Iphone 4s Battery life WORSE with upgrade. Anyone else seeing same?

menace,

As I said a good ending is GOOD.

I also agree with your thoughts on what is causing this issue i.e. some PUSH related broken code.

And oh by the way Apple does read these forums regardless of what others say.

Case in point during this same problem on my iPhone 3S there was an ongoing thread like this in which I made a lot of posts looking for answers and Apple Tech Support contacted me directly by email and asked if I would collect some data from my phone for them. So they are paying attention to these forums.

The ugly part is I never received a solution from Apple but someone in that 3S thread posted the "Restore as new" and/or delete your email account and manually re-install it. I tried it, it fixed my 3S and I never had to go back to Apple for a solution.

I did make the mistake of thinking that Apple watching these "Post" had gotten a handle on the problem and that would be the end of it - but then what the heck do I know.

Happy iPhoneing to you menace.

Yes I agree. The iphone 4s battery drain even faster after upgrade with 5.0.1. My wife iPhone 4 after upgrade to 5.0.1 battery only last 1 day. Before that can last at least 2 to 3 days using OS4

The iOS update did not help me. I have turned off locations for most everything and recently turned off iCloud backup. I have a friend that has a iPhone 4 that hasn't plugged their phone in in 2 days and has 90%+ battery with normal use.

derrickljy, rickfromFlatRock,

You both should try the "Delet existing mail accounts, manually re-install accounts" and/or "Restore as a new phone".

There are several people in this thread that have done one or both of the procedures I am describing and have had great success at gaining back normal batter life.

For some reason people seem to ignore this suggestion, maybe it doesn't sound reasonable, I don't know. I will tell you that this has worked for a lot of people including myself from as far back as the iPhone 3S to now on the iPhone 4S 5.0.1.

I feel like the guy in the commercial with the guinea pigs "I don't know why it took so long to teach the chubby one to say ROW, such a simple word".

Please search this thread and you will find at least a half dozen doubting Thomas' that finally gave in, tried the suggestions that I am offering you and much to their pleasure now have working iPhones with normal battery consumption - I recharge my iPhone 4S every 1.5 to 2 days under what for me is normal usage.

NO - I don't know why it works or what it corrects but it does work!!! "Think Row"

Does it work to restore as new, and then use a backup?

I'm not willing to lose all of my app data. I did delete and re-add my email accounts.

Mattlaw,

I believe you said in an earlier post that you are getting about six hours of usage.

Now as I said you have to define what you consider normal usage but in general six hours of USAGE sounds about as good as it is going to get - regardless of what Apple claims. From the 3S to current 4S 5.0.1 the best I get is about a day and a half standby and 3 to 4 hours usage (I don't use my phone to listen to music) so my usage is a little WEB browsing, a couple of hours of phone calls, check the weather, scan a couple of bar-codes and a picture or two.

If you are a You-Tube, game player, or anything that keeps the display on for long periods of time and uses a lot of Cell-Data transfers... I would think your 6 hours of usage is pretty darn good.

Now to your original question about restoring to a back-up, does that work, I really don't know but one of the original founders of the "Restore as new" guys only makes the suggestion to not do a restore from a backup to prevent any problems that may have been saved in the backup from being reintroduced via the backup.

But there is nothing to prevent you from doing a restore as new then testing and playing with it to see if you get any better battery life, then do a restore form a backup and see if you have lost any advantage you gained prior to the restore from a backup.

That said if you are not having the battery problem where you can almost watch the battery charge tick-down like the minute hands on a clock (i.e. go from full charge at 6 AM and be down to 60% by noon), your phone is not getting warm and you are getting 6 hours of usage, well... I don't think until Apple releases the rumored 5.0.2 battery fix that is aimed at getting the promised 10 hours of usage you will ever get much better than what you are getting now.

Frankly my 4S 5.0.1 is currently working about the same as my 3S and 4 did, maybe a little less but I attribute that to the "Hot-Rod" CPU and all the other 4S bells and whistles. So if I ever got 6 hours of usage per the Usage indicator on the phone I would be so excited I would have to take a valium.

My current numbers are:

71% battery

2 hours 8 minutes Usage

22 hours 47 minutes Standby

Bluetooth always on

WiFi always on

iCloud off - actually deleted the iCloud account

I use my att email account with PUSH

Signal strength - average 3 - 4 bars

From my personal opinion, I find the battery of my iPhone 4S not performing very good...

What do you think of my numbers?

35% battery left

9 hours, 16 minutes usage

10 hours, 35 minutes stand-by

bluetooth off

WIFI on

iCloud on

Push email 2 accounts on

EDIT: Oh yes, I'm running iOS 5.0.1

Flokky,

Before I step on my own foot or something worse let me ask what that 9 hours 16 minutes was doing?

One problem with just quoteing Usage is things that keep the screen on i.e. Games, Browsing, etc.

I noticed that you are using WiFi or at least you have it on so I am assuming your data is via WiFi which is a BIG plus. The difference between the battery required for WiFi and 3G is staggering. 3G data transmission can go as high as 1.5 watts (approx) where WiFi is in the 100 mili watt range. OK enough of the techie stuff.

