Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
5.0.1 Battery Improvement?
- Thread starter cfairbank
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Installed 5.0.1 last night, it's improved the battery performance but not by a huge deal. I ran 2 tests so far
Left my iPhone 4 (32gb) on a desk for 90mins without touching it:
iOS 5.0 = dropped down to 89%
iOS 5.0.1 = dropped down to 95%
iOS 4.3.5 = dropped to 99%
All 3 of these occasions I just had Echofon Twitter app and Facebook running along with whatever the iPhone runs on it's own.
2nd test was playing a radio app which uses Wifi to play whatever station I'm listening too. Played the radio stream for 30mins:
iOS 5.0 = dropped to 89%
iOS 5.0.1 = dropped to 92%
iOS 4.3.5 = dropped to 98%
My opionion is, yes 5.0.1 has helped and as long as you don't touch your iPhone 4/s then you'll notice quite a big difference but soon as you want to do anything then the 5.0 power drain will begin to appear. I'd personally drop back down to 4.3.5 but I'd hate to lose iMessage. Hopefully the public release of 5.0.1 is better than the Beta released to Dev's last night
So far I've definitely noticed an improvement but nothing drastic like I was hoping for.
I charged it up to 100% after the 5.0.1 update last night and currently I'm at 68% with:
Usage: 1 hour 48 mins
Standby: 15 hours 15mins
Not amazing but certainly better than I was getting before.
Previous approximate stats on 5.0 that are comparable:
70%
Usage: 1 Hour 44 mins
Standby: 6 Hours 1 min
I charged it up to 100% after the 5.0.1 update last night and currently I'm at 68% with:
Usage: 1 hour 48 mins
Standby: 15 hours 15mins
Not amazing but certainly better than I was getting before.
Previous approximate stats on 5.0 that are comparable:
70%
Usage: 1 Hour 44 mins
Standby: 6 Hours 1 min
I also agree, I think it is a tad better but not much. I'm at 86% now with normal usage. Under 5.0 I'd probably be below 80% right now. My usage says 1 hour, 2 mins with standby of 4 hours, 10 mins.
I doubt much will change from this version to the public release.
Um, 30% drop with 1:45 hours of usage and 15 hours of standby is perfectly fine, that equates to nearly 6 hours of usage, which, depending on the type of usage, is perfectly in line with the battery estimates. It's about what I get as well, and I think my 4S battery life is fine. I make it through the day with a good amount of use (3-4 hours) with plenty to spare. If I didn't have my phone on the charger when using GPS for an hour, I might need to charge during the day (or if I've been playing a lot of games), but those are uses that drain the battery quickly.
The issues are with people who are dropping from 100% to 40% in 10 hours of standby or such. THAT'S a big problem.
Now, perhaps there are still a few bugs, but my 5.0 4S (which doesn't have a battery issue), so far is at 97% with 19 minutes of use and 2 hours 50 minutes of standby (I had it on the charger on the way in since I use Waze on my commute to find ways around traffic). I have push mail on my work account, 15 minute fetch on my personal account, push notifications for Facebook and only the weather widget in Notification center. Connected to 3G now (wifi is on, but not connected) I'd hope that the 5.0.1 would be similar for those who have battery troubles.
The issues are with people who are dropping from 100% to 40% in 10 hours of standby or such. THAT'S a big problem.
Now, perhaps there are still a few bugs, but my 5.0 4S (which doesn't have a battery issue), so far is at 97% with 19 minutes of use and 2 hours 50 minutes of standby (I had it on the charger on the way in since I use Waze on my commute to find ways around traffic). I have push mail on my work account, 15 minute fetch on my personal account, push notifications for Facebook and only the weather widget in Notification center. Connected to 3G now (wifi is on, but not connected) I'd hope that the 5.0.1 would be similar for those who have battery troubles.
Yes, I only ever have 4 notifications set under the Notifications centre of 5.0, Weather/Stocks/Echofon and Facebook. Turning Notifications centre off completely has only saved maybe 1% but it's not really worth it to lose notifications from those things.
I'd love to have E-Mail notifications on but it does seem to be a bit of an issue within 5.0/1 so I keep them off and just check manually. It's quite frustrating having to turn things off that I had on all the time under iOS4 just to maintain an even lower battery performance
I wasn't asking suggesting you should turn them off. I was asking because unlike 5.0, the ioS4 versions do not have notification center and "widgets". I did some tests on iOS 4 vs 5.0.1 related to the notifications and widgets. I first normalized the difference in drain without any settings, on wifi. iOS4 showed about a 4-5% better battery performance. Once I had that marker, i turned on my usual settings. It appears, with my medium notification usage (everything including email) and widgets on, there is about a 3% additional battery drain on avg. This is on vibrate. In all of this, i think the biggest drain is the screen coming on with lock screen. When i turned off lock screen on all notifications, there was really not a difference, maybe 1%.
Honestly usage depends a lot on how you use it, your brightness, notifications etc. When I browse over Wifi on the 4S, I lose about 10% every hour, so 1/3rd less than you, which is about what the iPhone 4 got on iOS4.
I think some of you are being a little too anal about this.
