Q: 5.0.1 update--even worse battery life

I turned off the automatic time zone setting in location services and it has completely fixed the problem on my iPhone4.  Now, why this is different under IOS 5.0.1 is a different question.  But for now, I can live with it.

First, the 5.0 upgrade wiped out all of the pictures on my 3GS phone (and my wife's - I don't think she'll ever get over that) even though the upgrade "shouldn't have done that" according to the Apple tech.  Then the the 5.0.1 upgrade to "fix" the excessive battery drain created by the 5.0 upgrade greatly accelerated the battery drain (1% every 3 minutes when the phone is idle).  Not exactly the fix I anticipated.  In the absence of any guidance or information from Apple, I followed the steps suggested by davidch https://discussions.apple.com/message/16780195#16780195.  No dice.  The battery drain is the same or worse (it certainly isn't better).  I'll give it another shot, but it seems having to go through the time and effort of doing so defeats the purpose of having a smart phone to be more efficient and save time.  I can't imagine the wonders the next upgrade will bring: blue screens? melted phones? disappearing apps (wait, that already happened on my wife's 5.0 upgrade)?

yeah i have been having the same issue! my phone also shuts down at 49% and says its dead!! i plug it in and 2 min later it says the battery is full again! makes no sence!

Ok, so this is what I did Yesterday morning.  I restored my iPhone 4s via iTunes and set it up as a new device instead of using a previous backup.  Then when I went through the setup process on my iPhone, I said "no" to turning Siri on, to signing in with my iTunes account, and to location services.  I then went into general and into System Services and turned everything off except for Cell Network Search.  I turned on certain location services that I figured I might need for better functionality of certain Apps, and made sure that I was not signed into the iCloud.  So basically, all the wonderful features that make the iPhone 4s different from my iPhone 4 are turned off...

I went all day from 8 am til 10 pm last night with these settings.  I played peer to peer games on it, surfed the net, used maps to navigate me around town, and it never got hot, and my battery managed to last until I finally went to bed and plugged it in.  It was at 11 % by the end of the day. 

So, for me, running my iPhone with these settings worked.  Still, my iPhone 4, which is updated to iOS 5, but not iOS 5.0.1, goes all day and then some without being charged...

Yes! I've noticed faster batter discharge on my iPod Touch, both before AND after 5.0.1 update. And I try to conserve battery when WiFi unavailable by turning WiFi OFF. It doesn't seem to make a difference...

What worked for me was restoring a clean IOS 5.01 and NOT restore from backup in iTunes.. (choose the option "setup as new phone")

My battery was drained in 8 hours and now after (clean) restore it's back to normal. I manually synced my contacts and apps and everything is hunkydory again..

The only thing I lost was my message conversation...

I hope it helps.. Goodluck !

My phone drained 22% last night in less than 6 hours in standby, I have all the System Services Location Services turned off, does not seem to matter.

I did the reset settings and recharge to full suggestion. It has taken several days but I believe things are back to where they were before I updated.

I have System Services turned off. Location on for Siri and Find My Phone.  ICloud is off. Mail is on but push is off.  I only have a few notifications turned on.  This is not ideal, not what should it be.  Apple needs to do something that will allow full use of everything they have in iOS 5.0.1.

Usage:  1 hour 45 minutes

Standby: 1 Day, 1 Hour

Battery is at 49%.

For me, the battery is draining massively on 3g, just really bad.  Ill try the restore phone settings thing on the phone itself, as I have done a backup on my computer already and still had the problem. 

Again, the only thing that changed for me to get this worse life was 5.0.1 other then that my settings are the same as before which were always geared towards battery life (ive never had the screen brightness up past 20% in the phones life), never use location services, etc.  Just 5.0.1 kills me.

Hi,

I second the original poster of this thread.  Battery life on my iPhone 4 has gone haywire since 5.0.1.  This is terrible.  Can we get back to 5.0, please?

Apart from that, my phone also shuts down while in my pocket, very annoying.  I don't have a plausible reason for it (apart from conincidental broken hardware) but this started happening only after 5.0.1 was installed. 

As I poster elsewhere, this turning off has one very strange characteristic: after booting up the device after a mysterious death, I do not have to unlock the SIM card.  So it seems to be a "softer" kind of off than a real relet of the device.

Upgraded my 3GS which was perfect still being its 2 yrs old, upgraded to 5.0.1 and the battery life is terrible!! I sent 6 texts and talked on the phone for 5 min and the update killed 15 percent of my battery!! This is ridiculous :(

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!

More details on my thread here if needed:https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3484755

I've done this and my battery life hasn't improved. It was terrible on 5.0 and is much worse on 5.0.1. I did do a fresh install and let it discharge. In four hours, I lost 61% of my battery.

First, thanks to everyone for all of the suggestions to address this problem of massive battery drain created by the Apple "update."  I've restored my 3GS phone as new TWICE (the second time from a fresh install of iTunes on a computer that didn't have it installed previously to ensure no corruption was creeping in that way) and followed davidch's steps with no luck.  After the second process, the charge held at 100% for about an hour but then started plummeting faster than a brick in water (20% in one hour).  When I first bought the phone in September, the charge would hold for well over a day.  Since Apple's "update" I'm afraid to be too far from an outlet.  I'm trying to retain my patience, but I'm beginning to lose it about as fast as the phone is losing its charge.  Apple had better fix this soon.  I don't have time to keep trying to find workarounds for their updates that almost make the phone unusable.

FIX THE BATTERY PROBLEM  

FIX THE BATTERY PROBLEM

FIX THE BATTERY PROBLEM

FIX THE BATTERY PROBLEM

FIX THE BATTERY PROBLEM

FIX THE BATTERY PROBLEM

FIX THE BATTERY PROBLEM

FIX THE BATTERY PROBLEM

FIX THE BATTERY PROBLEM

FIX THE BATTERY PROBLEM

FIX THE BATTERY PROBLEM

FIX THE BATTERY PROBLEM

FIX THE BATTERY PROBLEM

FIX THE BATTERY PROBLEM

FIX THE BATTERY PROBLEM

FIX THE BATTERY PROBLEM

FIX THE BATTERY PROBLEM

FIX THE BATTERY PROBLEM

FIX THE BATTERY PROBLEM

FIX THE BATTERY PROBLEM

FIX THE BATTERY PROBLEM

FIX THE BATTERY PROBLEM

FIX THE BATTERY PROBLEM

FIX THE BATTERY PROBLEM

FIX THE BATTERY PROBLEM

FIX THE BATTERY PROBLEM

FIX THE BATTERY PROBLEM

FIX THE BATTERY PROBLEM