iPhone 4S battery

I really appreciate your help, Lawrence. I have already synced my large list of contacts for my exchange account and my calendar data for my iCloud account. So I don't think that it is still doing large amounts of syncing.

Right now, I must charge my iPhone overnight, otherwise there will be no way that it can last the next day. The weird issue is that the battery drains itself without me doing anything with it. If I have it charged at 100% before I sleep (without having the iPhone plugged in overnight), it will be at less than 60% the next morning. My iPod touch surely didn't do that. I think this is very abnormal.

My iPhone doesn't match the given specs at all. I talked for 20 minutes in Toronto with another cellphone, and my battery went down 11%. Standby time is definitely not 200 hours. Regardless of what tasks I do with my iPhone, the battery specs are much lower than the specs given by Apple.

I do have push enabled for my mail and contacts for my exchange account. If it's not location services or notifications, what can it possibly be?

No, most iPhones have no problem, and it's also wrong to think it is just a 4S problem. Even Consumer Reports recently said they could not duplicate the problem. But more people than usual have shorter battery life than they think they should get. Some of this is expectations; if the iPhone is your first smart phone you may be comparing it to a more primitive phone that could go for a week between charges. It's a different world; don't think of the iPhone as a phone; it's a very powerful, pocket-sized computer that can also make phone calls. And it gets battery life comparable to a computer, not a phone. Even if you don't think you are using it the iPhone is doing things in background. If NOTHING is running on the phone battery will drop about 1/2% per hour. This is normal. If you have streaming music apps that you forget to turn off (just exiting to the Home screen does not stop them), you have News apps that update (NY Times, AP, USA Today, etc), you have social networking apps (Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo Messenger, etc) the phone is never idle and will use both battery and bandwidth against your allowance.

But there are also things that can go wrong. At least some of the posts in the threads below describe them, and a few have suggestions on fixing them.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3391947?tstart=0

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3484755?tstart=0

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3481668?tstart=0

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3518760?tstart=0

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2755090?tstart=0

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3507356?tstart=30

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3482083?tstart=60

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3492588?tstart=60

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3397244?tstart=90

Then there's the historical issue:

Battery Meter/Life Problems with 4.0.2

4.0.2 guzzling my battery. Your's too?

4.0.1 battery life

Battery runs out very quicky in iOS 4.0.1

Battery nearly nonexistant after 4.0 upgrade

Dead battery after few hours on standby using 4.0 software

3.1.3 battery problem

OS 3.1.3 battery issues

3.1.3 upgrade - shortened battery life?

Battery life cut after 3.1.3 update on iPhone 3G

3.1.3 Firmware is a battery killer - how do I back out this upgrade?

Poor battery life with iPhone 3G running 3.1.2

3.1.2 EXTREME battery drain - what gives?

3.1 Battery nightmare

iPhone 3GS with fw 3.1 – battery life gets even worse

Battery Issues with 3.0.1

BATTERY drain with 3.0

upgrade to 3.0 drains my battery

Battery Drain after Update 2.2.1

Battery Life Radically Decreased after 2.2.1 Firmware Update

Do you perhaps have an Exchange account? Or an iCloud account and a large contact list? In either case the battery will contribute a lot of power to the initial sync. I'm not sure what you were expecting, but the iPhone is not a flip phone with a week's battery life; it is an extremely powerful computer that can also make phone calls. And it uses power like a computer. I suggest charging it every night so it is fully charged in the morning. If you are an average user you will end the day with some reserve, but probably not enough for a 2nd day. See the specs and compare them to your usage; if you don't get close to the specs post back and we'll help you figure out why. BTW, it isn't location services; that's one iPhone myth. Others are WiFi, BlueTooth and Siri. None of these contribute significantly to battery drain, and, in fact WiFi will extend battery life if it can connect when you are using the phone.

Battery specs:

• Talk time: Up to 8 hours on 3G, up to 14 hours on 2G (GSM)
• Standby time: Up to 200 hours
• Internet use: Up to 6 hours on 3G, up to 9 hours on Wi-Fi
• Video playback: Up to 10 hours
• Audio playback: Up to 40 hours

There are numerous threads on here with regards to the battery life. You might find some of them useful but there is no definite fix for everyone. If you do a search on here you will find all the threads. 😉

Click the button bottom center twice this will bring up all the apps you have used touch the first one and hold it X's will appear touch the X this will close the APP thuse saving some BATTERY. Hope this HELPS

I'm at the end of my rope. Yesterday I wiped my iphone 4s clean and started over, hoping something was running in the background that I could control/fix. To no avail. This morning I had 100% battery and now, two hours later and having not used my phone at ALL, my batter is at 70%. This phone ***** and the fix is needed now. Seems Apple was a little quick out of the gate to have something to sell in 2012. HELP!

If you restore your backup you restored whatever was corrupted in it that was causing the problem. Try a restore WITHOUT reloading the backup. You will probably find that battery life is just fine. Then add your email accounts and test again, and it will still probably be fine. And likewise with apps.

As you can see from the threads I linked to earlier, this is not a 4S problem and it is not an iOS 5.x problem. It has occurred on every model iPhone and every version since the first.

My brand new iPhone 4S battery drained over 30% overnight! I turned off most notifications and Siri. And only a few location services (eg. Find My iPhone) are on. And it's still doing that. Disappointing.

Several notes: If you have an Exchange account it will consume power whether you have Push on or off. The amount of drain will track very closely to the number of messages you get. On a weekday when I receive 100 or more messages my battery starts at 100% and ends the day at 20-30%. On a weekend, when I get very few emails, it ends the day at 70%.

Standby time is meaningless, because the phone is never on standby. The mail daemon is always running, and any app that gets notifications will wake the phone to process them. And some apps as well will run in background. You can try disabling Ping, iTunes Store and Game Center by setting Restrictions on them if you don't use them. A number of people have reported that this helps.

My phone seems to track the specs pretty closely if I use the Usage figure in Settings. One way to know something is abnormal is if Usage time equals Standby time. This means there is a runaway process somewhere on the phone.

iPhone Battery Optimise

http://www.apple.com/batteries/iphone.html

Also have a look at this post: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3447962?tstart=0