My iPhone 4S keeps shutting down before battery is low

im having this problem too it shuts off at random percentages! i notice it usaully does it when im multasking... talking and surfing or music and surfing.

idk i dont have applecare so im screwed

Hi!

Yup, same problem here but it's affecting basically all my iPhones (3GS, 4, 4S) independent of iOS version. Actually I don't typically see it happening with iPhone 4 but it's due to more lightweight (less CPU intensive tasks) I'm running whereas (as explained already above) running CPU heavy apps or tasks trigger this problem easier.

In addition, I have only seen this happening in cold weather e.g I'm taking lots pictures with Hipstamatic and it's using GPS and what not at the same time when rendering the final picture, marking the location etcetc.

As such lithium ion batteries do work worse in the cold weather so maybe voltages go sometimes just low enough for phone to panic and kill itself, and maybe having older battery also contributes to this problem as well.

The cure: warm the phone a bit between hands or inside a warm pocket, and restart it later on. You might get the battery warning and phone refusing to start, but holding the power button a tad bit longer will reset it and eventually phone power on - if you REALLY want/need to use it. At the same time you'll notice the battery level is still around whatever if was before phone committed suicide, also if you plug it in to charger the phone starts right away.

Is it annoying.... yes. Is it affecting only certain iPhone model or even iPhones - well, based on tests some phones / models fare better in cold or rather in winter conditions. I think some tests I saw gave highest marks to Samsung and HTC whereas Nokia Lumia and iPhone (4s) didn't do quite so good at all.

You have pretty much exhausted the options I would do - and actually I wouldn't even go as far as uninstalling apps. Did you calibrate anyway the battery charge meter by completely draining the battery and charging it fully?

I can just relate to the experience you're having. I have three iPhones: 3gs, 4 and 4s. So far I have seen the issue happening with 3gs using iOS4.x when I'm e.g using foursquare while battery is around 30-40% or lower in the cold weather. I think the GPS chip together with processing and cellular would be too much for the battery to handle, or some sensor is triggered to turn off the phone. Maybe the older battery contributes as well - don't know.

With iPhone 4s it's possible that the issue actually started to occur only after iOS 6 upgrade - and other people have been reporting the same. I hope so - and hoping for quick fix, as I'm getting fed up with first Google Maps missing followed by personal hotspot working like )!("/$ followed by phone dying in cold weather. Any of the previous issues alone already made me consider other options outside Apple world. Now I have only the battery issue left together with the self blame of ever installing iOS 6. And I definitely didn't consider upgrading to iPhone 5 after all the mess I have recently experienced.

Hi,

I simply use the phone until I have only a little charge left. Once that's reached I'll simply let phone idle completely or drain the rest with lightweight use. We have big difference here as I can actually reach 1% rather than phone dying at 20++ percentages. Previous said, e.g yesterday phone just died after some use with 12% battery left and started again when bringing indoors. I was then able to drain the battery from 12% -> 1% before it eventually died completely. After this I couldn't start the phone anymore instead getting the charge icon constantly, so I just plugged it in at that point. After charging over night I would then consider the battery charge meter calibrated.

In your case you could test if you can still start the phone at 47%. Even if it's displaying only charge icon you could try to hold the sleep/power button longer and/or do reset with holding home+sleep/power button a few seconds. If it indeed doesn't start it would indicate battery truly is empty. It it does.. then you could try to continue using the phone hopefully hitting lower battery levels and eventually try to fully recharge it in case you'll see the battery charge percentage working any different.

Below picture shows I can still reach the "0%" battery level and also pretty good usage times.. so the problem with me really is just that the stupid phone doesn't like cool temperatures (possibly after iOS6 upgrade)

-p

Huh. You really have one big puzzle there ongoing. Can you get past the 31% if you decrease the overall power consumption e.g by disabling 3G for a day, GPS, ... Just something to try for a day. ..though you have already reached the status of 'mystery' so I wonder if anything helps apart from still doing factory reset to see how it goes and identify the problem by slowly adding the applications one by one, even if it's a bit tedious.

-p

I am having the exact same problem as you. I am on my 3rd iphone 4S, I've only had it for 8 days and it has started the pattern of shutting down at 30% or higher. Did you ever determine a solution to your phone problem? I did the same thing as you and started this 3rd phone completely new with no backups from iCloud or from the computer. No apps have been running when it has started dying.

I do use Verizon, actually. I called Apple this morning and they said they could either spend a couple of days trying to do diagnostics on it (they checked the battery last night and it said it was working properly) or set up an appointment for me at an Apple Store to replace it (a 4th iPhone is a little ridiculous...). I just spent over an hour on the phone with Verizon talking about the same problem with them, and they had me restore the phone to factory settings, not sign into my apple ID, and just leave the phone empty for 24 hours. Basically, I am charging the phone to 100%, use it only for texting and calls (I don't even have my contacts loaded or an email account, no apps), and they're going to call me back tomorrow morning to see where the phone is at. I also have made an appointment with Apple, but I don't know what else they can do besides replace it and I can't keep doing this every week and a half! If anything comes out of this process Verizon is having me try I will let you know right away.

