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Iphone 4s ios 7 battery issues

I posted this question in the basics forum, but it probably belongs here: Since installing iOS 7 on my iPhone 4s, the battery life seems to be significantly reduced, at least judging by how quickly my battery life percentage meter keeps dropping. I've gone through and turned off all sorts of settings, like location services on most everything, etc. Is anyone else experiencing a similar issue? Anyone know of any fixes?

iPhone 4S, iOS 7

Posted on Sep 19, 2013 10:26 AM

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449 replies

Oct 3, 2013 1:31 PM in response to landminespring28

I also regretably upgraded my 4S to IOS7 and saw dramatic decrease in battery performance. I did notice issues with the battery after receiving and before instlling update. Once installed the performance is horid. Two hours on a full charge. Also, my phone has also been shuttiing down anywhere between 40 and 60% - when I plug in for recharge and turn it back on it shows 1% and climbing and then jumps right back up to approximately where it was when it shut down. Was there not testing done on previous versions of phones? I guess it is time to start loading up on battery packs - either that or a new brand of phone

Oct 3, 2013 9:02 PM in response to landminespring28

I am so frustrated. As soon as I upgraded to ios7 on my 4 iphone, my battery would not charge completely. Usually if I charge overnight, it is at 100% in the am. Today it was at 78%. Throughout the day, it drained despite the fact that it was plugged into my car. I turned off location services, updates, push notifications,turned down the brightness, reset it, turned it on airplaine mode, and turned it off while charging. I charged it while off for 4 hours and the battery life is still14%. Seriously? Unless this can be fixed or we can go back to ios 6 until it's fixed, I am never going to buy another apple product. We own 11 apple products in our 4 person household, and I will NEVER buy them again if Apple doesn't do something fast. Total BS!

Oct 4, 2013 3:02 AM in response to brsm1990

This is simply not true, Apple is still selling iPhone 4s and gives clear specs on its website:


Talk time: Up to 8 hours on 3G

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


iPhone 4s should have this battery life, otherwise they're giving misleading ads!

I'm sure they're going to fix it, with a bunch of other bugs, in next iOS 7 minor release.

Oct 4, 2013 7:03 AM in response to landminespring28

My iPhone 4S seems to be slowly fixing itself, presumably through auto-recalibration of the battery. When I first updated the phone, I got perhaps 30% of the expected life. Now I'm getting perhaps 80%. The weird discontinuities in the charge level (e.g. 20% -> shutdown -> 34% immediately upon plug in) seems to have stopped.


I'm currently on 7.0.2 with parallax on, some location services on, all auto-updating disabled. Some apps have updated since the worst of the problems, so perhaps that is also part of the fix.

Oct 4, 2013 7:05 PM in response to Linda Swenberg

Since my iPhone is under AppleCare, Apple wanted a chance to run battery diagnostics. My battery failed! They gave me a new battery. They also taught me that if you look under battery usage in usage under settings, if the two numbers for standby and used since the last charge are the same, then you have a background process running that it's trashing your battery. You have to race your phone and not restore from backup.

Oct 7, 2013 1:41 AM in response to Linda Swenberg

It makes me laugh, Apple have spent millions developing new software and things to make it stand out from the crowd but in all seriousness what is the point in having all these new things if they are all switched off all the time or if the phone lasts for 4 or 5 hours. It seems pointless. The thing that apple prided themselves on (I know as I used to be an ape store employee) was customer satisfaction and making the products all about customer interaction. It almost seems the opposite now as whenever I use my iPhone I worry about battery and the pleasure that apple want you to have by using the product has turned in to more of a frustration and worry. Makes the whole experience seem pointless. First time I have ever considered a non apple product when my contract expires.

Oct 7, 2013 12:38 PM in response to landminespring28

I upgraded to iOS7 the day it was available for my 4S. I am extremely happy with 7 itself, but the bugs make the whole iOS worthless! I can no longer hear music or alert sounds (including phone calls and texts). And my battery is down to 10% by lunchtime every day when it used to last a day and a half to that point on iOS6. It is INSANE not to give us the option of downgrading our iOS when we experience problems like this!


I have checked off background refresh, I always close all of my apps (now - didn't have to with 6. I always had facebook, email, and messages open before and battery was 2-3x what it is now). My battery life also is completely unpredictable at times - it goes from 30% to 4% in the time it takes to send a text message. Then when I plug it in it shows 25% even if it had shut itself off because of no juice.


What good is such a wonderful and pretty operating system, if all of its features have to be turned off (I had to disable the cool wallpaper effects to try to save battery, too). I can't even imagine IF my music would play how quick the battery would drain! (doesn't play through speakers or earbuds or bluetooth).

Oct 7, 2013 12:39 PM in response to landminespring28

The iOS7 update has severly changed the battery life of my phone. I am a runner and have been running with my phone and listening to music for a couple years. I could run for 3 hours and use about 60% battery life at the most. Since the update in 90 minutes I use 80% battery life. I have done all the tips to turn off the background applications but nothing seems to work. Is this Apples way of making us buy a 5s because if they don't fix this I may finally be tempted to buy an Andriod, my friend has none of the battery issues I have been having with hers.

Oct 7, 2013 12:57 PM in response to Pescetarian

Welcome to the club of IPhone 4S after IOS7, Apple left us in the dark, with a useless IPhone.

The interesting of this problem, and difficult to understand, is because Apple is selling IPhone 4S, and at Apple website they state that IPhone 4S has a battery life of 200 hours in standby, 9 hours on Wifi and 6 hours on 3G.

This is not truth for the 10,300 people is following this discussion, plus other people is following the similar discussion about battery life after IOS7.

Oct 7, 2013 9:13 PM in response to landminespring28

I had the same issue with battery life after IOS 7 update but managed to solve the problem.


Try this steps:

- As suggested by Linda Swenberg, go to Setting-General-Usage and scroll all the way down to read Usage and Standby time. If they are the same even though the phone has been on standby for some time since last full charge, it means phone was still working in the background.

- Go to Setting-Cellular-System Services and find out which service was comsuming most data. Most likely that's the one that is causing the battery drain. In my case, it was a profile I installed to access the Corporate Exchange.

- Delete the profile (if you can live without it) that is causing the phone to work even on standby.

- Put the phone on standby for a few minutes. Check if Standby time increases more than usage time. If it does, problem is solved.


After deleting the profile that caused the problem, my 4S battery life is now better than when it was on IOS 6.

Oct 8, 2013 7:57 PM in response to landminespring28

I have news on how to deal with the battery issues on the 4s. Today Im at 40% after having unplugged my phone from the charger for 12 hours. Before I had a min of 2 hours and my phone was dead.


What I did:


1. Background app refresh is off in settings/general

2. automatic downloads of apps is off settings/itunes app store

3. parallax is off

4. MOST IMPORTANTLY Wifi is OFF


after the wifi is off, always, i have no problems. I also do not allow my phone to download updates over 3g.


This fixed my problems till apple has solved the bug!


good luck.

Iphone 4s ios 7 battery issues

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