Turn off the battery percentage, and enjoy the phone. If you absolutely need to be on the phone for 8 hrs a day, get a battery extension. I'm in medicine and actually am one of those people who use my phone over the internet all day, and I still don't log more than 5-6 hrs of actual usage over a very long day. I can't imagine some office worker with a computer right on his desk using more hours, unless they're on Pandora all day, and in that case, plug it in.
Get to work! y'all playing too much.
Last edited:
I'm not finding turning the lock screen on/off having any power issues. The noticeable power drains personally have been from restarted my iPhone (dropped 2% rebooting) and any time I actually use the phone, for example sending 2/3 iMessages caused a 1% drop in the space of 60seconds and then dropped another 1% during a 1minute phone call. Put my phone back down for 30mins and dropped 1%
hmmmmm..Seems to work quite well. Haven't thoroughly tested it, but in standby mode (guaranteed to always drop 2% overnight) there was no drop.
Am I the only one not buying this "battery-gate" stuff?
The phone does more now than it did before... It has power-hungry internals and does a lot more with GPS and system processes.
At least it's not on LTE, right?
The phone does more now than it did before... It has power-hungry internals and does a lot more with GPS and system processes.
At least it's not on LTE, right?
just installed it on the iPhone 4S even if i don't have absolutely a battery draining.
I see that time' zone localization icon is still always turned on.
Does it have to be on or the bug is here like was on iOs5.0?
i cannot remember if also on iphone4 it was happening it because i have never seen the system localization.
I see that time' zone localization icon is still always turned on.
Does it have to be on or the bug is here like was on iOs5.0?
i cannot remember if also on iphone4 it was happening it because i have never seen the system localization.
Honestly usage depends a lot on how you use it, your brightness, notifications etc. When I browse over Wifi on the 4S, I lose about 10% every hour, so 1/3rd less than you, which is about what the iPhone 4 got on iOS4.
I think some of you are being a little too anal about this.
Turn off the battery percentage, and enjoy the phone. If you absolutely need to be on the phone for 8 hrs a day, get a battery extension. I'm in medicine and actually am one of those people who use my phone over the internet all day, and I still don't log more than 5-6 hrs of actual usage over a very long day. I can't imagine some office worker with a computer right on his desk using more hours, unless they're on Pandora all day, and in that case, plug it in.
Get to work! y'all playing too much.
Amen brother.
Am I the only one not buying this "battery-gate" stuff?
The phone does more now than it did before... It has power-hungry internals and does a lot more with GPS and system processes.
At least it's not on LTE, right?
But when my iPhone 4 with iOS 5 uses 1% in 10 hours standby while on my iPhone 4S uses 15% in 10 hours standby with the same settings then it tells me something is wrong with the iPhone 4S battery......
This is the result 5.0.1 had while I was just flicking through my menu's and wrote a quick tweet and got 1 email notification (just the alert, didn't actually read the email yet). I've also noticed it's not taking longer to charge than to use up power. I could drop 2% to 98% in 15mins but it would take 25-30mins to get back upto 100% while charging and not using the phone
Attachments
Last edited:
There is no neccesary corralation between battery usage and the physical battery in this case. There are hundreds of other reasons that could result in the battery being drained faster thus meaning the physical battery is just as good as in the 4 (or maybe even better) but the effectiveness of its use is worse.
For instance a feature like mail notification can have a bug for certain users that makes it constantly check and drain battery superfast. Or as someone else suggested that the memoryspace not in use on the 4S is not marked as free and constantly accessed by the phone thus draining the battery.
The wide variety in degree and suggested fixes that work for different people suggest to me not a hardware problem but a software one, but that is just a guestimate. I think Apple have hurried the software alittle and not done proper testing in multiple locations thus not been able to discover strange bugs like these that drain battery.
Agreed.
Most of the evidence point to iOS 5 being buggy. Not just the battery situation but a lot of other glitches such as some people having continuous phone reboots due to kernel panics, etc. I really hope Apple doesn't take a full 3 weeks to fix the issue but I guess I would rather have them take 3 weeks for a sure fix rather than get us a half-ass fix in a couple days.
Most of the phones are still fully functional; we are just putting maybe double the load cycles on the battery during the next couple of weeks which is not really significant in the life of the phone.
Honestly usage depends a lot on how you use it, your brightness, notifications etc. When I browse over Wifi on the 4S, I lose about 10% every hour, so 1/3rd less than you, which is about what the iPhone 4 got on iOS4.
I think some of you are being a little too anal about this.
Turn off the battery percentage, and enjoy the phone. If you absolutely need to be on the phone for 8 hrs a day, get a battery extension. I'm in medicine and actually am one of those people who use my phone over the internet all day, and I still don't log more than 5-6 hrs of actual usage over a very long day. I can't imagine some office worker with a computer right on his desk using more hours, unless they're on Pandora all day, and in that case, plug it in.
Get to work! y'all playing too much.
Thanks Dad!
Am I the only one not buying this "battery-gate" stuff?
The phone does more now than it did before... It has power-hungry internals and does a lot more with GPS and system processes.
At least it's not on LTE, right?
This guy understands. With all this new stuff that came with iOS 5 it's more taxing on the battery than before.