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iOS 8 iPhone 4S battery life is HORRIBLE

N

nezwick

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 21, 2013
16
0
Phone charges at night and is 100% when I leave for work at 7:30.

It is 12:00 noon and I'm already down to 31%. Before, with iOS 7, I'd be around 75% by this time of day (60% minimum depending on usage).

Siri disabled
Animations disabled ("reduce motion" setting)
Predictive text disabled
Screen brightness auto
No apps running in background
Always on WiFi
etc etc

In the new "Battery Usage" section in Settings, the top three are:

Messages: 61%
Home & Lock Screen: 14%
App Store: 8%


Anyone else with a 4S having battery trouble? I know pretty much the entire internet says not to install iOS 8 on a 4S but that was mostly because of performance lag or certain features not being available. Performance is on par with iOS 7, and I don't care about those features.
 
nezwick said:
Phone charges at night and is 100% when I leave for work at 7:30.

It is 12:00 noon and I'm already down to 31%. Before, with iOS 7, I'd be around 75% by this time of day (60% minimum depending on usage).

Siri disabled
Animations disabled ("reduce motion" setting)
Predictive text disabled
Screen brightness auto
No apps running in background
Always on WiFi
etc etc

In the new "Battery Usage" section in Settings, the top three are:

Messages: 61%
Home & Lock Screen: 14%
App Store: 8%


Anyone else with a 4S having battery trouble? I know pretty much the entire internet says not to install iOS 8 on a 4S but that was mostly because of performance lag or certain features not being available. Performance is on par with iOS 7, and I don't care about those features.
Click to expand...

The 4S is 3 years old. with the changes in the visual layout in iOS 7 and the API in iOS 8. this was bound to happen. its just Apple's way of telling you to upgrade

turn off notification widgets and you will save battery life.
 
I forgot to mention I installed a brand new battery about 6 months ago, for the exact same reasons (barely a half day of battery life).

I will look into disabling some of the notification widgets, but as far as I know the only notifications I have are for messages, Exchange email, Gmail, and Facebook. The first three are absolutely necessary for work. Facebook not so much but it's nice to have.

28%...
 
nezwick said:
28%...
Click to expand...

You're losing about 1% every 3 minutes. At that rate, your battery should only be expected to last 5 hours.

I'm serious when I say, try restarting your phone. I don't think that anything you do could possibly make your battery drain faster at this point, and it just might fix something if there's a process sucking up 100% of your CPU.
 
Post a screenshot of your usage screen. Theres a good chance it's something like your photos updating in the background. This is the reason apple included this feature.
 
Richardgm said:
I got 4 hours of usage yesterday.
It was a good day.
Click to expand...

FML


bkends35 said:
Post a screenshot of your usage screen.
Click to expand...

IMG_2925.PNG


thejadedmonkey said:
try restarting your phone
Click to expand...

Tried this. We'll see what happens.


Down to 20% now. Lost 3% in the time it took to email that screenshot to myself and attach it to this post.
 
Also, notifications got turned back on somehow for all kinds of stupid apps. I disabled everything but the essentials.
 
9%. Disabling notifications for apps and restarting the phone had no effect.
 
iOS 8 not that good on 4s

Just reverted back to iOS 7.1.2 ...
iOS 8 experience was horrible for me..
I will think of updating 4s when 8.1 arrives..
Thank God 7.1.2 window is still open..
 
Can you point me to the thread with the instructions for back-dating to iOS 7?
 
karstas said:
How old is your iPhone? Battery capacity decreasing every month so don't get upset for bad battery if your iPhone is 2years old or more...
Click to expand...


I have no idea how old it is, I got the phone itself second hand, to replace my original iPhone 4 whenever iOS 7 came out. I did, however, install a brand new replacement battery (genuine Apple) about 6 months ago. I was mostly satisfied with the battery life up until yesterday when I installed iOS 8. I could get about 12 hours with 7, and now it's about 5 hours.
 
nezwick said:
I have no idea how old it is, I got the phone itself second hand, to replace my original iPhone 4 whenever iOS 7 came out. I did, however, install a brand new replacement battery (genuine Apple) about 6 months ago. I was mostly satisfied with the battery life up until yesterday when I installed iOS 8. I could get about 12 hours with 7, and now it's about 5 hours.
Click to expand...

Oh okey, hmmm give atleast 3 charge cycles and some days to settle down operating system.
 
Well it's been hanging out at 5% for the past 45 minutes with no change. Maybe it's an issue of calibration and not excessive drain. I've heard of this behaviour before but never experienced it with my particular device.
 
nezwick said:
Well it's been hanging out at 5% for the past 45 minutes with no change. Maybe it's an issue of calibration and not excessive drain. I've heard of this behaviour before but never experienced it with my particular device.
Click to expand...

Drain it until it shuts off. Then charge again. Hoping it just needs to be calibrated...
 
iPhone20 said:
Just reverted back to iOS 7.1.2 ...
iOS 8 experience was horrible for me..
I will think of updating 4s when 8.1 arrives..
Thank God 7.1.2 window is still open..
Click to expand...

I must've accidentally hit ok on the update screen when moving the phone this morning (half asleep). I turned off wifi but I now have a partially downloaded 8 going on.

I started a thread on how to stop it, but how do you go back to 7?

I have a backup through iTunes on the laptop as of last night (iOS6) and this morning (iOS7 but that was when it was attempting to download so no idea if that's also locked into the backup). Unfortunately I've have the phone attached to my old G4 all these years, so that's where my music is. That version of iTunes will no longer see the phone. I can manually move the music to my MB if need be.

I also have the same with ibackupbot. I've never used ibackup bot to restore. I did restore once with iTunes and iCloud and didn't lose too much data - what I lost was missing in the iTunes backup as it wasn't 100% current then.

I have an iCloud backup from last night which is also iSO6.

How long is the downgrade window open? I held out on 7 for a full year and now I'm stuck halfway in 8. Like the OP I got a new battery in June, so I really don't want to go back to the bad battery issues.

Thanks so much
 
diane143 said:
I must've accidentally hit ok on the update screen when moving the phone this morning (half asleep). I turned off wifi but I now have a partially downloaded 8 going on.

I started a thread on how to stop it, but how do you go back to 7?

I have a backup through iTunes on the laptop as of last night (iOS6) and this morning (iOS7 but that was when it was attempting to download so no idea if that's also locked into the backup). Unfortunately I've have the phone attached to my old G4 all these years, so that's where my music is. That version of iTunes will no longer see the phone. I can manually move the music to my MB if need be.

I also have the same with ibackupbot. I've never used ibackup bot to restore. I did restore once with iTunes and iCloud and didn't lose too much data - what I lost was missing in the iTunes backup as it wasn't 100% current then.

I have an iCloud backup from last night which is also iSO6.

How long is the downgrade window open? I held out on 7 for a full year and now I'm stuck halfway in 8. Like the OP I got a new battery in June, so I really don't want to go back to the bad battery issues.

Thanks so much
Click to expand...


So you were on iOS 6 for the past year?
Download ipsw file for iOS 7.1.2 from anywhere and connect your phone to iTunes & then click Shift + Restore (Windows) and choose the ipsw file
And you will be back on iOS 7.1.2
And do it fast until they have opened the window for 7.1.2
 
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