iPhone 4s Battery problem maybe found!!

I'm able to reproduce this, on the face of it, it certainly looks like its not working as designed (unless Apple engineers know something we do not)

drStrangeP0rk - hold down a button on the remote and see how long it lasts for. 0.9ma draw is normal

Interesting find, congrats to the OP as its certainly plausible (and more productive than people telling you to turn everything off or reset everything)

Steve2828 wrote:

This is simply the "Raise to Speak" Siri sensor. It's not a "problem" or "malfunction" or "defect" or anything like that.

When you have Siri "Raise to Speak" on, that sensor is active whenever your phone is unlocked. That sensor detects when your phone is next to your face and makes siri listen automatically.

Also, when you are on a call, there is another similar sensor that is used to shut off the screen when you put the phone to your ear.

This is not Raise to Speak. If you read the description, it's on ALL THE TIME, with Raise to Speak OFF and Siri OFF and not in a call. it's a battery drain and a bug.

megakai132 wrote:

hello to all!!

I think i Found the problem of the iPhone 4s battery!

i had phantom usage for quite a bit and there was always a blue light above the screen ( you can only see it trough isight or others cameras! )

now i didnt have phantom use and the blue light was gone

i turend on siri Speaking because i was curius an then i could see the light again !

now i turend off siri speaking and the light is still on !?

i think this is the problem !

This is a bug 100%. See my video. It fires when Siri is OFF and not in a call. There is no need for this sensor and monitoring of it to happen. it's a battery drain for sure.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqcwVGW_-n0

I don't think this is the whole battery issue but it certainly helps when the sensor/light is off.

I need to do further testing from 100% battery but so far it's absolutely helped. The downside is I can't use Siri with this bug and get decent battery time at the same time. For the record here's a CU of the sensor/light on my phone while it was stuck on taken with the front-facing camera on an iPad2.

I had to turn off Siri and reboot the phone to get it to turn off and only come on for phone calls as it should.

Since turning off Siri and rebooting my iPhone 4S I'm currently seeing these stats:

Battery is at 4%

Call Time = (since hitting 100% and unplugging when resetting this stat to zero) 1 hour, 4 minutes

Usage = 16 hours, 1 minute (I haven't used it for 16 hours though, there's no possible way)

Standby = 1 Day, 7 hours

Hope this is helpful to someone!

I had this issue as well, turning off raise to talk on siri and rebooting phone turned the light off, battery life has got better by about two hours, but it still says 11 hours useage and 18 hours standbye, I have not been using my phone that much, I am starting to get concerened what this drain is doing to the battery, and wondering why my iPhone was fine when I first got it, then this happened one day. I am not sure but it seems like the software gets corrupted sometimes if you do a restore, I have had odd glitches with time zone for Calendar showing when it was turned off even setting up as a new handset did not help battery life, having had the phone since launch I am now fed up of waiting for a fix, wary of getting a refurbished handset when mine was brand new, Apple did contact me to ask about the issues, and ask to put something on the phone for 24 hours to monitor it, but at this stage I have lost faith. Saying that even the Google Galaxy Nexus has a bug with volume going up and down on its own, I am just fed up of being a beta tester for these huge companies, I really bought into Apple, I love my iMac, but this phone issue has me beat and very disheatened, the phone is a life line as I am disabled and is used for medical reminders to help jog my memory, my old iPhone 4 was a brilliant handset. The 4S is a mess tbh.

After testing this for the last day or so there is a definite improvement in battery life - cannot believe there has not been more comments on this thread, I'm sure Apple will enjoy the read...

Still, 4S is not getting anywhere near the battery life of the 4 running iOS 5 - lots of disappointed Apple fans right now

Same results here as well.

Just to mention...I tuned off 'raise to speak', did a hard reset but the IR sensor was still on. I had to disable Siri all together and then turn Siri back on again (with raise to speak off) for the IR sensor to actually remain off. No idea what effect this has on battery as I've literally only just done this!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqcwVGW_-n0

Yes, this is my video. If you turn off Siri then power down you can get it to go off. This is a bug and there is CPU being used to monitor the infrared and power to fire the sensor as well.

Nice find! Have this bug on my 4S too.

After turning off "Raise to speak" and restarting device (home + power button) battery life increased a lot.

Reset it without getting backup from itunes works like a charm

What I did: Before you do this remember PHOTOS AND CONTACTS MAY get deleted so make a BACKUP somewhere ;]

Settings -> General->Reset-> Erase all Content and Settings.

Tested overnight and battery drained 2% when I woke up. Its some software issue I guess. Also I'm not adding any email accounts or Icloud functions just yet as I believe the problem is connected somehow to them. Going to use Phone functions,some apps,videos, music all except for mail and icloud and sofar my testing seems to be good. Goodluck to anyone else

Just a quick update. I've been toying around with the IR sensor and found that if you:

1. turn off "Raise to Speak"

2. turn off Siri

3. hard reboot the iPhone 4S (keep holding both top and Home buttons until the phone shuts off, ignore the slide to shut down slider)

4. turn it back on

5. then turn Siri back on

the IR sensor will only come on when Siri is listening as it should.

(this still doesn't make sense since if Raise to Speak is off, it shouldn't need to know if you're holding the phone to your head, I'm thinking because it's kinda awkward to hold the Home button down while it's held to your face, but I dunno)

So I can use Siri again and only a tiny drain on the battery compared to before where the IR sensor was on 100% of the time.

You're still leaving Raise to Speak disabled after all of this? (it's not really a useful feature anyways -- it makes more sense via headphones).