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

I fell for the marketing, broke down and finally bought the JesusPad (iOS5 was major part of it frankly). I am finding it is not all that much better than my old sometimes hanging Galaxy Tab.

I am having crashes 3-5 times a day - get dropped suddenly to lock screen for no reason. The notification bar, as weird as it looks on a bigger screen - it flickers horribly. Skype and VTok get killed at whim and I miss calls many times. It goes low on memory so many times - it's not even funny.

Damn iMarketers - hopefully we get 5.1 soon and these issues are gone.
 
This fixed me

This workaround fixed my battery problem. iCloud was continually trying to resync something, grinding it's little heart out until the battery pooped.

Go to Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars, Fetch New Data > Advanced. Change iCloud from Push to Fetch. Back in the Fetch New Data screen, you might want to set Fetch to every 15 minutes.

Now instead of continuously fiddling with iCloud, it just goes in every 15 minutes and the battery is fine. But, you lose instant push.

Apple needs to fix the basic problem in a software update, of course.
 
Love the phone, not the battery life...

I'm one of the happy users who IS having trouble with the battery. I'm really good about shutting screen down, rarely talking on phone, no video feeds or unusual activity of any kind (GPS, etc), and my battery life is AWFUL. I've checked all my settings and am still having to recharge at least once a day (sometimes twice).

Mind you, I'm still very, very happy with the phone and consider this a modest tradeoff, but would admit that it really doesn't make sense, especially when I don't consider myself a "power-user." I can only imagine what it's like for those who really push the phone to its limits.

Just sayin.
 
parapup said:
I am having crashes 3-5 times a day - get dropped suddenly to lock screen for no reason. The notification bar, as weird as it looks on a bigger screen - it flickers horribly. Skype and VTok get killed at whim and I miss calls many times. It goes low on memory so many times - it's not even funny.
Click to expand...
Mine's been rock-solid. iOS has never crashed on me, the battery lasts for hours and hours (I think I've only had the battery run low once), and, while apps do sometimes (rarely) crash, that's typically the fault of the app and not the iPad/iOS. You can often see how crashy an app is by looking at the app's reviews.
 
Restore

My iPhone 4 drained the battery in one day without much use. After lots of forum reading I tried to restore as NEW iPhone. That worked for me. Have been using my phone the whole day and battery is now still 66%. Yesterday it was under 30% with very little use.

I installed ios5 with last backup copy the first time.

Dont know IF this is the issue with a brand new 4s though....
 
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And you wonder why there is no 4g LTE.....
 
odedia said:
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.
Click to expand...

That was my issue also. I have 3 email accounts set up on my 3GS with iOS 5 . I turned off Push and set it to fetch new data hourly. Big difference.
 
Ugh

Yeh I never had to plug my iPhone 4 in at work and I would check it periodically and use it for my hour lunch break. Now with my iPhone 4S, after that hour long lunch break my battery is substantially less then what it use to be. I am past that hump when you use your brand new phone every second you can yet I still notice that I can not go a full day without having to at some point recharge it during the day to keep the battery from running out. I have been through all the settings to look for things that would help drain the battery that much but I can not find anything. If Apple wanted to add that software to my phone I would gladly let them do it, if it helped fix this problem.
 
While there is a battery issue that affects some (significant number of?) users, I'd like to point out that ALL iPhones, fresh-from-the-factory, will exhibit wonky battery behavior at first. That's because the battery meter is UNCALIBRATED AND NEEDS TO BE CALIBRATED. Until the meter is calibrated, the battery is going to look weird/broken.
 
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And a bigger screen....
 
I had a hell of a time with battery drain when I first received my current phone. Then I bought a more powerful battery and it worked great after that. All of $10 on Amazon. I can't seem to find one for the iPhone though.
 
Was at 100% this morning at 6:30 when I unplugged it. Now it's 4pm, I have taken one phone call, played one video, mild Facebook surfing, checked email and written one as well. Otherwise on standby. Battery is at 86%.

Really, the only things I turned off were location services for anything that doesn't need them, like CBC radio or Siri (as in Canada, she can't tell me anything about anything anyway) and turned off Bluetooth. Also don't send info to Apple.

