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

I already posted my problem regarding 4S battery woes in another thread but will reiterate and add to here:

After recently switching to a 4S I've been suffering from the battery problems many others seem to be experiencing.  davidch's trick seems to have helped but I am still seeing significant battery drain when the phone is in standby.

Last night for instance, I charged the phone to 100% before bed.  After taking it off charge I woke up to find the battery at 77% with no usage whatsoever (all apps closed, most features except wireless disabeld) - a loss of 23% over approx 7 hours, i.e. ~3.3% /hr.

The really bizarre thing is that 9.5 hours on from that point I am currently at 57% battery remaining - ~2.1% /hr.  However during this time I have been using the phone for texting, web browsing, gaming and other apps; not particularly heavy usage but enough that would suggest it would drain the battry significantly more than being in standby. 

I can't understand why the battery would be losing less charge when it is in use rather than in standby

hi davidch.. bro i did the xactly same procedure as said by you to me in earlier post..
but bro now there is another problem i m facing.. that is i i lose 5% of my battery evry time.. like 87 to 83% or any other.. bt overall its working gud.. 7-8 hrs usage.. the only problem is i every time lose 5 % in one cycle.. which decreases my usage time to half an hour.. so plzz suggest me what to do know..

Is this good? 1 hour usage and 9 hours and 31 minutes. I have typed this email...and sent some messages.

Hi Thanks for the tip, sbailey4.

I let the battery completely drain and recharged for like 6 hours and that seems to have fixed the problem.

Now I'm having a new problem.

After doing a reset as directed by davidch, I find that when opening my Settings->General(to check usage) often crash. Like maybe 1 in 10 times, it would crash.

Anyone have experienced this?

PS. Is there not a search within this topic function on this forum? I can't flip through all 60 pages, lol.

Thanks

I think that is the best result i got with the battery so far , wifi is on all the time & 3g when outside

The problem I am having is that my usage and standby time shows the exact same number.  Added to that, the phone seems to lose 3-4% per hour while being on standby.  I have just tried your suggestion now to reset all settings and am currently letting it sit on wifi and watching videos to run the battery down.  Previously I have tried a hard reset, resetting network settings, and other various techniques that you can find with a google search.  Hopefully this will work.  Is there a specific technique to use when the usage and standby time shows the same?  I've still got a little over a week to return the phone, though I really don't want to.  I already sold my ipod touch so if I return the phone I will have nothing to play the apps I have purchased on itunes, but this is frustrating.

To add more information, I have just about everything turned off including all notifications beyond messaging and phone.  I do not have Siri on nor do I have location services on.  Cellular data is turned off and I do not have wifi on unless i specifically need to connect to the internet for something.  My total average time from 100% to 0% is around 30 hours.  While that might seem like a lot based on some of the other posts, I lose ~20% at night when the phone is on standby, which should not be happening at all.  I have not made any phone calls the past few days either as I try and figure out what the problem is.  I would say for a full cycle, the wifi is on at absolute most for 2 hours, cell data is never on, and if you want you can throw in 30 minutes of talking.

Hello Davidch,

First of all I would really like to appreciate your commendable work on this forum. I got this IP4S last week and have been having battery issues since then, as everybody else on this thread. I have followed all your instructions step by step and have got this battery life. Below are a few screenshots for your observations --

Is this Battery Life Good or Bad ? BTW - I have switched off WiFi and Location Services including System Services like Location Aids, Traffic and Timezone. All this has been after a full charge yesterday. Is this something to worry about ? Should I go knocking the Apple Stores' doors for such kind of battery life ? I am frustrated by this. Never expected this from Apple at all :-( Please let me know your thoughts.

Thanks in advance.

Velixar, I would suspect that maybe you have a roque app installed causing this type of issue. Did you happen to restore from an older device like a iPhone 3G or 4? Have seen that cause this kind of issue. If you have, I would restore to factory via iTunes, then use iTunes to sync (not restore) to get your contacts etc back.  Back it up to iCloud or via iTunes first just to be safe. Try that and see if the phone starts behaving. If it does then you can can assume an app was at fault and you can install a few apps at a time and see how it progresses. If it still does not behave when factory fresh then perhaps a trip to Apple is in order. BTW iOS 5.1 should be out soon and its expected to address lingering battery issues. Early reports are favorable!

