Question to people with bad battery life on iPhone 4S

To FiniteAffinity and Marc Man - THANK YOU!!

I am in the same boat and am currently speaking with Apple directly about this 50% phantom usage issue due to "SIM card applications"

iPhone 4S 64GB White, VODAFONE UK, DQ Serial number

I am on my second handset. Second Sim. Same problem.

My battery drain only disappears when I remove my SIM CARD.

Interestingly, setting up a phone as new (as suggested by apple care) INITIALLY removes sim applications from SETTINGS>PHONE, however, when I turn the phone off, then restart it, the menu option returns.

When it wasnt there, I had great battery for 24 hours, only droping 50% with usage and a tiny amount of phantom usage clocking up. Once I restart the phone, the SIM APPLICATION option returns, as does the evil battery drain!

I have emailed my apple rep and I should hopefully be booking an appointment to get me a C3. I will post back in the next few days with news. I am so happy to be so close to resolving this!!!

Jim

I have a C3# serial number iPhone 4S, 32GB, white - 5.0.1. I have used it on Vodacom in South Africa, Etisalat in Nigeria and O2 in the UK and I see the same battery drain issues.

I have switched almost everything off to the point where the phone is rendered almost completely useless.

That rules out the C3 scenario...

bonoboslr wrote:

I have a C3# serial number iPhone 4S, 32GB, white - 5.0.1. I have used it on Vodacom in South Africa, Etisalat in Nigeria and O2 in the UK and I see the same battery drain issues.

I have switched almost everything off to the point where the phone is rendered almost completely useless.

That rules out the C3 scenario...

I suspect your problem is different. Does your phone report at least 30 mins of usage for every hour in standby? If not then your battery drain is probably not the same type we have been discussing on this thread...

My phone drains 50% in three hours while in standby. I have not translated this into standby minutes.

bonoboslr wrote:

My phone drains 50% in three hours while in standby. I have not translated this into standby minutes.

What I mean is, does your phone show 'phantom usage'? Phantom usage is usage while in standby. Take a look in SETTINGS / GENERAL / USAGE - you will see how many hours/minutes the phone has been used for and how may hours/mnutes it's been in standby. My problem (and most on this particular thread) was that I would fully charge the phone then leave it overnight in standby. Then when checking the usage stats the next morning, the phone would say 4 hours usage and 8 hours standby. Those hours of usage were obviously the phone doing something while supposedly asleep and draining the battery. It's widely believed in this thread that this particular problem was caused by the DN serial# handsets. And all here that have changed from DN to C3 have had this problem of usage while in standby, eliminated.

Please let us know how your usage stats look - is there a large amount of 'usage' reported while phone is in standby?

Ok. I will check it tonight and report back here. I will admit that I did not read every entry in the thread.

Thanks

Right; on my third iPhone 4S thanks to Apple

This is a C3 serial

Interestingly, the one I just replaced was a DQ. But my FIRST iPhone, checking the box, was a C3. So I can also rule out the "C3####" serials being all OK; my first one wasn't!

It is very early days, but... In hour one of testing I only had 4m phantom usage and 0% battery drop. 6m in hour two. I am gonna do another few lengthier tests tonight and assuming all is well a full discharge.

NOTE RE APPLE STORE/APPLE CARE: Dispite the irriatation this battery issue has brought me, the customer service could not be better! They listen, consider all my work to resolve the issue through settings tweaks, and have changed the phone twice without qualm. Very happy and impressed.

Fingers crossed I have a good phone now. I am thinking along with "Finite Anfinity" and "Marc Man" that this is linked with certain handsets with certain SIMs.

Will post in a day or so!

OK - I charged my phone up to 90% and then unplugged and reset my all usage statistics.

I checked it after ±2 hours - The battery had drained by 3% but I was shocked to find that it says I have used 11 minutes of 'usage' in 1hr and 49 mins.

I have not used the phone at all. No calls. It has been in standby the whole time.

Interestingly my mobile usage says 0 minutes call time for the current period and has a lifetime of 1day and 12 hours

It also says I uploaded 205kb and received 2.4MB. Which is confusing I only have the following open -

Mail, Message, Phone, Calculator, Whatsapp and (ahem... Words with friends :S)

I have turned almost everything off, bluetooth, location services, notifications - everything - mail only checks once an hour and I have only received 2 mails

I took screenshots that I can upload.

Something is going on...

I wouldn't worry about this bonoboslr...

A few minutes each hour is acceptable; the phone may be scanning for network(s) and running gentle background stuff. And 3% drop in two hours isn't excessive, especially considering that battery percentage is FAR from an exact science. The drop from 100-99% and 2-0% can often take hours, for instance. The overall times are what matters.

People like me, Marc -man and Finite were getting figures such as:

Usage: 0hours 50mins

Standby: 2hours 0mins

...all the while NOT using our phones and losing 5-8% battery an hour. This was indicative of heavy background activity that was EATING battery!

FYI, my (second) replacement phone is doing much better! Will post more in a few days 🙂

I have a C3**** 4s on AT&T with strong 3g signal everywhere. If I fully charge the battery to 100%, then unplug it and leave it on my nightstand overnight (8-9hrs), it will eat 80%+ of the battery. The usage is almost identical to the standby time. This is off a DFU clean restore of 9A406 with NOTHING installed. No apps, no email accounts, no text messages, no calls etc... I'm sleeping for cripe sake, how can I be using the phone? I'm going to try leaving it with the sim out overnight tonight and see what happens. I have tried 9A405, 9A406, turning this off, that off, nothing works. I'm lucky if I get 6-7 hours of daily average use before the battery gives up and it shuts itself off. Average as in 75-100 texts, 5-10 mins of phone calls, very light internet usage. Usage is ALWAYS almost a mirror image of standby.

Hello guys i have C3 serial with 9a405 only thing i did not try was factory reset, all other solutions are fail for me "mail accounts, siri, location services even turning off cellular data". I have %50 phantom usage %7 battery drop per hour on standby.
I notice some strange behavior; when i reset my phone settings to defaults battery indicator went up several percent for example %97 to %99 and it will be fine for half a day then i start to use some apps, it will back on fast drain again. "turning on-off wifi or location services does not make any differance" phantom usage is about %50 all the time after several hours of usage or battery drops under %60-%50 percent some how usage statistics returns to normal and i get %7 drop for all night.
My old iphone 4 with same apps and usage has no battery issues at all, i can walk with her for 7.5 hours with nike+gps and music on all the time.

Anyone here that's resolved the 'phantom usage' issue with a replacement, tried IOS 5.1 yet?

I'm nervous about doing it as my 4S is getting good battery life and I don't want to f**k that up! That said, I really would like to get the 3G toggle as my 3G signal at home is very weak and if I leave the phone in the wrong spot the 1 bar of 3G I get drains it quicker!

I absolutely love my 4s, except for the battery life...

I have a Sim Applications Menu with Sim Applications in there (all chinese as I currently have a chinese Sim in my iPhone).

The battery life, in fact, is something really annoying. I use my iPhone about an hour a day, the other time it's just sitting the in screen locked mode. I have to charge it every day on average...

I am noticing a big difference with battery life since my 5.1 update and 3G turned off. It has been 6 hours since last full charge and I only notice a 10% drop in battery usage. It is still odd that is says I have used 1hr & 30 mins usage - when I have not used anywhere near that - but my battery is looking good for a change.

Tomorrow I will try with 3G on, but a friend of mine who is doing the opposite of me says he is seeing big improvements to his battery life with 3G on.

Will report what i find tomorrow.