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

i did the 'drain' and 'reset' thing and I think it's vastly improved mine - it never drains on standby and I've used it quite a lot today...

oh ok. yes i have also done the same

Thank you davidch!!! I tried your fix and it worked a treat! My battery life improved by 20%.

I did not set my 4S up as a new phone. I restored it from my iPhone 4 backup. Resetting everything fixed whatever problem I had.

My battery percentage has been off recenty. On most days, when I unplug the phone from the charger, it instantly drops to 99%. If I restart the phone, it goes back up to 100%. And today, I used the phone for 5 minuets after I unplugged it, and it dropped to 99%. After I restarted it, it went back to to 100%. Is this the case with anyone else?

sflomenb,

Yes, I have experienced similar strange battery indications even after performaing the "reset" and "battery drain" process a couple of times. The process set out by davidch has definitely helped with battery life and resetting the battery monitoring software (though after a few days I saw the battery drain slipping back into its old ways and had to perform the process again).

One thing I see consistently is a battery drop to from 100% to 97% when I can pick up the phone first thing in the morning and use it while it is still plugged in from overnight charging.  This baffles me.  The phone indicates that it is still charging yet the battery drops from 100% to 97%.  If I unplug the phone and plug it back in the battery indication jumps right back to 100% but then immediately drops to 97% again when unplugged.

There is absolutely no question in my mind that there is something buggy in the battery monitoring/charging software.  It just does not behave properly in so many, many ways.

The fact that the "reset" and "drain" procedure worked and then after five days or so the phone went back to draining rapidly is distressing and so far I have not be able to detect what/which change might account for that. For now performing the reset again has solved the problem temporarily again.

Doug

Thanks very much for the response davidch!

Hoping you can also answer a few more questions of mine he he.

Your procedure is was effective but has some weird considerations.

Okay i've already done your process. Reset the phone twice in order for the language selection to appear then disabled LS drained the battery fully then recharged it overnight until 100%.

After the charge, wifi BT was on, NO 3G, email was push, pretty much every common energy-consuming thing. LS was on excep iAds and TZ services, even after a few hours of standby and light use the meter was still at 100% so that made me happy.

Then after i applied the energy saving settings like wifi off, BT off, brightness to low, etcetera. it's WEIRD because the standby drain came back and it was much worse by some percentage :/

I mean 3% in less than 2 hours of standby

This is sooo weird.

You think I need to do the reset all settings thing again?

Question:

1. Is it better to charge it in a wall socket or a PC?

2. I'm not sure if this makes sense:

Is there any difference if after the reset-drain procedure that I leave the energy-consuming stuff like wifi,           BT, LS in a chance that the battery will get used to these things being left open and perhaps the battery           will drain less? Weird question right?

          I'm just basing it to what happend before i appied energy saving methods the battery drain was not           significant but after applying energy-saving methods the battery drained more!!

          This is sooo weird :/

Or is it better after the reset that I apply all energy-saving measures so that the bettery will somehow not drain faster?

It's like my battery has personality or something.

Here's is my usage: my only activities were: downloaded few, check out facebook, took some pictures, but not really extensive usage in my opinion

Remaining 83%

Usage: 1 hour 26 minutes

Standby: 14 hours, 11 minutes

Is this acceptable?

Thanks in advance for the response!

David,

1)  When looking at Activity Monitor I notice that my 4S seems to generate on the order of 200 page faults per second of operation.  I realize that page faults are a normal part of memory management and not something wrong in and of themselves, but is 200 per second a reasonable number or is something churning in the phone that should not be?

2)  I performed the reset and drain procedure and it worked well for a few days then the phone went back to its old battery draining ways.  Not sure what or which change might account for that but another reset seems to have reseolved the problem again, at least for now.

3) I mentioned another strange symptom in a previous post about experiencing battery drain while plugged in.  In the mornings it is common for me to pick up the phone to check email and web sites etc. while it is still plugged in after overnight charging.  This usage is conducted with wifi and tyicially with a low display brightness setting. When I pick up the phone in the morning it always shows a 100% charge and that it is plugged in.  After using it for 10-20 minutes still plugged in, the battery indication drops to 97%.  Shouldn't the phone be maintaining its charge while plugged in?  If I unplug the phone and plug it back in, the battery indication jumps back to 100% but if I unplug it again it jumps back down to 97% or lower even after charging for a while.  It seems to me that Apple has something really buggy in their battery charging and monitoring software.  So many wierd bahviors.

Any thoughts or suggestions?

Thanks as always for your time, expertise and patience!

Doug

Skipjack Captain wrote:

 

...When I pick up the phone in the morning it always shows a 100% charge and that it is plugged in.  After using it for 10-20 minutes still plugged in, the battery indication drops to 97%....

I confirm the same behaviour of the indicator!

I think after charging is done (over night) the charging controller stops to work. The indicator of the battery ist still NOT actual - when you touch it, the OS starts to calculate the remainng battery life.

The 3% (the difference between 100% and 97%) is the used energy still the controller stops and you wake up. (3-6 hours)

Tamarillo,

You may be correct in the assumption that the battery controller stops when the charge is complete because the phone appears to behave somewhat differently when I charge  it using the app called Battery Doctor.  I have not used it enough to fully assess what the differences are but it appears to have its own means of controlling charging that overrides the native iOS method and holds the charge better in the morning when I do.  There is a setting for 10 minutes to one hour of trickle charge after full charge which helps top off the battery.  I use an additional 20 minutes of trickle charge when I use Battery Doctor and that seems to give a little more life in the mornings.  Again, I have not used it much so my observations are few so far.

More will be revealed I suspect...

Doug

Not sure if this is what you guys are getting at, but when my battery stopped charging (overnight) at 97%, I recalibrated it and it was 100% on the next full charge. It has happened to me 2-3 times, I believe in 1.5 months of ownership.

Sorry for say that - but battery doctor is a hoax. Apple never allows software to get/change core functions. In the fact battery doctor is just another software using energy from the battery.

What do you think now?

I did a restore last night and also restored my current backup which had the settings reset done from my last post on it. Do you think I should do another reset?

Performed a backup and restore then phone was charged from 60% through the computer until iTunes showed it was full. Then I unplugged it last night and only sent 10 text msgs. Wifi on all the time, wifi sync off. No push on Exchange, IMAP for gmail and set to fetch hourly.

I want to say something that helped me a few days...

Battery on my iphone 4s was really bad, i bought it new and had a blackberry, so, no itunes before or backups. But i did the restore and disable PING, itunes and reset the mail accounts, battery improved. BUT Something really weird, i don't use icloud since i don't like it, never used it before, but when i reset, icloud auto-activate with my apple id... So i just deleted the iCloud, and battery is awesome (well, not as awesome as iphone 4 from my bro) but really good, like 1 day 10 hours standby and 5 hours usage still 15% left. (siri on, locations everything on, mail exchange and hotmail every 30min, pretty much with its whole functionality)

But now im facing a phantom usage time, on standby. 10 minutes per hour. O.o

For those wanting to shake Apple into making Wi-Fi and Data toggling easier (to conserve battery), have a quick look at this.

Still going strong. Mainly testing stand by drain..Can someone comment on this to tell me if it's meeting apple specs? whats the drain per hour here? I've been doing on and off texts so far otherwise it's stand by.