Q: 5.0.1 update--even worse battery life

This  is a support community, not a rant about your superiority and how blessed we should feel that you are there to save us all if Apple would only let you.

YOU'RE not a solution, YOU'RE a problem in the making...

i have the same problem with updating from iOS5.0.0 to 5.0.1! battery last evening 100%, today at midday 50% ... i wasn't doing anything. i never had a battery-problem with with iOS 5.0.0 or iOS4!

but i found a problem with the location based services -> system services -> automatic timezone update ....!

this service uses every 3 minutes the GPS-module and needs over a minute for synchronizing the timezone!!

@ apple engineers, can you please have a look at it??

thanks!

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. 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)

3. Turn off system location services timezone and iAd

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!

for more specific details follow thread here: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3484755

I as well am having problems with the new 5.1 update. Before on the original iOS5 my battery was fine, but I thought I'd update anyways, maybe getting a little better battery life. But now since I have updated I'm losing a few percent every hour on standby, and when On the web, I'm losing a percent almost every minute. Is there a way that I can just go back to the original iOS5, or do I have to wait for them to "try" and fix this problem again? Will it ever be fixed, or am I just doomed from now on with this horrible battery life?

Interesting experiment..   need to verify by end of day however...    this morning after charging all night batt went from 100% to 95% withing half hour.    I just recharged back to 100% but took off my WiFi sync...  its been about an hour and I am still at 100%...  I will come back and post my entire day experience tonight....   

Franco 

This may have worked for you, I'm not doubting you. I tried it, no luck. I also restored the phone as new and loaded no apps. With everything turned off (a useless smartphone) the battery drained at about 10% per hour sitting on a table doing nothing.

It has nothing to do with me.  It has to do with understanding company, cultural and technical dynamics and to not only see but deal with elephants in the room. The solution is a combination of the right person with the right skills, experience and personality mixed with the right plan.  That personality needs to have  courage and the ability to lead especially when things get really tough. How would you have made the same points and not tickled a nerve? I would submit to you that delivery is important but more often than not those who are offended, bothered or made uncomfortable by what I have said and offered are using the delivery issue as a straw man.  The real thing that bothers them is that the right nerve has been hit and they don't have the experience, maturity or courage to deal with that so they shoot the messenger.  Therefore it is the points that are being made not the method of delivery that make people uncomfortable. Yes I said some direct, very confident and critical things. I stand by them and my genuine offer to help.  There is not a long list of people who can do the right things the right way in situations like this. That may sound overly confident or arrogant to you - but it is a fact. You don't deal with the elephants by dancing around the edges.

So I just got off the phone with Apple. During the call, the rep said he was "just notified" that they aren't placing logging profiles on the phone anymore, even though at the beginning of the call he said they wanted to. Hmmm …. Anyway, he just asked a lot of questions and other than that, it's wait for 5.0.2, which he neither confirmed or denied.

THESE DEVICES AREN'T CHEAP. Especially, the 64Gb iPhone 4S.

We pay them for the quality, and not for us to take the mistakes of the Apple engineers in the iOS programming.

Each day, when waiting for the release of iOS 5.0.2, insanity hits us harder.

Didn't Steve mention the importance of gaining the trust of Apple's consumers?

Are these engineers working hard enough?

iOS 5.0.1 was released to developers before. Why did they fail to catch these stupid bugs?

Lazing around? Do they think it is for fun releasing a buggy update?

Even the Camera LED Light when set to "On" FAILS to switch on. How embarrassing?

If it is hardware-fault, we can't blame anyone.

If it is software fault, then those software engineers are to blame.

Do they think it is funny or was it taken too lightly?

I've never seen an iOS update making things worse for consumers' devices.

What a joke.

While I have been critical as well I want to defend the engineers.(Who are probably being anything other than defended by mid level and upper management in Apple)

Most likely they are actually working too hard.  In a lot of fields especially software engineering managers want more and they want more faster.  Engineers want to please so they try to do that. Problem is quality starts to go down. Defect density ramps up along with rework percentages.( Most companies don't even measure these things. they think they somehow don't apply) These same managers don't get they are the root cause so they blame the same engineers for making too many mistakes. They then try harder with the same workload. It becomes a vicious loop. Another problem, as you state, is testing.  Sometimes developers like to use method or unit testing, and code reviews (if they even really do them - and not stack the deck by reviewing code after unit testing), as a holy grail and put off integration, system or product testing. Then it gets rushed and steps are missed.  Personally the best process I have seen is to have systems engineers write requirements and then write and run product or system testing after unit testing.  Then QA does their part.  Of course key metrics are taken and evaluated along the way. The key though to this testing is usually not that something isn't being tested at all but a whole lot of things are being tested less than 100% This gets to test coverage which a lot of companies don't do well. In this case however it seems a very basic test was missed and that is very concerning.  Again the root cause it not technical. The symptom is technical. The root cause is a cultural and leadership issue.

I guaranty the answer is found in looking at a combination or productivity, defect density, rework, requirments volatility, requirements traceability through final testing and test coverage metrics.

The fix lies mostly with leadership's courage (assuming they actually know how to employ CMMi best practices correctly).  Everyone wants to please their boss all the way to the top.  Most leaders/managers go with the flow - worsening that loop. No one wants to admit to being anything less than awesome at what they or their bosses do.  What you need is the right someone to yell STOP and a little time to be taken to see and fix those elephants in the room. Most will deny they exist or they are as bad as they are. Ego, Maslov's triangle, selfishness, actual inexperience and fear will get in the way. I would imagine that Apple being who they are - this situation is very bad and probably way out of hand.

ok... i found it! In my case the battery eater was iTunes WIFI sync. I forgot I set that. Now my battery seem ok.

OK boys and girls...    my experiment is working...    I posted eariler that I turned off my wireless/WiFi sync.  Its about 7 hours after my full charge and I am still at 93% !!!!   This is unbelievable. It may be that iTunes was always giving me an error message after an overnight sync when plugged into an outlet - which may have been creating a constant battery-eating attemp to connect. But this my friends seems to be working....    I would love to hear if anyone else obtains a fix by turning off the wireless sync...  I will report again tomorrow to followup...      Try it!!

Franco

Another strange thing I noticed on my iPhone 4:

Usage & standby times are growing much faster than the actual time:)

This morning (around 9AM) I unpluged my iPhone, and I took a look at the usage - it was 0 standby, 0 usage (like it should have been).

This afternoon (around 4 PM) I looked again, and the total (standby + usage) was over 10 hours, even though only 7 hours had passed...

Seeing that, I took a screenshot at 16:02, and another one at 17:10. In this 1 hour and 8 minutes, standby + usage time increased with 2 hours and 9 minutes...

Seeing a screenshot from 18:13, my guess is that the iPhone is detecting independently "standby" and "usage" times, and it's a really clear pattern: standby time seems to be correct, actual usage seems to be real time - standby time, and the difference between shown usage and actual usage seems to be the time in which something is using the phone, even though it should somehow be in standby...

This is bullcrap! Why would Apple deny us the possibility to downgrade our iphones to previous firmware versions? I feel like I was led into a trap. I can barely use my phone, 'coz it drains dead half-way through the day.

Apple: Please resign previous versions!! at least until 5.02 is out (If that even fixes it).