A better iPhone 4s battery life

Even with those changes, the battery life is awful. I don't believe for a minute that Apple didn't know this before the release. Swell, now we have an expensive new product that requires turning off many of it's features just to make it marginally acceptable. Apple iOS5 management: shame on you to hit an arbitrary release date with a product you must have known to be not ready. Why so quiet?

I have these services off already and my battery drained completely in 5 hours sitting idle w/ no apps running.

If you're having a rapid battery drain, try disabling Calender in Notifications (in Settings). Worked for me!

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3391947?start=1905&tstart=0

What appears to be happening with 4s is that a corrupt contact causes the app to crash, which writes a crash log to the disk. The system then relaunches the app to try and continue syncing the contacts, it crashes again, writes another log and so on. It gets stuck in a crash loop, which prevents the OS from sleeping, and hence drains the battery. Removing the contact that causes the crash will break the cycle.

backing the phone's contents up to the computer and then restoring it resets the cycle improves the life.

angus cooney

I had already sussed out a lot of the changes before I became aware of the fact that it was a big problem, so thanks to everyone for their efforts and for highlighting a couple I hadn't yet worked out 🙂

As a Support Worker, I travel around a lot from village to village, and often I'm in cell coverage blind spots - the more time I spend in those areas, the more I notice my battery drain speeding up

It's a shame that even after all my efforts tweaking it, I get the same battery performance from my shiny new 4s, that I got from my 3g that I only stopped using because I got a 4s on the day of release... oh well - I've ordered a case with a built in battery so I can use it more

angus

If it's a bad contact I'm puzzled why disabling Calendar notifications would halt the process you outlined. Perhaps there are many issues causing rapid drains... I put a screenshot of my CPU use in the post on that link above...

I'm now concerned that the email notifications I'm getting for this thread will drain my battery. I've turned off "receive email notifications," but they still keep-a-comin'. Bah!

By the way;

EVERYONE who gets a new device with a rechargeable battery should always do a full charge cyclus before hard usage. That means to fully charge, even if full for at least 10 minutes extra for so to wear it all out.

It increases the living time over short time and the lifetime of the battery.

I am currently working both with simulator and with a real 4S to fix this.the iOS 5 is like a baby, give it a little time, even if you are a big demanding world. Wait for the first updates and fixes. They will increase the living time and decrease the drainage rate. You should undergo such a charging cyclus at least once a month, to make your battery spread happiness instead of anger, like this. Look positive at this. We have gotten a brand new update with lots of features. Much of the OS was built from scratch, so expect a few early flaws, and bugs. We will gradually pick them away. We promise:)

--Daniel Isaksen

I've had good battery life for the most part but had the following happen today. I set a reminder using a geofence. Once the reminder triggered location services remained active even after I killed the reminders app. After 7 hours of non use the phone was stone dead.

Daniel,

Thanks for your posts as my main goal is to capture as much information for you guys to prioritize your battle in getting the next iOS5 release out. From my own diagnosis and reading the other massive thread on this issue, here's what I have gathered (my initial posting was here: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3391947?answerId=16556765022#16556765022):

1) Turning off email Push and changing all email accounts to Manual updating solved my problems (I have one MobileMe (Mail, Contacts, Find My IPhone) and one GMail account (Mail, Calendars, Notes), no Exchange)

2) Within 1 I didn't tease out whether it's the email, calendar, and/or contacts being the main culprit, although I hardly have any calendar events, but do have heavy email volume (5-20 per minute)

3) I did also turn off most Location services, and minimized most Notification Center to what I need

With these I got my iPhone 4S to draw about 1% per hour, which is acceptable for me (versus ~10%/hour). I restored from a backup when first setting up the 4S, and opted not to re-install as a new phone since I managed to get to the battery level that I need.

Lastly, as to your notes regarding the A5 processor drawing more power for the same unit of work, I agree with you. However, I must point out that folks with iPhone 4 who upgraded to iOS5 are having the same problem (and maybe not as bad because of the A4), but the core issue appears to be daemons that are running more than they should/need to be (or crashing, but wasn't in my case).

As you pointed out, iOS5 is a huge undertaking with lots of new components, and you guys deserve a lot of credit for shipping it on time! So it's understandable that there are teething issues, but I just hope you guys can track the battery issues down quickly, since I know it's very tempting to run to the Apple store to exchange for a new phone, but we know that's just a waste of Apple's money and poeple's time. One last suggestion, I think it'd be hugely helpful if Apple posts a knowledge base article for iOS5 battery tips, similar to the one posted here by annabelle, so people can try them out before heading to the Apple store.

All the best,

Gerald

I just read that they think the culprit is the time zone update. I keeps the correct time as you move between time zones. Turning this off will should fix it, until this issue is resolved. Your phone won't automatically keep the correct time as you move through time zones, but small sacrafice for battery life in the meantime

See Cnet's article and fix: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-20127505-37/iphone-battery-drain-setting-time- zone-may-be-culprit/?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20

The battery drain problem on my iPhone 4S was definitely related to Location Services. You'll want to make sure that you have the Location Services status bar icon enabled to help you determine at a glance if the service is hanging on your device. I've posted more details on my blog.

I had the described battery drain problems until yesterday (German Vodafone; restored from iphone 4) - max 4 hrs life. I then disabled the calender in the exchange mail account and enabled it again. Battery now lasts min 24hrs.