5.0.1 update--even worse battery life

I have had the 4s since 10/21/2011 and noticed the battery drain the first couple days. The one thing I modified that gave me a huge leap in battery performance was turn off Cell Network Search. I now go for at least two to two-and-a-half days before requiring a charge. Try it for yourself by going to to Setting / Location Services / System Services / Cell Network Search / Off.

Update to my earlier post it has been about 50 minutes and I removed 2 weather radar apps that used my location. If you look at my earlier post I had lost after 2 hours 13% on iPhone 4. Now after removing those two apps I have only lost 2% with NO use on my part. So for me it appears to be APP\Location issue.

I've got the same problem on my iPhone 4 since 5.0.1! Everything was fine before...

Same problem here. My wife updated her iPhone 4 to iOS 5.0.1 2 days ago. Last night, she charged it to 100% and took it to work this morning. Today, she made only 3 brief phone calls, and sent 4 small emails, but by this evening the battery charge has decreased to 20%. She says it drains about 4x as fast as before the update.

Just adding my voice to this.

Before the 5.0.1 update my 4S wouldn't last a 14 hr day without shutting itself off whether I used it or not.

After the 5.0.1 update it will only burn through maybe 4-5% batterywhile untouched during the night but when I use it it'll use maybe 5% battery per 3 to 4 min phone call. Safari eats battery a about 1% every 1.5 minutes.

An interesting experiment would be to have a 100% charged iPhone 4S call another phone and play a radio (maybe set to a talk radio station) next to the iPhone or something and see how long the battery lasts with continuous use. A real world test I guess. I'm doubting an iPhone 4S would last two hours.

Yep. Same problem with my 4S. Battery life is worse now with the update. Sorry to hear that we're all in the same boat.

200 replies since I posted the exact problem and temp solution,

And people are Still posting tht their phone is faulty?

Nobody read anymore?

It is not a Hardware, not a Software problem,

It's a service problem.

iOS 5 makes Much heavier use of radios, thanks to great innovations like iCloud,

However, it's NEW, and Apple is still working out real world 100million user type testing,

They can't do that in the Lab, too many strange humans with strange use patterns.

For now, you can fix the drain by disabling features (you don't use) that use the radios too much.

iCloud Backup, certain unneeded Location services, etc.

Honestly, there is No Need for further discussion.

This case has been solved, now we wait for 5.0.2 (maybe next week, soon).

PRoTip: No Genius works at a Retail store, that's for everyone else ;)

I have upgraded my 4s to the new software the battery life before and after is the same ......this phone has the worst battery ever. I need to charge it constantly and even wit gps turned off etc I'm loosing about 20 per cent of the battery per hour....this is while doing just basic stuff ...movies and stuff I can just watch it drain like a timer. Apple has to solve this battery issue soon or the apple. Has got to go. It's unliveable. Considering I switched from blackberry last month because of the new bolds battery issues I'm totally gutted with this

Also, I graphed the Battery drain rate before and after I toggled each feature.

The OS thinks it has Way more juice than it does, because the estimations aren't able to estimate well enough your web service usage.

This is a sketch of said drawing...

http://t.co/TBccNYMz

As you can see, with everything on, a 283hour difference.

With iCloud and some Location services off,

I went on to use the 4S for another 80 minutes of medium use, only 20% drain.

me too. have iphone 4, always had excellent battery life. Updated today to 5.0.1 and the battery falls off a cliff rapidly. boo.

the desktop layout was not changed. I don;t think the dictionary was

touched either since I have not noticed anything different but I cannot be 100% sure.

I did notice today that my email signature setting has changed and now "sent from my iPad"

as added back whereas I had previously disabled it.

Overall the gain in terms of useability of the device (down to 85% after 32 hours and moderate use)

compared to these little settings is too big.

yes. battery drains off faster. other thing is that i have always put my music in 1 song repeat mode but now, i have to activate this mode everytime i enter the music app. the previous ios 5 had no such problem.

I wanted to read all the posts and on this thread and quickly realized that would take a long time being there is 778 posts. 🙂 I purposefully waited on installing the update 5.0.1. I was want to see what people generally felt about it before jumping in with both feet as I did with iOS 5. I just wanted to be sure that I'm still understanding correctly that everyone is having issues with this update including iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S alike and that is the general consciences? It would seem that I made the right choice in waiting since battery life is important obviously. What's the latest on a resolution being this wasn't much of one apparently?

yes....if i finde another tablet that have 10 hour battry life i will shoot ipad and apple at my home bin!

apple is a really unresponsible company....

im very angry...thay can take mony and sneer to thair costumer.....😠

I have the same problem! Did the new software upgrade hoping it would help the crap battery life and now in one hour ive lost 10% with no usage! I've just been playing around with my settings thats it! it just lost 1% in the last 2 minutes, just sitting there!!!....WHAT IS APPLE GOING TO DO ABOUT THIS? IN MY OPINION THIS IS A RIP OFF!....I'm locked into a contract of 12 months! cant return the phone as the initial 14 day return period is passed (i kept the phone thinking the software upgrade would fix it) Apple genius team refused to replace my phone with a new one saying they are not allowed to replace phones if the reason is the batter issue (as there will be an upgrade!) and now the upgrade just screwed up my battery more!!! WHAT HAS APPLE GOTTA SAY FOR THEMSELVES???