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

Frodo B wrote:

 

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.

frodo,

good to hear it is working out for you.  enjoy your phone...

sflomenb wrote:

 

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?

i have actually never tried that... (i.e. restart the phone and see if battery charge increases).  my guess, is that it meter readjust itself routinely against the actual available charge.  a restart my force it to happen... not really sure though.

garyfromdunfermline wrote:

 

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...

good to hear it is working out for you gary

miteglia90 wrote:

 

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!

mitegelia... good to hear it is working for you and your welcome.  it will not hurt anything to perform the process but it should work after a few trys.  if not, you may have another issue.  as far as you questions go:

1. a wall socket will typically provide better consistency than a PC, but either should work

2. wifi tends to use less power than 3G, so if wifi is off and an network type app tries to connect to the network, it will default 3G which may consume more power than when the wifi is off.  bluetooth off will reduce power somewhat, but should be minimal.  iTunes wifi sync off should also reduce power.

apple 4S specs are 200 hrs Standby or 9 hrs WIFI Data or 6 hrs 3G Data (mix of WIFI and 3G would be 7.5)... so approxiamately with you info:

standby -> 14.18/200 = 7%

mix 3G/wifi data -> 1.5/7.5 = 20%

so 100-(20+7) = 73%,  so it sounds like at 83% you are doing fine...

Skipjack Captain wrote:

 

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?

yes... that is normal.  i typically see between ~100-200 per second.

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.

mine has stayed good for several weeks now.  just let me know how it goes this time

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.

from what i can tell the battery meter continually adjust itself on some sort of interval, but it is definitely not realtime.  i think this can account for it looking stuck and/or moving very fast (i.e. catching up, etc) at times.  i have seen this behavior in somewhat in previous releases though...

ram130 wrote:

 

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.

ram130... here is how it compares to apple specs assuming your data usage was primarily internet and 3G/wifi mix and very little talks, music video:

apple expected would be: 22.5/200 -> 11.25%, 1.3/7.5 -> 17.3%, so expected total battery drain would be 11.25+17.33= 28.5%.  100-28.5 = 71.5%

so at 77%, your phone would be perfoming better than spec, but again that assume internet usage divided evenly between 3G and wifi... and negligible talk time, music and video.

ecax wrote:

 

hey i just bought my 4S yesterday.. its on 5.0.1 .. and i havent done anything , Only did the notification , location service , and charging it full to 100%..

i got 5 hours of usage , 15 hours of stand by , now its 5%..

are these good numbers ??

really need more info... did you primarily use 3G or wifi.  it seems a little lower than expectation, either way.  if you did not calibrate your battery yet, i would recommend going through my process below... 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 a. 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)

2 b. If you do not get the complete new setup screen with language setup and setup as new phone or restore from iTune/iCloud backup, be sure to go back to #1 and reset all settings again (it should happen the second time)

3. Turn off system location services timezone and iAd (settings -> location services -> system services)

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!

hey everyone...

just want to say YOUR WELCOME to all your thanks and kind words... i am trying to monitor this and a couple of the other related threads to try to help out so be patient with me if don't get back to you right away... i also have a wife and kids .   i don't work for apple but am very familiar with their products and many competing products in the phone and computing industry.  i do work in the mobile computing business and have long background in mechancial engineering, system programming and system support and i will do what i can to help.  i started the thread primarily because many of the other threads on the apple support forum became too much of a "complain session" and would like to keep this one from becoming that, so let's please do what we can to stay positive.  i have looked at the problem fairly hard and tried several different tests and my recommended process and settings seem to work in most cases.  just follow carefully everything step by step in the first few posts and detail process above and i am fairly confident now it will resolve the issue for most users with the standby drain issue.  if it doesn't, i recommend taking it to an apple store or authorized provider for further review.

good luck too all!

here are my personal system settings for reference:

mail: push for iCloud, hourly on imap account

iCloud: mail, reminders

notifications: phone, messages, reminders, calendar, cnbc, mail, twitter, find friends

location: maps, siri, weather

sytem services: all on but location based iAd and setting time zone turned off