Q: iOS 6 iPhone 4s battery drain

I am so disappointed in the poor battery life of the 5. I have owned every iPhone model and this is by far the worst battery performance ever! Particularly disappointed since one of the selling points was supposed to be the 40% increase in battery life. I find it hard to believe this wasn't tested before roll-out. Apple has to do something about this quick or I'm taking this phone back and will be done with Apple. I have turned off every feature I can think of that will drain the battery and its still draining rapidly! I refuse to be tethered to a power cord!

Again, go to settings, then general, then cellular, then under there ull find ur hotspot settings and such, turn off usage to iCloud which is part of 6.0 update, password, books iTunes and every thing in that and see, instant battery change, trust me I understand ur frustration , I had to go throw it for the past 2 days since the update 

I've never had a phone die on me in public before as I'm always meticulous and can predict battery life, but since receiving my iPhone5 the battery life has been a serious joke (this coming from a person who has never had an issue with battery life before). I went from a full charge to completely flat in a matter of 5hrs with next to no activity...idling 98% of the time.

Since then I've spent a day reading and re-reading all 20+ pages here (and counting) and have tried the flat to 100% charge, resetting all settings as well as a hard reset (2 button hold). While it did improve the standby overnight (only dropped 1% to 99%), as soon as I started operating it, it dropped to 97% within 2 minutes and any light use (a few smses and browsing the settings tab) since this morning has seen the battery drop to 53% right now as I type this.

The current stats are -

Usage - 3hrs 40mins

Standby - 17hrs 40mins

Taking into account that standby mode only saw 2% battery drop, it's fair to say the other 45% drop in 3hrs 40mins is much better than yesterday, but nowhere near Apple's claim as I cannot stress enough how LIGHT my usage has been in fear of seeing the battery drop 1% every 3mins. Most of the 'usage' time is plain idling on the home screen for a minute.

and yes, all my settings have been resetted and optimized to the max. Any further 'switching off this setting' would render a smartphone absolutely pointless. 

Thanks Googooguy,

But when you say

go to settings, then general, then cellular, then under there ull find ur hotspot settings and such, turn off usage to iCloud

When I got to settings, General, there is no cellular there. I'm using 4s.

Cheers

Deb

I tried this, but left FaceTime on as it really on should use battery if I actually turn it on (that is, no background processing).  Hopefully this will help as the battery life is noticeably worse after upgrading to iOS 6. I did an OTA update (initial), and then a complete restore after that because of the faster drain.  The restore didn't help.

This is pretty annoying as Apple could have just came out with an iPhone 4s that had 50% better battery life, and I'd bet most people would want to upgrade just for that.  Then there's the business community, where this kind of battery life will not be acceptable.

It worked for me way better than before, but its by far not a limitless battery

Or we can all get to gather and file a class action for miss leading about the battery life , I was stuck with a helpless phone. And get some of that money apple just got from Samsung for a dead man designed which they couldn't control after his glories dominated the world. RIP. stevo..  

Am using 4s too, but maybe because different carriers, find the new things downloaded source and kill it it should give you much better life since they constantly running and killing your battery

Here in India almost everyone who has a 4S is having this problem, after the update came out,just a day later Facebook was full of status updates saying that everyone's battery life was going to ****. I kinda solved the problem to a level by performing a settings reset and disabling most of the iCloud stuff except for the find my iPhone tab. I remember having the same problem when IOS 5 came out, the problem was solved only when 5.1 came out one and a half month later. So hope apple fixes the problem quick.

53% right now as I type this.

The current stats are -

Usage - 3hrs 40mins

Standby - 17hrs 40mins

That was an hour-ish ago. Right now the stats are -

31% (what on earth 22% in an hour of light use + standby)

Usage - 4hrs 52mins

Standby - 19hrs 4mins

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it looks as though the usage is increasing along with standby as there's no way I constantly used it for 1hr 12mins and have the standby increase by around the same amount of time in a space of just over an hour.

I made the upgrade to iOS6 last Friday and since then my iphone 4S lasts 4 hrs max !! I tried to change settings without success.

I read many of the posts but I could not really find a fix so far. Except praying for Apple issuing a fix soon. quite bad...

Anyone can help??

hope you are right and they will issue a fix VERY soon. Can't live with a phone being able to use it for 4 hours max...

I have a 4s and here is what I did that seemed to solve the problem.  At this point I turned off completely siri and dictation in settings.  I did this at 7:02 pm last night and I am please to say that I still have 84%.  How did I get here?  I was looking at my other iphone which is not a 4s hence no siri and no dictation.  That one is running perfect in terms of the battery and I decided to give it a try.  Three hours later was still at 100%, five at 96% and almost twelve hors later is at 84%.  Actually I had turned off Siri and it was still draining so my conclusion is that the culprit is dictation that has to be always connected to the server just in case.  I'm no expert. Try it and let me know.  And to add my two cents, this should not be acceptable.  Imagine if in the car industry one of the big companies sells a car that due to a manufacturing glitch leaks fuel or the tires go flat in 24 hours. I have been an apple user since 96 and it almost seems that in the past few years, every year there is a different issue. Good luck.

Yes ur right ... same for me ... stand by time also increases with usage... meaning .. stand by time now is the total of used and idle hrs.

Also for me too ... if I dont use iphone the battery drainage ... is ok .. however whenever I start using it .. there is some rapid drop in battery level .. may be 1 % in 5 mins ...

Hey there,

I HAD THIS PROBLEM AND FIXED IT. it's simple. Do a backup and restore via iTunes. battery life is now better than IOS 5.

Just do it.