Out of curiosity, when you look at your iPhone, does it say your network is Verizon in the upper left hand corner? Mine does not say Verizon and just says 3G and the bars of service I have. I can receive phone calls and texts, send them, and use Safari, so the phone is working, but it has never said Verizon on the phone. Verizon tried to fix it and couldn't and came to the conclusion that the phone is still working, so it shouldn't be a problem. Maybe the two are not related at all, but it makes me suspicious that in addition to all 3 phones having these battery problems, all 3 have not been able to identify Verizon as my network. I may be jumping to conclusion though.

This is a fascinating problem. I have an AT&T iPhone 4. It's just now starting to exhibit similar 'random shutdowns' which is why I googled my way into this forum thread.

My situation is a little different. In addition to being on AT&T, I'm still on iOS 5.0.1 and I was successfully using this phone for quite a while. I am pretty good about keeping my background apps to a minimum. I haven't noticed the climbing battery percentages issue you described, but, will start looking out for it.

Just discovered I've been capturing diagnostics data (and auto sending to Apple). Maybe will turn that off for a change. I have a hefty list of data/dump files in my diagnostcs log screen. Wonder if there's a clue in there?

Here's a recent example:

Incident Identifier: 817B1773-6021-4456-86C5-4B40592D9A0C

CrashReporter Key: 37e1c155df69f6185e0ccf9ca1c70ec7473601a1

Date: 2013-03-19 17:36:10 -0400

Reset count: 0

Boot failure count: 1

Boot faults:

Boot stage: 80

Boot app: 0

Maybe you should turn this setting on and see what gets captured.

One more sample from my Diagnistics log (found under Settings > About). This file was titled 'Low Memory' with a date.

Incident Identifier: 04B123A9-7D88-4CB4-AFB1-0DF1AF84B86B

CrashReporter Key: 37e1c155df69f6185e0ccf9ca1c70ec7473601a1

Hardware Model: iPhone3,1

OS Version: iPhone OS 5.0.1 (9A405)

Kernel Version: Darwin Kernel Version 11.0.0: Tue Nov 1 20:33:58 PDT 2011; root:xnu-1878.4.46~1/RELEASE_ARM_S5L8930X

Date: 2013-03-16 09:14:48 -0400

Time since snapshot: 76 ms

Free pages: 1212

Wired pages: 19253

Purgeable pages: 55

Largest process: Facebook

Processes

Name UUID Count resident pages

CommCenterMobile 271

awd_ice3 <9116d4efd29031d5b26955692f84998d> 439

syncdefaultsd 533

CVMServer 117

MobileSlideShow 3910

Skype <25a2046f841736dd84b4f632167dd237> 1117

VoiceMemos 2341

MobileNotes <53ff805c06ec3aa785e0c0e98b5900b1> 2244 (jettisoned)

Facebook 11437 (jettisoned)

calaccessd 489

MobileCal 1820 (jettisoned)

SCHelper 130

Music~iphone <18bda5f883623f3a8f78902464292fe0> 944

ColorLEDFlashlig 5034

MobileSMS <6a6b60b6b2b5361981c7cc4c21929d84> 3183

MobileSafari <586de8c153f93939a9f42bec9d0d8bfd> 9289

Preferences <728940c1d8973227ab2adca0eb654432> 1245

Camera <88291709452932ac9cbd0f1c06902214> 2697

MobilePhone 3089

MobileMail <7064f2baf3f23db987bc8ec99855fe53> 6607

networkd <6ee7a78e56073f6e8db4c2cc3265fdb4> 167

aosnotifyd <58089d732ab43bbea0aec4a6f812f446> 449

BTServer 325

aggregated <68a25a1690cb372096543a46abed14d7> 367

apsd 308

awdd <1cc9a098c3e63878bf779ccac7c08f0d> 280

dataaccessd 1211

fairplayd.N90 188

fseventsd <78af02202422321885dfc85c24534b0e> 170

iapd <3ee7f82879033b4fb93b9cf1f4ecae29> 376

imagent <8e2042f2ec9e3af9ba400f031f1bbfa7> 685

mDNSResponder 268

mediaremoted 259

mediaserverd <478e5e8345c83be5ba1868906813bb75> 1504

ubd <7eaf0b0ca5b83afabecb0dfaa38c7a19> 875

wifid 427

locationd <91c84ab19dd03e4ab1b4cc30178ab1c0> 1316

powerd <25ddef6b52e4385b819e777dd2eeed3c> 157

lockdownd 258

CommCenterClassi <3ef6d0094b5c39d3b77e558ad3018d24> 782

syslogd 102

SpringBoard <7506c20d86da3f1dbe9bf38f8bda253d> 11156 (active)

configd <3430c0025ed13f56800a329b7254d2ae> 554

notifyd <3793fabace3a385687b3c29c1fa1fcac> 250

UserEventAgent <6e1cabc1ec6d372c90a6bdeaa7b258fa> 399

launchd 108

**End**