Q: iPhone 4S 5.0.1 Update Improves Battery w/ Settings Reset

I tried the reset settings and a restore on Thursday (the same day the update was released) as soon as I finished the update on my 4S. My battery life drains even faster now. I removed my email accounts and turned off location settings. My iPad 2 is the same w the iOS 5.0.1 I really don't know why. But seems like a bad update for me and a god update for others. I wonder how many others are having the same issue as I am..

Extremely helpful answer. I refused to troubleshoot the battery life. Yours was the only one that made sense to me and I did it. Normally I would be at 40% at this time of day and can watch my battery life fall. After your fix I am at 83% right now with a bunch of use. It's almost 4:00pm. Usually I would consider a quick charge right now and I don't need to. Thank you thank you thank you. I refused to turn off my services that I was paying for. With this fix, everything is running post download of the update. Again I thank you.

Ms fish

Glad to hear your iPhone is now working better. 

i too was having the battery issues..i just did the reset and setup as a new device( which i was very scared to do because i thought i would loose everything) thanks to all you guys for making it clear and explaining that you dont loose anything. my phone is now it 36% and i am planning on draning it down til it shuts off then charging over nite so tomorrow i guess i will know for sure if this really helps in my case..keeping my fingers crossed.thanks again to all with the directions on what to do

You may also want to consider a hard reset too.  I did that yesterday and I noticed my standby time is improved.  Unfortunately it is the weekend so the activity is too low for me to quantify.  All I can say right now is that I am past 1 day standby and about 1.5 hrs usage (light, email only, no phone calls or texting) and the battery is at 75%.  I have never been at that point before.  Up to now I have been controlling the changes and so far biggest improvements for me have come from: a) changing exchange mail from push to fetch every 30 min (this upcoming week I will be going back to push to see the performance); b) reset all settings; c) hard reset.  Along with these, I have followed all suggestions in the forums (no bluetooth; turn off set time zone under location; and did a full battery drain/recharge 2 times).

the hard reset is just holding down the home button and the power button untill the apple comes up corrrect?

see my problem is i cant justify turning off the bluetooth because that is something i use alot.. i have had all the previous iphones and always had bluetooth turned on as well, i feel like if i never had to turn it off on the other phones i shouldent have to do it on the new one... i dont know thats just how i feel...i shouldent have to start to shut off settings and change things that always worked for me in the past, i feel like the battery on this phone should be better then the old phones but then again i can honestly say that the battery in any of the previous iphones were never that good anyway..

davidch

I have done exactly that. Then did a restore and DID NOT do a backup from prev file and I'm still having the same issue. It's on both my 4s and iPad 2. Any thoughts of what can be the issue other than hardware issues? Oh ya and now on my iPad the sounds do not work at all I can only hear the sounds when I play them in the settings. Email notifications sounds do not work  

i have question if you guys can help me out this maybe going a little off topic : aside from the battery issues my speaker phone wont work i can hear the person but the person cant hear me... after doing the reset and the set up as a new phone i thought that maybe this would solve the problem but it didnt.. im going to bring it to my local apple store because i live down the street from it and chances are they are going to swap the phone out for a new one.. if they do this and i go to set the new phone up at this point would i set it up as a new phone or rerstore it from the icloud?( keeping in mind i just did the reset and setup as a new phone to try and solve my battery issues and i want all my media and apps and all my icloud stuff to be the exact way it is on this current phone) im confused because if i were to set the phone up as a new phone would all my stuff transfer because it is technicly a new phone? and if i restore from the icloud backup would i risk transfering any bugs or issues thsat could have been associated with this battery issue that may have been fixed during the reset i just did? i would greatly appreciate any imput to my problem.. thanks in advance

yes, hard reset is holding down the home and power button for 10 seconds.  Ignore the message for "swipe to turn off power".  Once the apple logo appears,release the buttons.

Question - I am on the 4s. I updated to 5.0.1 on Thursday.  Right now my battery is at 75%. Standby is 20 hours and 58 minutes. Usage is just 1 hour and 14 minutes (no calls, just email, Facebook, etc.).  Does this sound pretty good? 

It's much better than my old 3G, athough I do notice the battery drops a few percentage points each time I use it. 

I'm currently draining my battery. I really hope this fixes the problem. Does anyone know of a quick way to drain it? I still have 40% left.

The reset of the Settings actually fixed another one of my problems. Before, in the Purchased section of the App Store, the All list and Not on this iPhone list were identical. Now, the All lost shows all my apps correctly, instead of the ones not on my phone.

watch some videos on youtube.  I played angry birds to drain my battery but there are probably more intense games out there.  In other discussion forums I have read that folks just watch videos while on wireless connection.  You probably don't want to use up your cell data feed depending upon your plan.

my opinion on the new phone setup would be to restore from the Cloud only if you had gone through all the steps and wanted to start from that point.  I have read in other forums on suggestions to avoid setting up a new iphone 4s from a backup of either iphone 4 or 3GS.  For me, I started day one with the iPhone 4S so I had nothing to restore.

I may be wrong here, but I think there are some subtles when you setup and say you call it a new phone and then setup and restore, vs jumping to straight to a restore.  Good question for the genius bar folks.  Also under the discussion thread called "iPhone 4s Battery Life?"  (this is the thread that seem to start all of the battery discussions...I don't know if the link transferred over but the subject is the right one) you will find somewhere in the 300 pages where some have documented those steps on how to setup your phone.