iPhone 4S battery not charging completely

I put the new phone to charge last night. Around 4AM I woke up and looked at it and it was at 100%. I left it charging and then at 7AM it was at 92%! I left it plugged in and started to use it, and within a minute it dropped to 91%. I unplugged it and plugged it back in and now it's charging again.

Since this is the 2nd 4S with he same issue I am hoping it's just a software glitch. Fingers crossed!

How long was it charging for? It seems like it gets to 100% but the longer it stays plugged in then the charge starts to drop.

I've been involved in an in-depth discussion about this same issue here: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3407164?answerId=16568911022#16568911022

In short, based on everything I've read and experiences personally, the "not remaining at 100% charge while plugged in" issue seems to be a "design choice" made by Apple. It may not be desirable, but it seems to be the intended (or perhaps even unintended, but still) result of how the firmware was programmed and not the result of faulty hardware or anything people are doing wrong. My guess is that it will either be explained as "why this approach was chosen", if it somehow is better for the phone's battery longevity over time, or corrected in an update, if deemed a mistake or oversight in programming.

I would say if you tranfered all your stuff from a restore threw itunes to do a reset all settings i have had this fix tons of my customers issues that had the simliar traits that you have described.

My 4S only charged up to 93% on a few different times after charging for an entire night.

The battery also dropped from 93% charge to the low 80% after an hour of what I would consider light use (checking news headlines, but not reading any articles and checking email without sending any email). After seeing several news reports about the battery life I turned off all location services except for maps. I have not seen any improvement with my battery drain.

ERAmn wrote:

My 4S only charged up to 93% on a few different times after charging for an entire night.

The battery also dropped from 93% charge to the low 80% after an hour of what I would consider light use (checking news headlines, but not reading any articles and checking email without sending any email). After seeing several news reports about the battery life I turned off all location services except for maps. I have not seen any improvement with my battery drain.

ERAmn wrote:

My 4S only charged up to 93% on a few different times after charging for an entire night.

The battery also dropped from 93% charge to the low 80% after an hour of what I would consider light use (checking news headlines, but not reading any articles and checking email without sending any email). After seeing several news reports about the battery life I turned off all location services except for maps. I have not seen any improvement with my battery drain.

Your phone probably charged fully to 100% and then began dropping back down *before* you checked it for the first time after plugging it in. For whatever reason - as a "feature" or possibly an oversight, the iPhone 4S seems to stop drawing any power at all from the charger after reaching 100% charge. The longer it remains on the charger (after the charge bolt has changed to just a plug icon in the battery meter in the upper-right corner), the more power will slowly drain as it is (seemingly) drawing all operational power from the battery alone, even though it is still plugged in. In another thread, someone even chimed in to say they witnessed their iPhone 4S begin charging again *while* he was using it (never unplugging it, it dropped to 91%, and then began charging again on its own while being used).

In terms of your fast battery drain - it is probably the result of a battery meter that needs to be calibrated. To calibrate your battery, let it run down completely to the point where it powers itself off. Then plug it in, making sure it gets a full 100% charge without interruption. You should probably repeat this process at least twice in the first week of owning the phone (or just start now) and then maybe once a month or every other month over time, just to keep it calibrated. The phone's software is doing its best to *guess* how much charge it has left, but it doesn't always guess well, and that is why you might sometimes notice a really fast battery drain within just a few minutes. If you've ever tried running your battery down to the point where it powers down by itself, you may notice that the last 1% lasts a rather long time. This is because the battery meter is, again, not guessing at the actual charge remaining. Just cycle it a couple of times to calibrate the battery meter and I'm sure your power drain will be reflected a bit more consistently in the percentage meter.

One more thing - the more you go looking for odd battery draining issues, the more you are likely to find them. This is because when you keep looking and testing, and looking some more - you tend to do things that *do* cause faster battery drain. When you're more into your general routine, chances are, the battery life won't seem like such an issue. I know - it's a new baby and you just want to make sure everything is perfect. I think we all do that. :-)

i had the exact same problem and i found it was a certain App i downloaded... for me the Free Version of the flashlight by "Latter-Day Apps" was the cause of my problems with the phone not charging to 100%. it would charge to 92%, 95%, or 97% every night, if i would delete the app it would do it less often, but it would still do it occasionally, if i did a restore of the phone by resetting it and deleting all data it would NOT do it at all, if i would install any app it would still work perfect and charge to 100%, as soon as i installed the flashlight app again, it would start doing it. so my solution was to delete the flashlight app, do a hard restore, install a PAID Flashlight app by "i4software" and call it a day no more worries, my friend had a simillar problem, but with a completely different app... he did the same thing i did, and just avoided installing that app and that fixed the problem for him... i dunno tho, i am sure it is just a kink in ios5 that needs to be tackled and fixed in the next version...

Yes I have! Just this morning in fact. It stopped at 97%. I unplugged and replugged it in to complete to 100. This has happen four or five times.

haha! i am not sure if i jinxed myself or not, but this morning i was at 97% and had to unplug and re-plug it to make it charge to 100%. i thought i had fixxed the issue, it worked fine for 3 weeks... 😟 i don't know, i am guessing it is a software issue... if it was a hardware issue, it would do it every time, no matter if you restore or not. i called Apple and they told me to take the iPhone and the cable in to the store to check it out, i will keep you guys updated on this... hopefully it goes away on it's own or they release an ios 5.1 to repair this issue.

My 4S charges first to 100%, and if left plugged in, drops to 97% overnight. If I unplug, and plug back in, it goes to 100%.

Looks like the phone stops charging after it gets to 100%, and then drops to 97% via standby. Software bug.

I'm wondering if a third party battery manager might keep the charge at 100%? Bet it will!

Fix this bug Apple.

You're not Alone. It happened to me twice already. Left the iphone4s charged overnight after calibrating it few days ago and I got 97% charged the next morning with phone still plugged in. I used an app called battery Doctor that does trickle charge when I calibrated my battery and that seemed to charge my phone all the way to 100%. so I hope it's a software bug.

I have the same issue with my 4S; it stops charging when it reaches 100% so when I wake up it's at 97% or something close to that. BUT it just started doing that -- didn't have the issue until a couple of days ago, and I got the phone on launch day. ( A week ago I took it into the Apple Store because of another issue -- camera and photo problem -- and we did a system restore which solved the camera problem. I don't think the issues are related.). I wonder if Ascil-t is right and if the phone was designed to stop charging at 100%. If so, I think that's ridiculous because so many people charge their phones overnight. Also, if it was designed to do that then I should have had the issue right from the start and I didn't.

Apple says they're coming up with a fix for the rapid battery-draining problem but that's a different issue from the stop-charging-at-100% issue.

I had the same exact problem, same thing that's been described here. I went to apple, they replaced the phone. this new one works fine. I put it on the charger before I go to bed and I wake up with it charged to 100% every night. Bottom line, just swich your phone out, and make apple aware of this problem by physically going into the store.

I have exactly the same issue too. I put it to charge overnight and in the morning I have 95% or less. Seems that when reached 100% it stops charging.