Even before you answer, considering the Usage numbers... 9.25 hours I am inclined to say your doing pretty good.

Have you ever used an iPhone or a smart phone before? The reason for the question is that I don't care what the manufacturers say about how long the battery will last they all lean pretty heavy towards the impossible. That is my way of cutting them a little slack for lying. Case in point the soon to be released iOS 5.0.2 is supposed to give 10 hours of usage, well I think that is what the phone was advertised to do prior to any modifications.

Oh - the BIG question is did you really use 9.25 hours or is that what the phone is saying you used. Most of the folks that are experiencing the infamous battery drain problem as one poster said today his would clock up usage time and he never used it (or very little), He just carried it around in his pocket and about 3/4 of the way thru the day he was down to 50% on his battery. The code that gets wacked is talking to some server (or some problem like that) sucking your battery down when it is just sitting on the end table while you sleep and of course it continues to do that in the background even when you are using it.

OK - I'll quit until you tell me what kind of activities you used the phone for over that 9.25 hours.

I never had battery issues until the 5.0.1 now it drains in 5 hours.

Karen,

Try the quick fix - delete your email accounts, turn your phone off and back on, then manually re-install your email accounts and you should be back to the battery life you had before 5.0.1.

And I would suggest trying this as soon as you can that kind of battery consumption can do bad things to your battery.

PS - is the phone getting warmer than before 5.0.1 ?

Soooo....

Rebuilt my exchange email box (as some have suggested) and was hoping to get better battery life....

Seemed just slightly improved...and then I got a call from Apple...

They asked me about 15 - 20 minutes of questions on how I use the phone, favorite apps, and everything in between...the person from engineering was great and Im sure they are doing everything they can to understand what is happening and make the proper fix....

Spent all of today with a logger profile installed on my phone to ascertain usage etc and just sent the log to Apple after their follow up phone call with me...

Love the fact that they reached out directly to me and that in a small way my input might help get this battery usage issue fixed properly...

They DO listen and do want to get these fantastic phones working better....

I own an IMAC, and IPad2, Ipod, MacBook and IPHONE4s. The point is I'm a an Apple fan.

I am sooooo disappointed with this phone. I too did the upgrade and the battery life is worse. I DON'T have e-mail set up on the phone and use WIFI for most of my data. I started with a full charge this morning at 8 a.m.. I made one phone call and used at 52MB of data via WI-FI and about 6MB using 3G. Blue Tooth is always on and location services off. I cloud is on and I have my phone set up to synch over WI-FI. Despite that fact that this phone was in my pocket most of the day, by 10PM my battery was down to 19%. Does anyone disagree that this is horrible???. My wife and I got our phones at the same time. She also did the upgrade. She uses e-mail but not much else and isn't using I-Cloud and doesn't synch over WI-FI. She started her day at 8 a.m. and with a fully charged phone made no phone calls and at 10 pm her phone's battery had an astonishing 90% remaining.

Flokky wrote:

From my personal opinion, I find the battery of my iPhone 4S not performing very good...

What do you think of my numbers?

35% battery left

9 hours, 16 minutes usage

10 hours, 35 minutes stand-by

bluetooth off

WIFI on

iCloud on

Push email 2 accounts on

EDIT: Oh yes, I'm running iOS 5.0.1

I agree with Holman that your figures seem pretty good.

But to clearly answer your question we need to know what your 9 hours 16 minutes worth of usage were made up of.

I get roughly around 6 hours on mine, but that's with quite a bit of game playing. Game playing is a big battery drain has the screen is on constantly and also the iPhone's processor is working harder than it would do if I were just surfing for example.

davidfrommatthews wrote:

I own an IMAC, and IPad2, Ipod, MacBook and IPHONE4s. The point is I'm a an Apple fan.

I am sooooo disappointed with this phone. I too did the upgrade and the battery life is worse. I DON'T have e-mail set up on the phone and use WIFI for most of my data. I started with a full charge this morning at 8 a.m.. I made one phone call and used at 52MB of data via WI-FI and about 6MB using 3G. Blue Tooth is always on and location services off. I cloud is on and I have my phone set up to synch over WI-FI. Despite that fact that this phone was in my pocket most of the day, by 10PM my battery was down to 19%. Does anyone disagree that this is horrible???. My wife and I got our phones at the same time. She also did the upgrade. She uses e-mail but not much else and isn't using I-Cloud and doesn't synch over WI-FI. She started her day at 8 a.m. and with a fully charged phone made no phone calls and at 10 pm her phone's battery had an astonishing 90% remaining.

David:

Does your usage time appear to be of a similar figure to your standby time?

The reason I ask is, if it is then there is some process/app running pretty much constantly and could be the answer to why your seeing more battery drain than your wife.

Update:

I deleted and readded my email accounts.

Reset the phone

Turned off Blue tooth when not in use

Turned off WiFi when not in use

Email push off

Most location services are off (only on for ones I need)

Notifications off

Battery at 43%

Usage 4 hours 46 minutes

Standby 1 day 10 hours