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

As a company, you shouldn't expect people to turn off services etc..

People saying "no problem, you should just turn off your services, etc etc.." kinda remind me of the time my sister went into radio shack to return her EVO and the manager told her "just buy extra batteries and carry them".. "make sure you get the "app killer" or all these hoops for the EVO.

I know more than likely a lot of you guys are technically savvy, but as big as a company apple is, they shouldn't depend on people trouble shooting their devices to optimize battery performance. I think this is why so many people like their devices to begin with.
 
My guess that the culprit will be found with wifi doing some jazz - trying to reconnect over and over again when nobody is watching.

I'm not being silly, I'm just guessing and using intuition.

Or something to do with too many logins to iCloud.

Apple will fix it (if there really is an issue at all) in an update. I'm sure they got rushed to get to release version. Anyway, it's a small issue if it's an issue at all.

I have 2 iPhone 4s's and 2 iPhone 4's. I don't see the difference just yet, but we are doing heavy FaceTime and I would almost say that "Yeah FaceTime eats up battery like crazy!". In fact I would say that. FaceTime eats batteries up.
 
When I got mine, I restored it as a copy of my 3rd-gen touch, whose profile originated on a 1st-gen touch. Haven't had any issues personally, and I think I have almost all the iCloud/notifications/sync stuff still turned on.
 
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...

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.
 
I had major drain due to iMessage. 10% per hour kind of drain on standby.

I was able to resolve it by killing Messages app when I was done with it. Problem solved. :)
 
My iPhone 4S was fine except for one day when I was in a building and had trouble getting to the AT&T network. The battery drained very rapidly during that time. Maybe internally, it is the iOS equivalent of the Abort, Retry, Fail of the DOS world that just keeps looping and killing the battery.
 
I also have very poor battery life. I specially notice it when at home where I have wifi enabled on the phone.

-Mike
 
Settings > iCloud > Documents & Data > Use Cellular = OFF

"10% battery burned per hour" problem solved
 
alphaod said:
I'm not sure what constitute bad battery life because I can go about 14 hours on one charge, but I have push enabled, along with locations services, etc.

14 hours isn't terrific, but it's fine.
Click to expand...

Anything significantly less than what's advertised. My 4S craps out in less than two days in almost pure standby mode while my IP4 chugged along for 9 days, in similar very light usage scenarios.
 
3G anyone?

I feel astounded that none of you, apparently, were upgrading from the *thick sarcasm* awesome 3G.

A few months back I made my big trip to NYC. Made the mistake of having headphones on listening to music for 2-3 hours and having to check Google maps during the day a few times (sessions lasting no more than 5 mins)... by time nightfall and I couldn't find the subway entry... my battery was like 2% and I was life and death trying to power it back on and hunt quickly enough through the map to find the way home.

Things had about 12 hours idle battery life. I never make phone calls, really, at all, and it was always dead by the end of the day. (No games either, just a bit of email checking here and there)

Be thankful for your 4S.
 
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'm having the same issue... even though I had no trouble using the betas... It's the final version that's killing me. I have a friend that is experiencing the same behavior.
 
Wi-fi

Not to mention my Wi-Fi sucks now that I have the 4S. I have to manually connect to my home wireless router half the time and even then it will say can't connect 5 times before I finally get it working.
 
Genner21 said:
People saying "no problem, you should just turn off your services, etc etc.." kinda remind me of the time my sister went into radio shack to return her EVO and the manager told her "just buy extra batteries and carry them".. "make sure you get the "app killer" or all these hoops for the EVO.

I know more than likely a lot of you guys are technically savvy, but as big as a company apple is, they shouldn't depend on people trouble shooting their devices to optimize battery performance. I think this is why so many people like their devices to begin with.
Click to expand...
Yeah. This is a bug, though, and that's not what Apple expects people to do, so the choice for now is pretty simple. If a person is encountering the problem they either 1) figure out how to fix it, as some have done through different approaches, or 2) disable whatever service resolves it and wait for Apple to release the fix. Micromanaging battery life isn't going to be useful for this, though. If someone's encountering the bug it sounds like its battery consumption takes center stage.

iphone X said:
agreed it has to be a bug in ios5
Click to expand...
Something associated with iCloud syncing/interaction it seems.
 
Fits me to a T

My iPhone 4S also drains very rapidly with no services running. I would very much like to get to the bottom of it, and would be happy to assist Apple.
 
Having gone from a 3G (no S) on its original battery running the last version of iOS4 supported, to the 4S I am quite surprised how much lower my battery is compared at the end of the day.

I'm consistently 20-30% lower at the end of the day than I was with my 3G. I still get a whole day and either way fully charge at the end while sleeping.
 
My guess is it's a combination of factors, since people have complained that iOS 5 caused a battery drain on iPhone 4 and 3GS phones, as well. I can't complain about my iPhone 4S. It drains about the same, perhaps slightly slower, than my Nexus One in standby. There was one night when it lost about 50%, but that could have been a backup operation that started when I plugged it in. It happened only once, and usually it has lost less than 10% overnight. I leave Wi-Fi connected so this doesn't seem unusual to me.
 
Feel bad for those people because my iphone 4 was having terrible battery drain as well and everything was turned off. The solution most people suggested was a clean restore which I never had time to get around to. So I just kept it plugged in a lot.

After the update to ios5 and the required clean restore, problem gone.

Somewhere Apple's made a mistake that keeps coming back and biting people in the rear.

My dad is having me buy an iphone 4S and giving him my 4. I said no if you are paying the full price of the 4S you should get a new phone I'll wait for the 5 or get an android. His rational was "your phone worked here in Hong Kong" and I want an iphone that I know for sure works. Wonders if I should be "nice" and do what he suggested with the phone swap..... cause he's pretty tech unsavvy any issues would just turn him off using the device at all. Which is why he wants to get an iphone cause his N8 has had issues with updates.
 
iPhone 4 with iOS 5

I've had stellar battery life since upgrading. 16 hours standby and 5 hours usage and still have 25-30% left
 
alphaod said:
I'm not sure what constitute bad battery life because I can go about 14 hours on one charge, but I have push enabled, along with locations services, etc.

14 hours isn't terrific, but it's fine.
Click to expand...

I've had bad battery drain ever since getting my iPhone 4S. So what is bad? I've had every iPhone from the first one on. I could use the Hipstamatic camera app all day on a fully charged iPhone and by the end of the day my battery percentage would only be down to 75%. Now with the iPhone 4S, after only 2 hours of usage, my battery is down to 17 - 25%. That's not right.

bermaster said:
Settings > iCloud > Documents & Data > Use Cellular = OFF

"10% battery burned per hour" problem solved
Click to expand...

Didn't change anything for me; still draining battery.

One issue that I am having that may be affecting the battery, I have lost all of my bookmarks on my iPhone (and my iPad 2.) They use to be synced through MobileMe from my Macbook Pro, but now, even though I have the option chosen in iCloud, no bookmarks are showing up on my iPhone 4S or my iPad 2, yet when I try to edit my bookmarks, a message says that my "bookmarks are currently syncing" and to wait until it finishes... it's been saying that for a week now! And nothing new is actually syncing to my iDevices. So there is definitely a bug somewhere in this (either iOS 5, iCloud or both?)
 
I haven't really noticed that much of a difference between my 4S and my 4. It get's me through my day, which is all I ask. Normally, from 7AM to about 8 or 9PM. It's all good here...

Also, I do want to know who this "user" is and the related thread, if any, is on the forums. anyone? I'd like to get more info on his experience...
 
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