How the hell does this happen?

glen e said:

How is it apple just announces the battery flaw-update? Are a lot of you here on the ios5 testing program? All that sold gold master stuff, next upgrade, no one saw this? It's not small either, of 6 people I know, 4 have batts that don't last long at all including mine - even after turning everything off.

Tim Cook has an iPhone - he did not see it? How does the richest company in the world not see a glaring thing like this?

This type thing and the death grip thing last year make me wonder why they have a beta testing program....

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The beta testing program is for developers. Most developers just make sure there applications run on ios5. A public beta would help prevent code issues like the battery problem. However they plan on addressing the issue within the week so sit tight and carry the charger with you.

truz said:

The beta testing program is for developers. Most developers just make sure there applications run on ios5. A public beta would help prevent code issues like the battery problem. However they plan on addressing the issue within the week so sit tight and carry the charger with you.

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And it's also not affecting everyone, which reduces the problem's exposure. I'm in the developer program and had all of the iOS 5 betas and am now on the GM (official release) and still am not experiencing abnormal battery drain.

glen e said:

I understand it's for developers but I would think it would effect even them. And it's not small if apple is addressing it this early in the release...I'm not bitching or whining, I think it's great, I still just don't know how a batt problem and death grip get by thousands of people...

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I'm not sure what background you come from, but as a software developer I can tell you while this is disappointing for any company to admit, its quite easy how something like this can happen.

The fact is, software is a very complex, creative undertaking. There are a lot of nuances, use cases, and flows that can't be fully covered in all the different permutations while testing. It is impossible to test software fully, and that's why we're taught to think about these kind of design issues early on in the software development lifecycle because its expensive to fix later on (ie when released to the public).

Once you release software to millions of people, they run the software in ways you just can't test in a lab situation. That's why their engineers are trying to pull data from user phones in order to help isolate the issue. Even now they're still investigating the issue.

So in short, why did this happen? Because engineers human, because software is hard to build perfectly, and because testing can never be 100%, it is a best effort type of scenario.

I turned off iMesssage and my battery life is fine. I was using Imessage for a while and my battery drained a lot faster than now that i have it off.

I have worked as an avionics technician both in the USAF and as a civilian for over 35 years. One thing that you can count on, is that new software always fixes a lot of known issues, and creates a bunch of new ones. And, no matter how much the software is tested in lab or flight testing, bugs do not show up until it is loaded up in the entire fleet and used on a daily basis.
And, the fix is usually identifed fairly promptly, tested, and a patch is released. I am sure that Apple is working hard on all the issues that have been identified.

glen e said:

well I need it on, so that's not a fix I can live with. In my business this would be akin to getting terrible mpg and telling people to turn off the a/c to fix it.

I have turned off everything, and it still drains faster than pre-ios5...I'm sure the fix will clear it up and that's my point.

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so what did you do before iMessage? It's not like it's been around for years and you got use to it. Nothing is perfect, each new OS upgrade you will have bumps. You fix one issue and that fix can cause issues with something else. I bet any developer will tell you this also.

glen e said:

How is it apple just announces the battery flaw-update? Are a lot of you here on the ios5 testing program? All that sold gold master stuff, next upgrade, no one saw this? It's not small either, of 6 people I know, 4 have batts that don't last long at all including mine - even after turning everything off.

Tim Cook has an iPhone - he did not see it? How does the richest company in the world not see a glaring thing like this?

This type thing and the death grip thing last year make me wonder why they have a beta testing program....

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Testing a phone takes more than a day to do. They can't just take very picky customers words for it that something is wrong. They have to do repeatability tests under standby and usage, a single test of which can last upwards of 2 days. The time it took them to come out with a conclusion that there IS an issue seems about right to me.

glen e said:

"picky customers?"

that's a laugh...

I have about 15 friends with ios5 iphones...and an office full of them - everyone mentions it...

I expect this to degenerate with a bunch of defensive posts so I'll close it off now...not interested in a joust, just my opin...

