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Apple Working with iPhone 4S Owners to Address Battery Life Issues

M

Maltz

macrumors member
Mar 31, 2011
60
5
I had this problem, but it doesn't do it now. It turned out to be a calibration issue for me. To recalibrate:

1) Drain the battery until the phone shuts off on its own.

2) Charge it non-stop back to 100% (Should take 2 - 3 hrs)

When I first started draining the phone, I was losing about 5-7% per hour in standby. As the battery drained, the rate the percentage was dropping got slower and when it got to 1%, it sat there for almost an hour. Then it finally shut itself off. I recharged back to 100% in one sitting, and now it's got the same or better battery life my 3GS had that I was upgrading from.
 
NeverhadaPC

NeverhadaPC

macrumors 6502
Oct 3, 2008
410
2
jp70 said:
I only turn off Time Zone, blue tooth when not in use, Ask to join networks, and I don't send data to Apple.
Click to expand...

Interesting. My Usage and Standby times (since last full charge) are always identical, even though I do not use my phone all the time (less than 50% of time)....

Weird! :confused:

My battery lasts one day max with average use (some music, a lot of messaging, few pics, ~10 mins phone call per day, a small amount of Angry Birds + Cut the Rope)
 
A

ade2bee

macrumors regular
Dec 13, 2009
168
0
CortexRock said:
My iPhone 4 battery is getting caned since I upgraded to iOS5... if it's bad on the new phone too, surely there's got to be a bug in the software?
Click to expand...

I've had a nightmare too on my iPad 1. I've got it back to normal after a lot of trial and error by going into settings/iCloud then turning everything off except for photostream Docs & Data and find my iPad/iPhone and it seems to be back to normal...
 
Trius

Trius

macrumors 6502a
Aug 7, 2008
843
105
no problems here

I have pretty much every service available turned on (location, bluetooth, iCloud, Siri, etc..) and I use my phone constantly. My battery lasts me all the way through the day until I go to bed.. Actually, come to think of it, I have only been charging my iPhone 4S every other day or so and its been fine...
 
A

ade2bee

macrumors regular
Dec 13, 2009
168
0
Nightmare solved for my battery draining iPad... wanna try?

I've had a nightmare too on my iPad 1. I've got it back to normal after a lot of trial and error by going into settings/iCloud then turning everything off except for photostream Docs & Data and find my iPad/iPhone and it seems to be back to normal...
 
P

pjaydubya

macrumors newbie
Mar 5, 2003
3
0
Central Texas
Unfortunate battery :(

Went to bed last night around 1130 PM with 60% battery life. Closed all open apps. Got up around 330 AM for a restroom run and noticed my phone was dead. That's scary because my iPhone is my alarm clock!

I am on the phone all the time - even so the iPhone 4 yielded twice the usage as I'm getting now with my iPhone 4S. It's a great phone, but this battery issue is a pain!
 
kirk26

kirk26

macrumors 6502a
Jun 21, 2003
785
2
West Virginia
The 4S battery is way better than the 4. When I used the iPhone 4 my battery would be drained by noon (started using it fully charged at 6:30am) from heavy use. Now it lasts more than half the day.
 
A

applextrent

macrumors member
Oct 29, 2003
53
0
So. Cal
My iPhone 4S battery life is simply horrible.

Last night I left with a 100% charge and I used it to listen to music, and for Google Maps and sent a few texts for about an hour in my car. I then watched a band practice and didn't look at my phone for 2-hours, listened to some music on my way home without even looking at maps or texting and had 50% battery left. 2-hours of music, 1-hour of data usage, and 2 hours of standby left me with 50% of my battery. Clearly something is wrong.

I've tried turning off location services, I manually close all running apps, I've calibrated the battery three times now, and nothing works other than keeping a charger handy.

I really hope this is a software issue, and not a hardware problem.
 
M

marty11

macrumors 6502
Oct 9, 2011
274
412
DESNOS said:
I love Apple, truly. This is above and beyond what I expect from any customer service, even Apple. I'm impressed.
Click to expand...