Velixar wrote:

 

The problem I am having is that my usage and standby time shows the exact same number.  Added to that, the phone seems to lose 3-4% per hour while being on standby.  I have just tried your suggestion now to reset all settings and am currently letting it sit on wifi and watching videos to run the battery down.  Previously I have tried a hard reset, resetting network settings, and other various techniques that you can find with a google search.  Hopefully this will work.  Is there a specific technique to use when the usage and standby time shows the same?  I've still got a little over a week to return the phone, though I really don't want to.  I already sold my ipod touch so if I return the phone I will have nothing to play the apps I have purchased on itunes, but this is frustrating.

 

To add more information, I have just about everything turned off including all notifications beyond messaging and phone.  I do not have Siri on nor do I have location services on.  Cellular data is turned off and I do not have wifi on unless i specifically need to connect to the internet for something.  My total average time from 100% to 0% is around 30 hours.  While that might seem like a lot based on some of the other posts, I lose ~20% at night when the phone is on standby, which should not be happening at all.  I have not made any phone calls the past few days either as I try and figure out what the problem is.  I would say for a full cycle, the wifi is on at absolute most for 2 hours, cell data is never on, and if you want you can throw in 30 minutes of talking.

Your suggestions have helped me considerably.

This is from last night:

Thanks

When I purchased the Iphone i set it up as a new phone and did not copy over any data.  I used the same itunes account that I had previously used with my ipod touch, but no data was transferred over.  I lost all of my saves/etc.  Now that you mention the rogue app theory, I do not recall such terrible battery life when I first started using it.  I will try to delete an app here and there and see what I can find.  I don't have any oddball apps though that I can think of, so I didnt think it was an issue since they are all 'mainstream' for lack of a better word, and thus I would assume any of them causing issues would be more out in the open.  If the technique provided by David doesn't work then I will do a full reset of everything on the phone and wipe it clean.  I really love the phone but the lack of being able to do much is really disappointing me at the moment.  Thanks for the response and I'll keep you posted.

Also, I'm not sure if it is worth mentioning, but I changed the SIM card roughly a week after I started using it.  I had to wait for my number from a different carrier to transfer over and was given a temporary phone number for the iphone in the meantime.  When the SIM card was switched they didn't do anything besides have me turn the device completely off before I removed the old SIM card and put in the new one.

Yeah apparently some of the apps available are not optimized for iOS5 and seem to cause issues on the newer iPhone/iOS. Are you running 5.0.1 9A406? That has helped a lot of folks as well. It was released to address a sim card issue but some people are saying it helped battery as well. A few apps I have heard that have been known to cause issues are as follows:

Wikipedia

Whatsapp

Onavo

Of course there are others and I am sure some people have the ones above and no problems as well. But if you have any of these it may be a good place to start. Good luck

I deleted my apps one by one and then put it in standby mode for a few minutes to see if that worked, but the usage/standby time continued to be the same.  After I deleted all of the apps I put it into airplane mode and still could not get the usage/standby time to be different.  I just got done doing a full restore via iTunes and I am charging it to full now, I'll see how that goes.

I did have the latest update, I always check for it.  I also do not use any of the apps you listed.  I really do not want to go to an Apple Store as the closest one is an hour away, so hopefully the full reset will work.

Well so far so good.  I have 1 hr 15 mins of standby and 15 mins of usage time, all on WiFi and it is still at 100%.  Hopefully this continues!  I'll post again with what happened over night.

hi davidch,

(ALL AS WHILE I WAS ON WIFI ONLY) Well i wanted to run something by you again. Today my battery was doing EXCELLENT! It was on standby for 12 hrs and was only down to 96% with a few email notifactions and 1 facebook notification. Anyway, by about mid afternoon or so with some moderate usage i got down to about 77%. I then started to use facetime for about 1 hr 30 mins. my battery depleated about 30% during this whole time.  I also heard some music for about 30 minutes. Below are what my stats were before i had to put it on the charger. I actually played music while it was on about 3% battery all the way until it shut off. It actually shut off when i got down to 1% then i had to leave it on the charger for a few minutes until it went back on. It powered back on at 4%. Is this good or bad? I had no idea facetime used so much battery power. Not even when i make a phone call does my battery depleat that fast.

OK - I thought I'd fixed it but replaced the battery and reset. The phone then reverted back to battery munching!! I fully reset , even reset from DFU with non itunes software and still didn't fix it! What I did in the end was to turn off the auto - time setting in clock and settings, ran out the battery and recharged - disconned charger at about 9 last night. Its 17:15hrs and the phone still has 85% (albeit with very little usage , wifi & BT off). So double check that you've clicked off this setting and do as me - see if it helps. It may be worth trying to shortcut and turn off the  setting and then power off and on the phone. general / date and time / set automatically. Good luck