Q: Question to people with bad battery life on iPhone 4S

However, they have recently very quietly released a new firmware build, which updates your baseband such that DN phones can now communicate properly with previously incompatible SIMs. I can't verify myself that this works, because I got mine replaced with a C3 long before they released this update. The new update is still iOS 5.0.1, but it is build 9A406 instead of 9A405. The only way to install this is to do a complete restore of your phone through iTunes, to factory settings.

I'll try that after I've seen if the restore that I am currently doing, helps. I wiped all fotos, which solved my problem of not being able to sync. I am currently filling my iPhone up with music to delete any corrupt file that might be sitting in the empty space. After that I'll delete the music, backup, restore to factory and restore from the backup. I also deleted MobileMe apps now, like iDisk and MobileMe Gallery. As said, my issue started after moving from MobileMe to iCloud. I'll let you know the results.

I think I found a solution: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3391947?start=8505&tstart=0

I removed iDisk and Mobile Me Gallery apps, and some other older ones, deleted the empty space on my iPhone by filling it with music and deleting that again and then I did a restore to factory, followed by a restore from backup. My 4S is back ton normal with less than 1% drain in more than 40 minutes. Everything is turned on (Wifi, mobile data, iCloud, etc.)

I didn't mean to turn off the Find My iPhone from the location settings and that is because I don't think that takes up the battery. I meant the Find My iPhone application that can be downloaded from the app store. My battery is still bad but it improved. I suggest you turn on the Find My iPhone in the location settings on case you lose your iPhone!

Find my iPhone - that's another MobileMe related app. My theory is that the issue is related to MobileMe-related apps when you are already on iCloud. My issue started after moving to iCloud.

I've had Find My Phone turned off in locations since my first steps to a better battery back in October. It's an interesting feature but one I can live without...

I have now deleted the app, just to see if there is any improvement. I can always put it back if there's no difference without it.

@bleepingApple So, did you get better results? It really did improve my iPhone but I'm still facing the battery drainage problem. About 24% battery drained while I was sleeping, 9 hours.

@AliAR

Can't say that I have noticed any better results by deleting FMiP. Perhaps because I'd already turned off its location features a while ago?

UPDATE:

Yesterday my 'usage' and 'standby' figures were identical - for 4 hours of standby it would also report 4 hours of usage even though the phone was in standby the whole time. That was a first, as it would usually give phantom usage of half the standby time. I reckon a hard reboot would probably have stopped it but I had a Genius appointment pre-booked at local Apple Store and wanted to show them this behaviour.

The Genius was a nice, helpful bloke. I told him the problems of phantom usage and battery drain in standby. Told him of all the tests I'd done, full restores, setting up as new phone, not installing any apps, leaving WiFi, BT, Siri, Contacts, Calendars off, etc. I explained that I was convinced it was something between the SIM and the 4S causing the problem and that it was likely to do with the DN serial # and that replacing with a C3 serial # was the fix (as this thread has convinced me). He was skeptical about it being SIM related but certainly listened. He took the phone away to run diagnostics. He came back 5 mins later and said there was definintly a software glitch going on but didn't elaborate. I think the software glitch was a one-off occurance causing the uasge and standby to be identical, and not related to my usual problem. He insisted we do a DFU update as I hadn't done one before. I waited patiently while the update took place. Waited longer after that for the phone to fully charge (can't see the usage stats until full charge is reached). Then waited another 15 mins for the phone to record some usage stats while in standby. Sure enough the phone was still reporting phantom usage while in standby, at a rate of roughly half the standby time - 15 mins standby, 8 mins usage.

Genius was still very skeptical about it being a hardware problem - ie a problem between the SIM and the 4S but was keen to help me. He presented me with a replacement 4S with a C3 serial #. It was in a black plastic, sealed box. At first I thought it was a refurb but he insisted it was brand new - it certainly looks brand new. He did make it clear that he still thought it was a software related problem and not hardware as I'd suggested, but as I'd been waiting so long (1hr 15m) he wanted to do the replacement to satisfy me. I then signed the paper work and walked out the shop while going through the set-up proceedure as I went. For initial set-up I left Locations, Wifi and Siri off.

