iOS 5.0.1 - Made my iPhone 4S battery performance worse!

I have recently upgraded my iphone 4S to 5.1 , i have purchased it in Feb 2012, Unnecessesarily i have updated it to 5.1 without checking the reviews now my phone is not even giving battery back up of 1 day.Earlier when i am on 5.0.1 it worked well but now it *****. Apple please fix this issue as early as possible. I even tried to restore to factory settings and resynced with icloud but still im having the same problem

Same here with my 4S. Tried every suggestion. Only thing that works is to turn of 3G. On 5.1 my iPhone lasts about 50% of the time it did on 5.0.1 with exactly the same settings and usage. It's definitely the 3G radio that drains the battery. On my 30 minute commute it drains aprox. 5% without even touching the device. It's rediculous.

Only temporary solution for now is that I turn 3G off and turn push mail off. But that's not what I got the phone for.

Same problem over here. iPhone 4S with 5.1, 25% power drain within 2 hrs! Location based services disabled, Bluetooth disabled, 3G disabled, WLAN disabled, notifications and Push Emails disabled. Thank you Apple! I appreciate this brick with a cord... Now completely useless.

atb, Lars

Please try my method which i tried and tested. It works !!! Here's what I wrote on this forum earlier.

Hi folks !!! I have replied to users Wijanarka, ilovemyfamily, Astronorick & nbercasio on this forum about the iphone 4S battery issue. I have tried various methods to get some juice out of all the suggestions given by them and others on this forum but none of them really worked for me. I have done a restore on 5.1 and then restored from backup. I have done a restore and then restored as new phone. I have done a reset all settings, deleted my email accounts and added them again. I have gone through a complete restore with all apps installed again method given by user ilovemyfamily. But I am sorry to say that none absolutely worked for me except my own method what I originally posted on page 13 on this forum.

My method was to turn off 3G & switch on wifi when at home in your own wifi range and do exactly the opposite when out i.e switch off wifi & turn on 3G. I am now 100% convinced that only this method worked for me and I am going to substantiate my claim with these two images (below) which were taken on separate occasions. I have taken these images at exactly 13% battery remaining on iphone.

One when both wifi & 3G was on with locations services / notifications all off and the second one when wifi (at home) and 3G (when out) alternatively switched on/off with locations services / notifications all off.

I know that this is not an ideal situation given that we didn't buy the phone to turn off its features which defeats the very purpose for which it was bought in the first place. But until Apple comes up with a fix, this is what i am going to implement.

From these 2 images you can clearly see at 13% remaining battery the one with alternate on/off wifi/3G is a winner.

It gives me an amazing usage of 9hrs 53min with a standby of 1day 22hrs. Other people who have some locations/notifications on will experience similar usage/standby patterns as mine albeit with lower values. This is understandable. All the folks out there who has 5.1 battery issues should give a try to my method and post their comments/findings the same way I did.

I hope that Apple is monitoring these forums and take user feedback positively to come up with a lasting solution.

Image one with wifi / 3G on at the same time always.

Image two with wifi (when at home) & 3G (when out) alternate on / off.

This example is my experience forthe most part also - in simple terms, it's about managing the radio's on the phone. At the end of all my delving into resets, etc., the key seems to be awareness of when your phone struggles with 3G, and or WiFi. I find that the phone trying to connect out Via 3G in a bad spot for a while (overnight) is the biggest killer of my battery. My home has poor and 'spotty' 3G reception. At the office, 3G is fine, at home, it pushes battery hard. With WiFi, I don't notice it being a battery killer as much as 3G can be. When I'm at home, I don't turn off 3G, I just make sure I'm coneced WiFi.

Here's a good case point. At home overnight, when connected WiFi, my night time drainage is minimal. Well, I had recently setup some 'Parental Rules' on my WiFi, to turn WiFi off for the kids at 9:30 to help 'steer' them off their ipod's and laptops at that time of night, I had forgotten I did this, and noticed that my Phone was down to 50 to 70% in the morning. I was like Whaaatt now !. Then I remembered that WiFi was off for the kids. Well, although my phone is not on the parental ban list on my router, it still seems to have it's WiFi connection somehow impeded. This isn't an Iphone issue, but a router issue. So this just further proved to me that when I don't have WiFi and need to push my email via 4G in a bad area, that my battery pays the price.

So at the end of my experimentation, my settings are:

Exchange email always on push ( I need this)

WiFi on, with notification OFF

3G always on

Location Services I manage - I turn on as I need, although I think I could leave it on

I don't use Icloud. No Way, No How. Even deleted Icloud account.

