4S Battery Life - is it normal for it to be so short?

[elliebeth21]

Just a quick question - I'm on a brand new Verizon 4S running 6.1 and I'm experiencing battery life that's almost as bad as my old 3GS on AT&T --- basically, after 2 hours of talk time, the battery is dead. I charged it all the way back up again, and same thing. The second time I did a little bit of FaceTime for about 20 minutes, and then just surfed the web occasionally in the day. Not heavy use (actually hardly any use) - but it was still close to dead by the end of the day. Is this par for the course?

 

[Davejprince]

Or your reception is bad, or you are using it wrong ( Location, everything enabled ) because battery life is just capacity / usage.

 

[RotaryP7]

The 4S has a bad battery. Same update, features on/off on my 4S & 5. My i5 now lasts the whole day. I'm on my 2nd day, no charge; 33% left. No lie. And I use my iPhone.

My 4S used to be 10-15% by 8pm every day.

 

[nickchallis92]

I can only comment relatively speaking, but the 2 galaxy S3s in our student house here outlast the 4s considerably

 

[kenetic]

I come to accept the battery issue after 2 months. Get a charger handy incase I need it.

 

[srsub3]

First I'll try to restore... las t time I updated I got that problem... after restoring everything was fine.

 

[ZombiePete]

...or you are using it wrong ( Location, everything enabled ) because battery life is just capacity / usage.

Sad that using the standard/default features of the OS is considered "using it wrong".

 

[Davejprince]

Sad that using the standard/default features of the OS is considered "using it wrong".

The more features which require more battery the faster it drains, same as driving 150MPH with a car compared to 70.

 

[cynics]

CDMA talk time is a battery hog however I talk about 3-4 hours everyday on my Verizon 4S and still get ~7 hours of usage. When I don't talk on the phone I get about 8-9 hours of usage.

 

[chambone]

Yea, and the other thread says the 5 battery is worse than the 4S. Go figure. I don't get these complaints about the 4S battery being bad at all. I get over 7 hours of screen time easily if I were to completely run it down. And that's jailbroken tweaked-out and with everything except bluetooth on, and wifi vs 3G usage about 2:1. The thing is, however simple to use these phones may be, there's still a ton of stuff that can be disabled. Also, the screen backlight is one of the biggest drains as well. My buddy is always complaining about his black iPhone 5's battery, but when I play with the thing my eyes almost start watering because it's set too damn bright. Auto-brightness is your battery's friend.

And my old 3GS manages about 6 hours of actual use on a full charge.

 

[takeshi74]

4S Battery Life - is it normal for it to be so short?

It's not normal for me. My usage (and coverage, etc) probably isn't the same as yours though. I don't talk much on mine for one thing.

 

[impulse462]

In my experience, after I updated to 5.0.1, my 4S battery was awful, and remained awful until I got the 5.

 

[Interstella5555]

Sad that using the standard/default features of the OS is considered "using it wrong".

Sad that people still don't understand how usage effects battery life.

 

[ZombiePete]

Sad that people still don't understand how usage effects battery life.

I've never had problems with my battery life, so say what you will but it's not me bitching and I don't turn off all my services and features.

 

[BenTrovato]

The software is mostly the culprit here. After many tweaks I'm finally able to get my drain rate at about 8%/hour.

 

[iamartimus]

Never had a 4s, but had the 4 and the battery life sucked. I now have the 5 and have had great battery life, until I did the last update.
NOW IT SUCKS AGAIN!!!!!!!! WTF APPLE???!!!!!

 

[EdwardC]

I get 24 to 36 hours out of my 4S, Wi-Fi on, Bluetooth off with a good 4G signal. Minimal voice usage ( 15 minutes a day max ) lots of e-mails and a few texts. Brightness is about 75%.