I guess I'm okay.
 
For those having this issue on the 4, download the free System Status lite. Look at the cpu usage...when"normal, it should be under 15% or so. if it jumps to the 80% plus when doing nothing, try these:

1. settings--> airplane mode ON
2. settings-->general-->network and turn OFF 3G and cellular data

go back to the System Status app..when you first do, it jumps to 100%, then back down..if it goes to the lower range, undo the above then check to see if the cpu usage is still down. This works for me and I have to do this a few times a day...please report back.
 
I'd also like to mention that I have push enabled for all of my email accounts on my 3GS, and my battery life actually seems to have increased with iOS5.

(Well, at the end of the day, the battery meter is reading 10-20% above what it used to read, pre-iOS5. I haven't checked to see if the battery actually lasts longer.)
 
Finally found the solution - Incredible battery life now!

Press and hold the sleep button and then swipe across the top of the screen when prompted.
 
TLewis said:
I'd also like to mention that I have push enabled for all of my email accounts on my 3GS, and my battery life actually seems to have increased with iOS5.

(Well, at the end of the day, the battery meter is reading 10-20% above what it used to read, pre-iOS5. I haven't checked to see if the battery actually lasts longer.)
Click to expand...

Same for me. I also have a 3GS and have found the battery life to be more efficient after upgrading to iOS5.
 
I stopped PUSH email and that helped a lot!

I'm glad they are acknowledging this! Turning off features was making me think I had a Motorola Razr.
 
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...

14 hours sounds pretty poor without some VOIP, gaming or video usage.
 
Benjy91 said:
Just let me turn off my damn 3G! It destroys my battery life.
Click to expand...

Ditto. I work in a 100 year-old cement/metal fortress of a building, and I lose signal a lot. I'd keep my 3GS on EDGE all the time. The only downside of EDGE was the horrible sound speakers would make.

With my 4S, I'm stuck with no bars. I can put the device in Air Plane mode and then toggle WiFi on, but then I have to remember to change it back again when I leave the "bad" area.


nick_elt said:
And a bigger screen....
Click to expand...

A bigger screen would also allow for a bigger battery.
 
apple support helped me sort my battery drain issue!

Under setting/general/about/diagnostics & usage/ (select, don't send)

I had very poor battery life as the damn phone was sending diagnostic reports to apple every 10 seconds, the phone also started to get hot some times!

Now I have turned this off, all is good and its as good as my old iphone 4.

Poor mistake by apple, I expect better!
 
Last edited:
I did notice poor performance at first, but I've been able to comfortably go a full two days on 1 charge now. I manually fetch emails, close apps when done using them, turn off 3G/Cell data when not using phone for long periods of time (during work/sleep), locking phone when not using it and letting the battery FULLY drain before charging it back up to 100% again. You need to use the phone throughout the day to keep the electrons a flow'n. Don't be afraid to use it. With this phone, the goal is to use the battery up. thats why its there. It seems to be working great after a few full power cycles. I hope this helps.
 
I went in a couple of times and got my phone "replaced for comfort" last weekend. I've seen an improvement in battery life from the replacement. Not as good as an iPhone 4 obviously, but it is much better than the original phone I received.
 
This worked for me - turn off Calendar in the Notification Center

I had this on my 4S - 10% battery drain per hour whilst on standby.

I started off by doing a straight restore from my 3GS backup. Once I'd encountered the issue I rebuilt the phone from factory settings (note that iTunes auto syncs accounts back onto the "new" phone) but the issue persisted. Aside from the battery drain, the phone felt warm, even when left for a period of time on standby.

I noticed that there was a display bug in the notification center where calendar notifications were flickering. I have both a corporate Exchange account and my iCloud account - the (flickering) calendar notifications were associated with the former.

Thinking that this might be linked to the battery drain issue I turned off "Calendar" in the Notification Center (Settings>Notifications>Calendar>[Notification Center = Off]), after which the standby battery life appears to be back to what I'd expect.

YMMV.
 
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Yeh but if it had a bigger screen surely the phone will be thinner and overall surely the phone wouldnt be much bigger overall as it wouldnt be apple otherwise
 
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