5.0.1 update--even worse battery life

Hi davidch,

I have been telling everybody to use your fix because it works! Well, at least it did for me. I was going 2 1/2 days between charges. Had email push off, system services off, location services off, iCloud off. Usage was amazing.

It was stellar for three weeks, until yesterday when for no reason under the sun, the problem came back!!!!

Usage and stand by once again are the same numbers!!! I unplugged my phone from the charger 3 hours ago. It was at 100%. I did nothing on the phone. Right now it says Usage 3 hours, 4 minutes, and Standby 3 hours, 4 minutes. Battery is at 70%!

I made no changes. All apps are closed in the background. Nothing is different than it was 2 days ago, except the battery problem is back.

I am so frustrated I could scream. I don't understand what could be causing this horrific problem.

Update: my phone showed 5 app updates waiting. After I finished installing them, the little wheel was still spinning at the top of the phone as if searching for something. I did a Reset Network Settings. After the phone restarted and network was joined, messages with photos started arriving like crazy. I had cellular data turned off, and am wondering if that is what was causing all the background usage activity. All seems to be normal again with usage and standby numbers different.

I wanted to pass along an update and something AT&T pointed out to me that has drastically helped with my battery problems.

I was reviewing my monthly data usage amounts. On my old iPhone 3G a 6 month average of my usage is about 1.7GB a month. I was shocked when I looked at my usage for the previous month on my new 4S and it was 3.4GB for less than a month.

I called AT&T to asked why it was so high, as I had most of the services like push, location, and iCloud turned off completely. AT&T clued me into the fact that apps that are multitasking in the background are still sending data back and forth. In some cases as high as 800MB at a time. They instructed as to how to shut these apps down when I didn't need them multitasking (double click the Home button to the multitask bar, push and hold to then remove the apps from the bar).

Hopefully, this will curb my data usage (thank God for Unlimited Data Plans). But I've also noticed a mark improvement in battery life, since 9:00 this morning (almost 6 hours) I have only drained the battery to 92%. Not great, but a marked improvement.

I think Apple needs to give users more control over which apps they want multitasking in the background. It is a bit of a hassle to always have to go in and shut them down after using them. Just my two cents. Hope it helps.

This is exactly what I did after sort of "discovering" it by accident and my battery life is back to normal. I didn't understand why it worked, just that it did. Thanks for the explanation.

I'm glad it worked for you, but I have used this technique for a year, with my 4. I do it several times a day. With the 4s of course it was the first thing I did. Didn't work for me at all. No effect

This strange thing started happening to me too. For some reason, usage and stand by are the same!!!

David - I have done all of the recommendations. On two different 4s phones. I still have the problem of 30 percent an hour drain. Genius bar confirmed not a hardware issue, battery and phone was fine. THIS MUST BE SOFTWARE RELATED AND I BELIEVE DUE TO IOS 5. It may be a conflict with some apps, but I don't know about that. For instance my standby and usage now show the same identical time. Something is very very wrong. Nwhatnis MOST EGREGIOUS is that apple is silent here. They won't even ack the issue. Really? After almost 7,000 posts?

That's what it appears like to me as well. I have an iPhone 4. With 5.0, my battery would show 70-80% after a day's use. I use it a moderate amount, with WiFi and Bluetooth always on, but not constantly using the phone.

After installing 5.0.1, my phone shows 30-60% after the same amount of time, under the same conditions.

So, either the battery life is worse now...or the display was incorrect before.

I also updated my Apple Touch 4g to ios 5.0.1 and the battery lasts about two hours before it needs a recharge. This also happened with ios 4.0 through ios 4.3 and now 5.0.1. When will apple figure out how to write software that works - I now have a fantastic paperweight and am changing over to an Android. My wife's android (Samsung Galaxy) lasts about three days of emails, camera usage, phone usage, and surfing the web before it needs a recharge. Too bad apple, your products (hardware and software) are not worth the dollars nor the effort to keep them operating.

its totaly true, i also just went on apple website and reply to post and my batery went down from 20% to 14% in 5- 6 minutes!!!! i would say that ios5.0.1 repaired baterry life when we dont use internet but internet usage drain baterry like vampire!!!! its not fair that we payed so expensive this device and we get ****, i wonder what would steve jobs said that he is alive... i bet he would fired all this apple crew for this failure!

The battery reset DOES NOT WORK for everyone. It did not work for me. I have done everything I can to get my battery back to 5.0 or pre 5.0 level and NOTHING has worked. 5.0.1 is terrible, plain and simple. We need a TRUE fix from apple. Its not my standby thats a problem, its the fact that when I used the phone for any purpose, it drains like something fierce. Yes, all the things 'preserve' battery life are done, and NO, they arent working. Apple just needs to fix it. My contract is almost up and those droids look better every day.........

Is the problem solved with the ios 5.0.1 so i could update my iphone with 5.0.1 or should i wait for ios update 5.0.2

are these posts read by the apple's concerned person or r we wasting our time writing all these reveiws coz

i cant find any satisfactory answer for the problems stated above

I know I have 3g off and no internet usage or anything just using my iphone 4 for texting and stuff and it drains like a piece of garbage so yes indeed a software issue. The only thing I haven't done is set it up as a new phone but I doubt that will work and will be a waste of time.

after doing what DavidCh recommend - my battery life used to be 10hours max.. now i went from 10 hours standby time to 1 day and 3 hours and then use 6hours and 32 minutes