Totally. Using free labor for field engineering a defective product they just released.

Top notch!
 
O

odedia

macrumors 65816
Nov 24, 2005
1,044
149
Same issue exists on the 3GS and I think I know why

Its push email. When I turned it off from my corporate exchange, and set it to every 15 minutes instead, battery life improved dramatically.

Other stuff like iCloud and location services are on but still battery life is better now.
 
B

batchtaster

macrumors 65816
Mar 3, 2008
1,031
217
Since upgrading to iOS 5.0, my 3GS loses about 10% per hour, with me barely touching it. No apps running, no iCloud (haven't migrated), no Bluetooth - my Exchange account has push enabled, but this was also turned on in iOS 4.x. The phone gets quite hot, when all it's doing is just sitting in my bag or on my desk. I'll pluck it out of my bag to go to lunch, and it'll be down to 60%.
 
Last edited:
O

odedia

macrumors 65816
Nov 24, 2005
1,044
149
batchtaster said:
Since upgrading to iOS 5.0, my 3GS loses about 10% per hour. No apps running, no iCloud (haven't migrated), although my Exchange account has push enabled, but this was also turned on in iOS 4.x.
Click to expand...

See my post above and let me know if it works for you.
 
H

hofer

macrumors member
Aug 29, 2006
98
38
dotnsk said:
Mine too! I tried about a half dozen minor tweaks over the last week or so trying to find the culprit to no avail...until yesterday!

NOTE: My problem was that standby time and usage time were close to the same, even after letting my phone sit for hours without using it. My phone would also drain up to 60% in just 4 hours or less, leading me to believe that SOMETHING was hanging and preventing my phone from idling. I have an iPhone 4 that I restored from backup after performing the iOS 5 upgrade. I am unjailbroken for the time being.

I can't promise this will work for everyone (as the scads of threads I've read here and on Apple's support site seem to indicate many potential solutions), but this was an infrequently-mentioned one that worked for me:

  • Delete your email accounts (yes, your iCloud one, too). I let iCloud leave my contact and calendar information on my iPhone when I deleted it and was fine, but YMMV. As always, have a backup of any critical information somewhere else (Google contacts, Address Book on your Mac, etc).
  • Perform a hard reboot of your iPhone (this step may not be entirely necessary, but it was in the initial instructions that I read, so I did it).
  • Add your email accounts again. When I added iCloud back to my iPhone, I let it merge the information from my phone with my iCloud information. No dupes, and everyone's there in contacts. My calendars actually appear to be working again, too (they weren't before, but it wasn't really a big deal).

That's it. Days of banging my head against the wall adjusting settings and praying for a solution, and deleting my email accounts seems to be the trick.

I'm slowly re-enabling the settings I disabled over the course of my troubleshooting, so this is a tentative solution at best, but I figured I should share it so others could try it. My battery life is FINALLY where it should be relative to the age of the phone and the settings I have enabled.
Click to expand...

Something similar to this worked for me too. I suspect that IOS5 could not deal with some corrupt data in the address book file that I had on my Mac. Therefore, I exported my address book data to Vcards and erased the old contact data on all devises and iCloud. I then imported the Vcards back into the address book and then synced back with address book. Problems solved, both with address book syncing and battery drain. Works like a charm now.
 
J

Jamooche

macrumors regular
Jul 23, 2011
204
55
I pre-ordered the iPhone 4S and used it for 3 days. The battery life was horrible! After listening to MP3s over bluetooth in my car for 30 minutes, and then not using the phone all day, It would be at 48% after work when heading to my car. If I sent a text and email in the parking lot it was down to low 40s. My 3GS would still be around 80%.

I went to the Apple Store and they gave me a 4S replacement. The replacement is fine. I have it set with most notifications and location services turned off. I did the same thing today (Actually, I used more power and listened to Pandora on the way to work) and am about ready to leave the office and the phone is still at 78%.
 
N

newoverhere

macrumors newbie
Jun 14, 2009
16
0
No problem here with the battery in my 4S

Only thing I have turned off is bluetooth and automatic brightness, everything else (location service, GPS, Wifi, Siri, iCloud backup) is on and running.
 

