iPhone 4S 5.0.1 Update Improves Battery w/ Settings Reset

sflomenb wrote:

davidch

I'm really not sure what to do anymore. Nothing I do works to fix my battery. I can still only get about 4-5 hours of usage, and some people can get 7-9. Wow.

Remember, Apple only specs 7 w/o any standby, talks, video, etc, but I think your case my be more unique and actually be a hardware issue (likely a battery). It happens and have seen it with previous model iPhones before. Just take it in to Apple Store, explain your efforts to fix, following my process,etc and how most others are seeing success and you have not. I would think they would give you a replacement. Good Luck!

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!

Jarcl92 wrote:

That worked! Thank you, my battery is still rapidly going down but I will let it drain out and then do a full charge and see what happens with my normal use. One more problem though, my iMessage is not working right now and I do not think any of my texts are going through, what is the fix for this? Thanks for your help and support.

Good luck with fixing the standby drain issue. As far as messages, I have seeen a similar issue. Just go to the "Messages" settings under the Settings app -> Messages. Turn message off and turn it back on again. In my case, it forced a reset of the Apple ID and phone number. Everything has worked since. Good Luck!

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 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!

Reinhard Arnhold wrote:

Hi I have two 4s now, One white 32GB and One Black 64GB. Even After updating to 5.0.1 the white one seems still to have a problem. Both are configured in the same way, the black has more accounts but. The white one is loosing much faster battery. I charged it to 100% and after 4 hours without using and display turned off battery is down to 86%. The other one get off 5 % with some usage which seems to be normal. So comparing to iPhones I am pretty shure the white one has a problem. What to do?

Reinhard,

Did you try my process below. Be sure to follow in order and step by step. Good Luck

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!

Re: 5.0.1 update--even worse battery life

Nov 23, 2011 6:57 PM (in response to art_in_motion)

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!

sanjayfromtoronto wrote:

David, I did the steps summarized in your post on page 33 (Nov 25, 11;25am) sightly differently but got the same result. This worked! The battery after 28 hours is still at 60%. This is with my normal usage. I bought my 64GB unlocked 4S directly from Apple last week and I was unable to get through even one day with minimal use. It lost 5% per hour. The max life I got was 10 hours 15 minutes from 100% to 0% and auto shutdown. I tried all suggstions - turning off location services, Siri etc, but nothing had helped. Here's what I did:

1. Restored from iTunes. Interestingly, even though the phone was on 5.0.1 out of the box, it asked if I wanted to upgrade. Not sure what it upgraded but I let it do so. Perhaps your reset would have accomplished the same.

2. Did the initial setup and asked iTunes to Set up as NEW. Did not restore from a backup.

3. Changed settings as follows:

- WIFI on and connected to my home network. I leave it on always.

- Notifications - removed Stock Widget and Game Centre

- Location services ON - Allow only Camera, Maps. Turned off for Siri (can't find anything in Canada anyway) and Weather. System Services ALL off.

- General Settings: siri on; network>cellular data on, data roming off; bluetooth off; WIFI sync off (I'm old and prefer the wired connection); spotlight search> delected podcasts, videos, audiobooks (I don't need these); date and time>set timezone automatically is off;

- iCloud - don't use it yet

- Mail, contacts, calendar - I have mobileme, 1 pop, and windows live. Fetch new data> Push is ON; Calendar TimeZone Support is OFF

- Facetime is on

This seems to be working now after 2 days. I will let the battery discharge to zero today and recharge.

Thanks for the tip. It is good into the second day now.

sanjay... great to hear it iworked for you. it does seem to work for most people with the issue in my experience

Skipjack Captain wrote:

Daivdch,

I used your recommended settings reset, battery drain and recharge method and it seems to have made a marked improvement in the battery life of my 4S. I am now getting a full day of heavy use out of one charge as I believe I should and probably would get two days with light use. There is little standby battery drain any longer and what drain I do experience is in line with phone usage as opposed to standby time. In effect I am getting battery performance on par with my prior iPhone 4 which is all I ask given all the new battery intensive features rolled out iOS 5 and iCould.

Doug,

Glad it worked out for you and agree with you expectations. 1 solid day with moderate to heavy usage or up to 2 days with light to moderate usage has been my experience with all my iPhones.

My only comment (and it has been identified by others) is that it seems to take two settings resets before you are given the choice to set the phone up as a new iPhone. The first time through the proceddure I was not given this opportunity and was also not asked about region or language. The second time I performed the reset the phone truly took me back to the setup as though it were new out of the box including aking me about region, language and giving the choice to set up as new. It seems that the first time through iOS does not give you these choices but doing it twice sets it back to original. Just a heads up.

Thanks for the heads up and have heard similar comments from some others. I will try add something to the recommended process making users aware.

Thank you very much for your insight and patience with this and other strings on the topic. Your input has been invaluable and has given me the phone I expected when I bought it and can be proud of. I was really getting discouraged otherwise what with having to plug in for a charge at every opportunity.

Nicely done and I appreciate your efforts.

Best,

Doug

Your very welcome and very glad I could help out. I was also discouraged myself the first few days of owning my 4S due this standby battery issue. Having some background in the mobile field (incl mac and iOS devices), I decided to try a variety of things out. Reducing some of the notification and location services helped, deleting/recreating mail accoutns, etc, but still did not seem right. When 5.0.1 was released, I saw that some users were fixed while others were the same or in some case worse. I had seen corrupt settings/prefs and calibration issues on previous iPhones (and Macs)... so that led me to that and recalibrating the battery. It fixed my 4S, my wife's 4S, her older 3GS (kids now), our iPad 2 and a coworkers 4 and I realized I was onto something. I originally tried to post my experience on other threads but the complaining and negativity was just too tough to break through, so I started my own and done what I can to keep it positive and on track.

kylebridges wrote:

Hi davidch,

I have initiated the process you've described that is supposed to help with battery life and I am waiting for my battery to completely discharge before I charge it. However, now when I go into my messages, there are just numbers and no names. Do you know how to fix this without resyncing the phone (as I know you warned against this because it may put the corrupt settings back on the phone)?

Thanks for all of your help!

are you on verizon? there is an issue specifically with verizon causing that issue. i don't work with any verizon users, personally, so have not seen it. i read that to fix it, you just need to disenable iCloud contacts (i.e. settings -> iCloud, turn of contacts, turn back on contacts). if that does not work, you will need to contact verizon tech support and have them reset some things on their end. check page 3 of the thread for more details. good luck