact that, I was asleep the whole night !!

So the hard reboot and restore did not seem to work one bit

(also all location services have been turned off and so has the push mails etc)