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aliensporebomb

aliensporebomb

macrumors 68000
Jun 19, 2005
1,907
332
Minneapolis, MN, USA, Urth
Ah!

lapis said:
One definite problem is the Setting Time Zone function in Locations (under system services). It never turns off location searching so it drains the battery. Turning off the Time Zone feature eliminates that particular problem.
Click to expand...

Lapis: Thanks for the tip. I've shut that off on my iPhone4 too. No need for that, I don't veer out of this time zone very often.
 
A

astewes

macrumors member
Apr 15, 2008
35
4
San Francisco, CA
phantom overnight battery drain

i experienced a battery drain situation about a week after i activated the phone. i went to bed with the battery at 80% and no apps running. when i woke up, the battery was at 1%. i'd used GPS the night before, but turned off all of my apps, so i thought i was fine.

sprint was beyond unhelpful. i couldn't get in touch with anyone at apple via telephone. ended up restoring the phone through itunes. since then, i've kept itunes ping and location services turned off - with mail settings on manual. additionally, i've been letting the phone drain completely and then charging it to 100%. some charges are better than others. this phantom battery drain hasn't occurred a second time, but i'm still cautious and wish apple would release some sort of statement. i switched to the iphone beause i wanted to be able to take advantage of cool features like location services with apps, ping, among others. it's frustrating to have spent this kind of money on a phone and then find myself erring on the side of caution. hoping it was just a fluke. that, or siri is plotting something while i'm asleep.
 
R

richardsonrs

macrumors regular
Jul 1, 2010
238
135
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)

My 4s drains like crazy. I get up its 100%. Might check fb or something early. Leave for work. BT audio on the way for about 30 minutes. Get to work and I'm at 85%. Nuts. That never happened on my 4. It's now 2:40 pm. Got up at 7am and have barely actually used it and I'm at 51%. Have some location stuff turned on but not THAT much. Nothing my 4 wasn't doing.
 
GooMan

GooMan

macrumors regular
May 8, 2006
207
25
USA
I've been using iOS5 on my 3GS since the 1st beta. The 1st couple of beta versions kinda chewed on the battery but that's to be expected. Everything since that has been very good. I've been running the GM on it since it was released and couldn't be happier. My battery life seems no different to me than it ever has. Push is on, notifications are on, wifi is on, bluetooth is off.

My wife has a 4S and she says she can tell the battery drains faster but it's not a big deal. A friend of her says her 4S is almost unusable as her main phone b/c the battery won't last a whole day, mostly on standby.

My iPad has been running iOS5 since the 1st beta as well and it doesn't have any battery issues either.
 
E

epot1072

macrumors newbie
Oct 28, 2011
1
0
My idle phone lost 60% charge in 2 hours

At one point the phone went from 60% charged to dead in 2 hours. All while I wasn't using the phone and after I'd turned off location services, bluetooth etc. I took it to the Apple Store and the guy was very rude, skeptical and accused me of simply wanting a new phone. He eventually gave me a new phone and the battery life of the new phone is now consistent with what I experienced with the iPhone 4 I previously had. If anything, it's probably a little better.
 
backinblack875

backinblack875

macrumors 6502a
Aug 23, 2010
614
46
USA
issue for me was bluetooth, because the icon doesn't appear in the top corner unless its in use, i turned it off and the things battery is what i originally expected, amazing. i hadn't realized it was on this whole time since yesterday. not sure why it defaults on, found the same thing on my iPad.
 
U

UKStu

macrumors newbie
Aug 13, 2010
5
0
My iPhone 4S battery was draining 50% overnight.

I eventually solved it by doing the following.

go to Settings then Location Services, scroll down to the bottom and click System Services. Turn OFF "Setting Time Zone"

With this setting switched off my phone drains only 1% overnight, with this setting on my battery drains 50% overnight.

I don't cross time zones so not sure of the point of this.

Anyway since turning that off I no longer have battery issues and I still have push, iCloud, siri, wifi and other features enabled
 
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