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A better iPhone 4s battery life

Since I got my iPhone 4s I was very disappointed with the battery life: it looks like I'm not the only one..


During the last days I found several solutions that really improved my battery life 🙂

You have to read for days to find the good tips among hundred discussions, this is why I'm sharing those here

I'm still hoping that Apple will do something soon to improve IOS5 battery eating disorder


1) Fully charge the battery with the iPhone off

At night -or when you do not need it- plug in your iPhone to the charger , then switch it off

pulling the red tab on the screen and let it charge.

Do not switch it off before and plug in after because

the iPhone will start back automatically


The battery will go to 100% and it will last longer

This is a procedure I have done in the past even with old iPhone and iPad and I always found that works great.

Same for laptop.


2) Turn off Setting Time Zone function

in Locations (system services). It never turns off location searching so it drains the battery.

This setting was draining my battery 3% in one hour with everything off.



3) Turn off Diagnostic & Usage Data.

Settings > General > About > Diagnostic & Usage > Diagnostic & Usage Data.

Another big improvement


4) Brightness at the minimum you can stand


5) iCloud off

I use it to sync when I'm at home and with wi-fi for now: hopefully Apple will come up with some fixes


I had to kill several operations to get a decent battery life: I do not think this is what you need to do when you buy an expensive phone

Everything should work fine and the battery last as long as promised...


6) No iCloud cellular use

Settings > iCloud > Documents & Data > Use Cellular = OFF


7) Turn off Time Zone and Ask to join networks


8) Do not leave iMessage in standby when you do not use it

Quit as soon as you finish sending messages



Thanks to everyone who suggested all these tricks : it's difficult to go back and find them all but

my gratitude goes to all of you !

iPhone 4S, iOS 5

Posted on Oct 29, 2011 2:32 PM

Reply
127 replies

Dec 11, 2011 8:54 PM in response to annabelle

I did the reset on my phone today. I turn off Bluetooth and diagnostic and data. Discharge battery completely and recharge to a 100%. Usage and standby at 42 minutes now and battery life is at 97%. So far it seems to be doing better since I have been using it to read all these post and writing this post right this minute. I will check tomorrow morning since I am going to put to my normal use and see.

Dec 11, 2011 9:02 PM in response to annabelle

But if I have to turn off all the stuff on the phone. Then what is the reason to have an iPhone. You pay the amount of money. Because you want a phone with these features. So they need to fix this stuff. Just like they should have text sounds turn off when ur on a call. It is distracting when ur on the phone and all of a sudden you get a loud sound in your ear and whomever you were talking to on the phone has to repeat everything they just said.


They should have fixed these issues before releasing the phone.

Dec 12, 2011 8:32 PM in response to annabelle

I have reset my Phone yesterday around 1:30pm and discharge completely and recharge it too 100%. I use it for about 35 mins before it drop 1%. Then I used it for about another 40 minutes or so, the. Went to bed. I didn't charge the phone overnight and check the phone at about 8:15am this morning and the battery still has about 93%. Here is my usage and standby by the time I had 1% left. Usage 4 hours 38 mins and standby at 21 hours and 52 mins. That is a heck of improvement from what I normally get. Normally I get the phone fully charge in the morning, go to work and us. The phone about the same or least and I would have to charge it by 4pm. Once it shut off at about 1pm before. I am glad that reset really help me. I hope it will help most of you out the too. Almost forgot, my wife has an iPhone too and she got 1 day standby and about 5 hours 20 mins of usage

Dec 25, 2011 7:35 PM in response to andy677

I am extremely disappointed in the battery life. Sitting here reading about battery problems using my iPad and checking settings on the iPhone (not making calls or anything), the battery life has drained 6% in less than 30 minutes. I disabled Siri's use of location services, let's see if that helps. Got an appt to speak with tech support, perhaps they can help. As it stands, the battery life is so poor as to make the thing almost unusable. My old, not-so-smart phone could go days without needing a charge. Not a real happy customer right now.

Jan 15, 2012 7:34 AM in response to Ashraf999

Because not everyone is experiencing the problem. My 4S iand my wife's 4s is lasting us just fine with all the features turned on. My guess is there is a hardware issue affecting only the 32gb phones that is supplier related problem and not a design issue. I also contend that a lot of folks take it out of the box and start playing with it rather than letting it completely discharge and recharge completly without interuption. If that doesnt do it, then I would go back to Apple and ask for an exchange or service until they get it right. But making comments like " They lie " doesnt do any good to help anyone.

Jan 16, 2012 7:40 PM in response to Medpilot

I did take mine back because the battery was lousy.

They exchanged it for a brand new one.


The brand new one is marginally WORSE than the first one!!!


I tried to take this one back, too, but Apple refused to give me another one.


Just like so many other people, I have tried a bunch of different things to fix this, but nothing has helped.


Pretty hard to feel all warm and fuzzy about Apple when they're like this.

Jan 17, 2012 4:38 PM in response to Karin_xox

Hi Karin_xox, you need to go back to Apple and talk to a manager. I have the 32G and had battery issues. The first time I took the phone back they did a diagnostic and told me the battery was normal but my IOS 5 was corrupted and told me to restore the phone. I did all that but the battery life still sucked. I took it back and told the techie guy that I did everything they told me to do but my battery life still drained fairly quickly. He also did a diagnostic and the battery came up as normal but he swapped my phone for me.


After a few weeks, my phone was having the same issue if not worse like yours and I took it back and Apple swapped it again. When I spoke to my phone carrier, they told me that as long as I"m still under the manufactor warranty, Apple has to swap it. They told me to fight it if I have to but they said there shouldn't be a problem. I didn't have a problem swapping it a second time. I encourage you to go back to Apple and tell them you didn't invest a lot of money into a phone that doesn't work properly. Stand your ground and if the manager doesn't help you, ask to speak to someone above them. Like I said, you should be able to use the phone and be happy with it's performance. Good luck and let us know what happens.

Feb 4, 2012 8:17 PM in response to kennethfromsaint davids

I agree!! The battery life on my iPhone 4s was horrible!! I got it 2 days after it was released and just dealt with it till today(three months later). I brought it in to the Apple Store, they looked at it for ten minutes and just gave me a brand new one!! Seems to have solved the problem!! I think Apple was trying to cover up their tracks by saying it needed a software update, which 5.0.1 did absolutely nothing. I think the first batches of phones that were released had bad batteries, and they didn't wanna admit it. My new iPhone 4s seems to have 4 times the battery life as my original. Don't know if this helps anyone, but getting a new one solved my problem.

A better iPhone 4s battery life

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