Now the important bit - is the problem fixed?

Charged the phone up to full - got to 100% at about 4.30pm yesterday. I left it for 15 mins before I checked the stats and with a big smile on my face I saw usage 1 min, standby 15 mins. FINALLY GETTING SOMEWHERE!

OK, left the phone overnight. Not been used except to check stats once or twice, take a couple of screenshots and reject a couple of calls from my wife (called her back from landline).

This morning. 08.55

Battery 83%
Usage: 1 hour, 15 mins,

Standby: 17 Hours, 31 mins.

That's pretty much 1% per hour standby drain. i'll attribute the usage time to network checking etc. I am VERY happy with this so far. With that I'm likely to get 4 days of standby (if I dont use the phone, of course). I'm going to continue with this test and report back. Once I need to recharge I'll then start turning things on and report back again. So far so good!

Massive, MASSIVE thanks to FiniteAffinity (bleepingapple and the other contributors too). I am a firm believer in the theory of DN serial #s not playing nicely with certain carriers SIMS, causing phantom usage/standby battery drain and that the fix in this instance is swapping for a C3 serial model. I feel my story is further proof to that theory! That said, I really can't see Apple replacing all the DN's for C3's - I doubt everyone will be successful getting replacements - it all depends on your Genius, your problem and your argument!

Most probably yes. I'm really disasatisfied with my battery.

I want other people to try this and see whether it really does work.

But it seems convincing to me, and true.

@FiniteAffinity & @bleepingApple

     I wondered where you guys had got to (the other post has got crazy). Just thought I would update you with my latest experiences. Last time I updated the old forum I had sent my DN serial 4s back to vodafone to evaluation. Got it back a week later saying there was nothing wrong with it (very annoying). 

Just after this the 9A406 version of iOS 5.0.1 came out. I updated to this and started to see some imporvements the next day after a full charge. Phantom usage hadn't completley dissapeared but it seems to occur less frequently (for some reason it seems to be mostly at night). I am now getting on average about 1% -> 1.5% drop in standby (as opposed to 3%-4% before 9A406). For some reason the first 10hours after an overnight charge seems to produce very little phantom usuage (55mins usage to 10hours standby - which can probably be accounted for by normal pinging of the Cell network) and an average drop of 0.5%/hr in standby. After this there can be a few hours were phantom usuage is close to standby. It happens intermittently (seems strange but this is what I have observed). SIM applications now work. All in all it seems a little better.

What was interesting for me was that after this update I had to go to Sweden on business. Whilst there I got 4+ days out of one full charge. I only used the phone for some texts and calls no 3G data or WiFi. Very little phantom usuage while there (sorry but I hadn't recorded the actual figures). When I got back to Ireland I  started to see the intermitent phantom usage that I described above (still no where near as bad as it was before 9A406 ).

My Phone is alot better after 9A406 but would like to see the intermittent phantom usage eleminated also. Maybe 5.1 will deliver this.

Hey @bright raven

Yeah, now found lurking here; the other post is boring me, it's just going round and round the same old...

Thanks for taking the time to update us here; your story is very similar to mine, except of course I did get a replacement. It's interesting, though, to see that your situation and mine are still similar despite you having the same hardware as before.

I think my new phone is unlocked [as suggested by helpful folk here] and, as a result, I don't have any 'Sim Applications' or even a button for it any longer.

I immediately found this phone to be better than the last but I'm not convinced it's stayed as good. Due to Christmas and also having been abroad for 3 weeks, I've not had a chance to do any definitive testing. I plan to next week by replicating the 4 overnight tests I did previously with the old phone: I'll do a normal control test first, where it's all set-up as it would be during a normal day for me. I'll then do airplane mode, followed by WiFi only/Mobile data off and the inverse of that. It will be interesting to see what differs.

My current perception is that my phantom usage still persists but not as much as it did before. Whether that's a sim thing or not, I can only speculate, but my gut feeling is that it was a factor but not the sole culprit. I've maintained all through this saga that I suspect that there is probably more than one factor at play.

