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

The first day I got my iPhone 4S the battery drained to 5% within 8 hours. I immediately came onto the forums and checked what I could do to fix it. After reading some threads, I continued to drain the phone until it was completely flat. I then charged it up to 100% again. The next day the phone lasted approximately 4 hours later with similar usage (I was using it approximately 5-6 hours both days, lots of Siri, lots of web surfing etc...). I recently updated to 5.01 which seems to be fine. Just checked my usage stats and I have 1 hour usage, 7 hours 52 mins standby with 78% remaining. This seems to be doing alright. I haven't turned any settings off except for a couple of location settings for specific apps. I have noticed that when you make a "At a Location" reminder that it runs your battery down considerably, but I assume this is because it is constantly using GPS to track the phone.

So I'm happy with the phone, because it lasts a day, but I am only an average user doing average tasks, and if I increased my usage to using the phone like a computer or more regularly I wouldn't be surprised if the phone didn't last the entire day. I know that everytime I use Siri for about a minute the battery life decreases far more rapidly, but I don't have any quantitative measure of exactly how much faster.

Apple should've tested the phone better though, as it can't be coincidence that so many people are having the same problem. Surely testing one phone every 10,000 or whatever for a entire day would show the problem given the number of complaints on the forums.

so if you run the battery flat till its dead then charge it to 100%, thats a good thing to do to improve battery life??

Read it somewhere on the forum... it seemed to make a difference, but to be honest the only reason I could think that it would work would be something to do with battery memory and caching. Look through the forums for similar topics and you'll probably find others who have tried it. I just thought I'd post with my stats and what I've done to provide info to others and the history of my own experience. Hope the phone works out for you!

Same on iphone 4 and 3gs lol man apple has to fix this !

My phone ....... searching network 20 time per day so his battery came down very fast

I have got to agree with you ! i am using 4s too and in 40 mins it drained about 10% of my battery i did off my wifi/ some notifications /push for emails and dim the brightness but it din work ! apple, please help! :/

No major issues with battery, I think the problem is isolated in carrier network. Me and other friends are with orange UK network and no issues whilst couple friends on t-mobile uk are having issues with battery regarding usage and standby time showing same figure which is related to battery.

See me report here with one full day usage.

I have around 74 apps installed including games, etc.

Icloud mail fetch feature on

Around 45 mins of calls

around 34 imessage send in 24 hours

pulse news check frequently once an hour

couple youtube vids

45 mins of street fighter games

and safari use

today battery died from a whole day of charge

Yes JoJo, What it does is calibrates the actual battery power with the software reporting it. For example the software may report 20% left but the phone shuts down because in fact the battery energy is depleted. Or actually the opposite, software reporting 1% but there is still energy left in the battery. You can see this sometimes when you discharge, it may get to 1% quickly then sit on 1% for a long time before it actually shuts down. So the calibration does in fact help. Also it helps the battery per Apple, they recommend doing that once a month to keep the battery alive. http://www.apple.com/batteries/iphone.html

Everyone needs to stop hammering Apple with their take on battery performance. We all know the battery life is bad for some and is good for others. The performance of my 4S is actually pretty good. (especially when you compare it to android devices.) I can use my iPhone 4S all day and have some battery left for games, whereas if I tried that on anybody I know's android device it would be dead. So stop complaining to Apple days after they aknowledge the issue and we all know that they are working hard to fix it.

My battery still good but my network down randomly , i am at 5.1 beta

Although my battery is currently good, I can't wait for 5.1 final because I know that it will be a great improvement over my current battery life. I have never had an iPhone before so getting the 4S now, I really have no idea on what the life should be normally.

For anyone new to the thread be sure to go through these steps to address the battery after updating to iOS 5.0.1:

1. Reset all settings (settings app-> general-> reset)

2 a. Go through initial setup steps (lang, wifi, siri, enable location, etc) and choose setup as new phone (don't worry your apps, data, contacts, mail will still be there). Do NOT restore from iCloud or iTunes (It can copy back corrupt settings)

2 b. If you do not get the complete new setup screen with language setup and setup as new phone or restore from iTune/iCloud backup, be sure to go back to #1 and reset all settings again (it should happen the second time)

3. Turn off system location services timezone and iAd (settings -> location services -> system services)

4. Fully discharge battery (until you get the spinning wheel and it shuts off)

5. Fully recharge battery (overnight if possible)

In my experience this improves the Standby battery drain issue significantly in most cases. It reduces drain from 2-4% or more per hr to 0.5% or less. It has worked for many, many users now. If it does not work after a few try's you may have a real battery or hardware issue and should contact Apple. Good Luck!

You can check details on my thread along with numerous successes here: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3484755

I did all your suggestion but I have always the same problem.

Why Apple never talks about this problem?

Gennaro, If you have a lot of 3rd party apps you may want to backup, then reset the phone as default and see how it works in its native state from Apple. It could be a rogue app causing your issues. If the iPhone behaves better in default configuration then most likely you have an app causing your issue. Start adding back apps one at a time to see. If it does not then perform any better in its default state then you could in fact have a bad phone and maybe a trip to Apple store is in order.

Just because yours is good doesn't mean everyone's else is. Apple only half heartedly acknowledge the problem. Releasing a pathetic 5.0.1 update that didn't do jack for majority of us here.

Heck I doubt that Apple is even going to fix this issue at all.

Cochran T wrote:

Everyone needs to stop hammering Apple with their take on battery performance. We all know the battery life is bad for some and is good for others. The performance of my 4S is actually pretty good. (especially when you compare it to android devices.) I can use my iPhone 4S all day and have some battery left for games, whereas if I tried that on anybody I know's android device it would be dead. So stop complaining to Apple days after they aknowledge the issue and we all know that they are working hard to fix it.