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I use my phone all day then get home and charge my phone. Is the battery a problem? Probably. Have I run into issues with my battery dying on me before the day ends? Nope.

glen e said:

I am on the corporate side of the car business and certainly understand how things are designed wrong and parts gets morphed from the original intent when production gets involved. I also certainly understand code and how things that are minute can slip by. But the death grip and the batt would show itself in 5 times out of 10 if given to 10 people on the street. I am very surprised that apple employees that had this phone did not experience the drain or death grip themselves, and that is my sole point. I have purchased practically every apple product since investing in 2001. That investment let me retire last year off of Jobs and co, so I'm asking a legit question here and not a troll.

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Hmmm thats a pretty big percentage of people you say would be experiencing this. 50%? i seriously doubt it. It may be that way in YOUR individual situation, but just like last year a very small percentage of people were complaining about the death grip, and about the same small percent are complaining about the battery drain.

I know plenty of people with the 4s (more than 10) and not a single person is experiencing a weird battery drain of any kind. Even my 3gs running on iOS 5 isn't experiencing it.

Again i think people and the media are just blowing this out of proportion. They are trying to show apple has a weak spot because they have nothing else to do.

Again this year Apple has at least called attention to it just like the death grip, and they are quickly putting together a fix for it.


None of these so called "problems" with the 4s is deterring me from buying one as soon as i can find one.

As i see it you only see threads on forums like this that bring up problems. How many forums do you go on that say "OMG my phone's battery and screen and speakers are working just like i expect it to!!!"

You don't see any because people don't go to forums to show their pride, so when people say "everyone on this forum is experiencing the problem" thats a tiny percent when compared to all those people not complaining on forums because they have no issues with their phone.

I posted some similar question yesterday, kinda odd though no one picked up on this issue, also I never really gave thought that Siri was a service, I thought it was integrated into your phone, so now we have the Siri outage to deal with as well.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1268710/

I get less than I did on my 4, but it still gets me through the day. Dual-Core phone versus a single core phone, of course it's going to run down quicker. Duh.

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Isn't the issue that Apple is admitting specific to the 4s?

I don't have a battery issue. Get through the whole day and more, just like my iPhone 4.

cmChimera said:

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A334 Safari/7534.48.3)

Isn't the issue that Apple is admitting specific to the 4s?

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No, Apple stated it was with iOS 5.

A small number of customers have reported lower than expected battery life on iOS 5 devices. We have found a few bugs that are affecting battery life and we will release a software update to address those in a few weeks.

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I'm just home from work, checked my iPhone 4 on iOS 5.

Stats since last full charge, without the iPhone being plugged in since.

Just under 3 hours use, 11 hours standby, 62% battery remaining.

cmChimera said:

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A334 Safari/7534.48.3)

Isn't the issue that Apple is admitting specific to the 4s?

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I don't think so

OP: I'm not sure you're coming back, but in regard to the antenna issue the most common theory I see mentioned is that the phones were in cases to disguise the new design. That prevented bridging the antennas and attenuating the signal. Obviously they also had the phones naked, but the attenuation wasn't dramatic with a strong cell signal. So maybe they had good cell coverage on campus and left them in the case at home. Or in the bar.

DaLurker said:

Once you release software to millions of people, they run the software in ways you just can't test in a lab situation.

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This.

I do support for an enterprise level accounting package. End users have an amazing ability to do things in ways programmers never anticipated.

People are railing on the OP, but isn't this the exact reaction a company should expect when making a product aimed directly at the average consumer and marketed as an appliance?

Tech geeks understand first gen bugs that come with buying new technology but to most people then when you buy a blender or a lawn mower then you don't say "the burning smell is because it's a new model but they'll update it in a month". To us these may be the pinnacle of technology but to your mom or boss then these tools are supposed to be perfect out of the box because most likely they won't be doing software updates.

glen e said:

How is it apple just announces the battery flaw-update? Are a lot of you here on the ios5 testing program? All that sold gold master stuff, next upgrade, no one saw this? It's not small either, of 6 people I know, 4 have batts that don't last long at all including mine - even after turning everything off.

Tim Cook has an iPhone - he did not see it? How does the richest company in the world not see a glaring thing like this?

This type thing and the death grip thing last year make me wonder why they have a beta testing program....

Click to expand...

Dude,

It's a Mobile phone. They aren't curing cancer! 5.0.1 will be the fix so chill pill!

It's an imperfect world filled with imperfect people. That's the way it works.