I'm also finding things are inconsistent and the trouble is seemingly intermittent. Take today. I'm in a rural area [normally in London] where I'm getting between no service and 2 bars, max, of coverage all day long. The WiFi here is archaic using an antique WAP on a phone-line broadband connection and is so slow I could post a letter faster than email. Yet I'm seeing 44mins Usage / 3hrs 25 Standby and only 9% drop in battery. All things considered I should be seeing worse stats than in town, surely? The only difference here is that there is simply no 3g. None at all, it's way too rural.

I did stumble across something else recently and anyone willing to also give this ago could add credibility to my findings:

I was messing about with resetting the phone and it happened to be on a wall-charger at the time. If you do the button presses for a DFU restore without iTunes at the other end but with it charging you get a screen telling you to hook it up to iTunes [makes sense if you think about it, I guess]. I got a bit worried that I had maybe upset it, so I simply held the power button for 5 seconds and that screen went away and the phone reset as usual. Pretty harmless and not very noteworthy in itself but the next morning I noticed that I had similar usage/standby stats to the day after I had left it in airplane mode overnight, i.e. the best stats I've had so far but this time with WiFi and mobile data on.

So I started to consider if the [let's call it] 'REALLY hard reset' had maybe terminated some or all apps and background processes, hence why the usage was then immediately reduced. This fits nicely into my personal theory that apps simply don't close properly and that background processes just stack up and eat power. Each app will be unique in this and, given the vast permutations of users' app choice it would shed light on why some users have no trouble at all and others, via all the rest in between, have terrible problems.

The perceived status quo from that reset didn't last more than a few days and soon I was aware that drainage and usage were creeping back up once more. Again this fits my theory too as a few days' use will let those gremlins build up again.

As I say I've not had much time to be thorough enough to test this or other ideas further, but maybe someone out there has similar experiences or is willing to try it too? Straw clutching and voodoo may be at play here but it feels a worthy line of enquiry to me.

@bright raven, if you really do want a handset exchange, you will probably achieve that with Apple rather than with Vodafone. You'll probably be able to win over the Apple genius if you show all your homework; at least that worked for me. I showed them all my screen caps and testing results and asked pertinent questions to the point I think my guy may have felt a little less genius-like.... bless.

Well lots of theories here and very few answers until I can get time to be empirical once again. If any of this strikes a chord with anyone, I'd be really interested in your thoughts and personal observations. Once I've done some tests, I'll pop the results here.

@Marc-man you're now in the very same boat as me and it will be very interesting to see if your experience matches mine and bright raven's. I really hope you're continuing to get better life from your battery, either way an update would be welcome once you've had time to let it settle in.

@FiniteAffinity I hope we're [I'm] not messing up your thread, I know it was very sim based initially but it's so nice and peaceful here...

Happy New Year, eveyone.

@Marc-man you're now in the very same boat as me and it will be very interesting to see if your experience matches mine and bright raven's. I really hope you're continuing to get better life from your battery, either way an update would be welcome once you've had time to let it settle in.

I'm still doing the inital testing - phone's in factory state, no apps, wifi off, locations off, siri off etc

My current stats:

Battery remaining: 43%

Usage: 3 hours, 49 mins
Standby: 2 days, 2 hours

I'm not acutally using the phone. Had a couple of short calls 5 mins, 1 min, that's all. It's clocking up roughly 4.6 mins usage per hour. I'll put this down to network pings for now. The phone has travelled back and forth to work with me twice (35 mile journey each way) so would have been constantly switching transmitters during the journeys. At work I have a 4-5 bar 3G connection and at home I have a 4-5 bar 2G connection, although it sometimes sits on 1 bar 3G briefly.

Im VERY happy with the battery stats so far - it's looking VERY good and is way, way better than I was getting previously.

Once the charge is down to its last few %, I will post the stats again. I'll then charge and set-up my contacts, calendar and email. I use Google for this as I defected from the Android camp! I'll then see how the battery goes on that charge cycle. I'll then enable wifi, siri and locations to see what happens. Installing apps will be my last test.