I toggle bluetooth on and off, on if I'm n my vehicle as needed.

WhatI would love to know the Facts on is how Apple manages radio connections. Like their timings and If Then Else regarding data. IF can't check email via Wifit THEN try 3G ELSE ???. It's the ELSE I would like to know. DOes it wait for x minutes, then try it all again ? Does it pound 3G endlessly until it connects ? etc.

I suppose I'll never know the answer to that one, but then again, I shouldn't need to know. At this point, I find that I need to use WiFi in bad 3G areas to keep battery life decent. Other than that, all is running well now. I do hope Apple tightens up their code, in terms of how it handles 'marginal connections' so we don't need to elf manage, but by simply being aware of your signals is key.

The problem is when the phone is searching for 3G and doesn't have a strong signal or in some cases does have a strong signal.

Using wifi at my house and work I have great battery life. Its during the drive home or if I leave the house or office even if I have nothing on that I see huge drops in battery.

It's got to be a bug when they updated the 3G on 5.1.

My experimentation (as per images above) shows clearly that when wifi+3G is on together, I have poor usage / standby but when I turn on/off wifi/3G at home and out it improves usage/standby. I am happy that you don't seem to have that problem at least but nevertheless the battery performance overall is poor. I did try to keep wifi+3G on together for about 3-4 days of usage but then when I tried the other method it worked. Very strange with iOS that it works on some devices and not work at all on some.

I think for those of us with similar battery issues, it relates to the radio's current use/handling with ios 5.1

There's lot of reports of what works for some and not or others, however it's a very difficult set of circumstance to discern because of our unknowns, such as:

1. What the actual 3G and/or WiFi strengths are for any given user at any given time.

2. How Ios 5.1 handles the radios when there are weak signals.

3. Exactly what their settings are, ranging from Push Mail, to location services, to icloud, and how much of each they actually do through the period of one battery cycle.

Basically, it's hard for one person to simply apply what worked for someone else, because their conditions are different to some degree.

I would think that when Apple gives a user an App to enable Apple Technicians to monitor a users phone for a given period of time, that they are gathering data from the phone that as users, we simply dont have access to. Like signal strengths, useage information, re-try connection information, etc.

Hello All,

O.K. I am pretty sure I have accidentally found out new info that may play a HUGE part in this whole "Radio" issue that we are discussing currently on this thread.

O.K. so here’s the deal…

This past Friday I made an appointment with the Genius Bar at the Indianapolis Apple retail store (which by the way was a 3 ½ hour round trip not including store time) to take one of my iPhone 4s’ to get replaced. I have, like many of you, have tried everything under the sun and in every order imaginable. So I gave in and after buying my phones in Oct. the first day they were out decided to throw in the white flag and go get a refurbished replacement. The people at the Apple store were very nice and the young man that helped me was too. After explaining to him how OCD and meticulous I was and am about going through the steps of “Restore” and everything else and after every update his words to me were “Well, it looks like you have done all my work for me, that is normally what I would do first before replacing the phone. So let’s get you another phone.” I thought…Great, sounds promising. Well he brought me out my refurbished phone and removed the SIM card out of my original NEW phone and put it in the replacement, proceeded to activate it and went through all the first time set up steps to get the phone up and running. Which by the way made me very nervous and uncomfortable because of past experiences and ever since update 5.0.1 (9A405) which caused ALL of my battery issues, my phone worked perfect before that first update, so I thought well I’m starting new so why not let him proceed. Plus he also from the get go went ahead and updated the existing ios 5.0.1(9A406) which came on the refurbished phone to 5.1.0 is was a BIG mistake I think, as soon as I left the store and was on my 1 ½ hour drive back to Terre Haute the phone started to get really warm around the lower right side, not at the top middle behind the Apple logo which is where the processor is and is where the phone originally would get warm pre-5.0.1 update. Once I did the first update after buying the phone new is when the phone would get extremely hot and the heat moved from where the Apple logo is on the back (which is where it is supposed to heat up) to the metal/metallic sides, which at the time I thought to myself that’s odd for it to be getting hot in a different area than normal. And let me add that this immediate warming was constant and continual with absolutely NO apps installed yet, remember I was on my way back to my hotel first to put everything back on my phone there. So I called Apple Care about half way back because the phone never cooled down, even when I put it in standby and I even powered it off and it was still warm on the sides!!!! Yeah I know, odd right? So the rep. was very nice and offered to overnight me another one and said that it was probably a hardware issue because the phone was as plain as a brand new one since I hadn’t installed anything on it yet. I declined and told them that I would be traveling through Nashville, TN the following day and would stop in at the Apple Retail store there if that was alright with them, he said that would be fine and set the appointment.

I went into the Apple Retail store there in Nashville, by the way not treated as nice, kind of like the young man that helped me treated me like I was lying or something, but anyway that’s beside the point.

So this time, after waiting almost 1 hour compared to 15 mins. in Indy with the same size crowd, after my interrogation he brought me out another phone, but I did this one a little different… I asked the young man to let me set it up and choose the first time options to activate the phone. And I did NOT let him update it either so I left with a clean new (refurbished) phone without any apps installed. This time the phone during my first phone call home started to get a little warm, like normal warm, and the warmth was in the correct place…behind the logo!! And the battery by the way is lasting more like it should, I take it off my charger at 3:50 AM EST go to work in a bad signal area and after work I go to bed at like 10:00 pm EST and the battery is not dead! It still has around 24% at that time.

Now to the interesting part…

Now for the questionable difference…unbeknownst to me, and did not know until I plugged my phone into my computer to start placing my family photos back on the phone, a message popped up in front of me right there on the computer screen that reads something like this…”There is no SIM card in your phone, you phone will still work on your CDMA network but if you want to use it international overseas you will need to have the SIM card installed in order for international calling.” WHAT???? So my Verizon phone works without the SIM card? I did not know I could do that!! The Genius Bar gentleman that helped me forgot to pull my SIM card out of my phone I was trading and put it in this second replacement!! And when my battery issues started and the phone started overheating after the first update until now 5 months or so later remember the heat moved from behind the Apple logo to the metallic right side right by the SIM CARD DOOR!!!!!! So my question is could these overheating and battery draining issues be caused by the SIM card??????

I have not updated the phone yet to 5.1.0 and to be honest I’m kind of scared to because my phone is working so good. I just think it is too much of a coincidence that the same area of overheating is the same area the SIM card goes and when there was no SIM card installed there is no overheating and battery problems !!!!! What do you all think??

Oh and I will need to go by Verizon and get another SIM card but I am not sure if I want to put it in unless I go overseas, which I won’t be anytime soon.

I'm becoming a believer in the "low 3G even though I have WiFi being the problem" theory. My iPhone 4 with iOS 5.1 was very well behaved at work today (adequate 3G, no WiFi) with both cellular data and WiFi truned on. When I got home, where I have great WiFi but almost no 3G, I experienced rapid battery drops. When I turned off cellular data, that seemed to bring it back. So what I'm experiencing is that low 3G strength is causing my phone to use battery rapidly with iOS 5.1, even though it is using WiFi. So, since I'm working from home tomorrow, I'll have 3G turned off all day, and use WiFi as usual, and see how that goes.

The rest of the story is that I used to have a working Verizon Network Extender that boosted our very poor cell phone and 3G strength to acceptable levels. Now I don't have a working Network Extender, so I have only one bar of cell phone signal strength and a little more than negligible 3G. Which seems to be a problem for my phone, despite the WiFi working well.

The final piece of the puzzle, after finding out if my phone acts okay at home with cellular data turned off and using WiFi, will be if I can ever get the Network Extender that I have here working again. I'm working with Verizon, but they seem to be in no hurry to help me get the thing working again, I guess they get paid anyway.. Once the Network Extender is working (I hope), I'll have adequate 3G, and can see if my phone will work with both WiFi and 3G turned on (as it did at work where I can use 3G only).

Anyways, if my phone's good tomorrow with cellular data off and using WiFi, I think that's pretty conclusive that low 3G with cellular data turned on is the battery problem that I'm seeing. I've tried about everything else, restores, resets, you name it (other than downgrading to iOS 5.0.1, which apparently isn't an option for some reason). Some of those have helped temporarily, but not for even a full day.

I am convinced it will work for you when you turn off 3G at home and only leave wifi on and vice versa when you are out. I have done an extensive trail over almost a week now and can definately confirm that my method works. I have also substantiated my claim with these 2 images before on this forum and once again giving you my iPhone readings as i am typing this message : usage 5hrs 28min, standby 1day 7hrs and battery reamining 41%.

Image one with wifi / 3G on at the same time always.

Image two with wifi (when at home) & 3G (when out) alternate on / off.

Please stop posting the same picture over and over Yaarab.

No offence to you but there are many who don't read the full forum nor have the time to go back and forth.

How do you know they don't read the whole thread? and your solution is not a solution! Do you buy an iPad and not use the WiFi or Xbox and not use the controllers?

We need a Apple software solution to fix this problem not turning on and off features!

It's on the same page 3 times Yaarab that's why.