Bad iPhone 4S battery life?

[linkandzelda]

I installed 6 pages of apps, by the time the first page installed it had dropped to 34%. I needed to sleep so put it to charge.

 

[Captainobvvious]

Mine is terrible.

The standby time is great, it went from 100% to 98% overnight (about 9 hours)... However this morning I used it for MAYBE 15 minutes (and that is a stretch) and its at 93%.

I browsed a few web pages, sent one voice text and that's it. It dropped 5% in 15 minutes of use.

Maybe that isn't bad in the grand scheme of things but it seems like its draining fast.

 

[Bill C.]

Very Disappointed

I've had similar problems with the battery not holding a charge. Got my phone on Friday and had it sync'd up and running. Friday night when I went to bed, I had 78% on the battery. Got up at 6:30 Saturday morning and the phone was dead. Coincidentally, I was at the Apple store Sunday morning to pick up a new Nano and said something to the guy in the store about the battery and got the usual - is the Bluetooth on? is Wi-Fi on? - Was the screen turned off?

Well of course both the Bluetooth and Wi-Fi was on. What good is the phone if I keep having to turn them on and off every single time I need them? And no, my screen turns off after 5 min so the screen wasn't sucking the life out of the battery. And no, all the apps were turned off and NOTHING was running in the background.

This morning when I woke up, the phone was plugged in all night and was 100%. I swear, not 15 minutes later, the battery was at 91%. When I got to work, the battery was at 82% and I'm betting it's going to be damn near dead when I get off of work 9 hours later.

What really irritates me is I traded in a 3GS for the 4S and the battery on that phone was awesome - even after over two years of use. I hope Apple fixes this problem and doesn't try to duck it like they did with the crappy antenna on the 4G when it first came out.

 

[KHudsonFilms]

Battery life

Did you guys not realize apple cannot release a single thing without things being wrong with it? the antenna issue with the last one? I had to send my imac back 4 times before I got one that worked..

 

[spazzcat]

Is it possible that 'Siri' takes up a lot of battery life?

I think this maybe part of the issue, I been show off Siri today and my battery is going down way to fast...

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I've had similar problems with the battery not holding a charge. Got my phone on Friday and had it sync'd up and running. Friday night when I went to bed, I had 78% on the battery. Got up at 6:30 Saturday morning and the phone was dead. Coincidentally, I was at the Apple store Sunday morning to pick up a new Nano and said something to the guy in the store about the battery and got the usual - is the Bluetooth on? is Wi-Fi on? - Was the screen turned off?

Well of course both the Bluetooth and Wi-Fi was on. What good is the phone if I keep having to turn them on and off every single time I need them? And no, my screen turns off after 5 min so the screen wasn't sucking the life out of the battery. And no, all the apps were turned off and NOTHING was running in the background.

This morning when I woke up, the phone was plugged in all night and was 100%. I swear, not 15 minutes later, the battery was at 91%. When I got to work, the battery was at 82% and I'm betting it's going to be damn near dead when I get off of work 9 hours later.

What really irritates me is I traded in a 3GS for the 4GS and the battery on that phone was awesome - even after over two years of use. I hope Apple fixes this problem and doesn't try to duck it like they did with the crappy antenna on the 4G when it first came out.

Did you turn your phone off and back on, sounds like something is stuck running?

 

[Bill C.]

I think this maybe part of the issue, I been show off Siri today and my battery is going down way to fast...

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Did you turn your phone off and back on, sounds like something is stuck running?

Yes, I've rebooted the phone at least twice.

This whole "upgrade" is a huge disappointment. I skipped the 4G for the same reason why I don't buy first-year new model cars -- they need time to work the bugs out. So I wait to buy the 4GS and guess what -- there are still bugs!

 

[lsd]

Charging 4S vs. 3GS

I upgraded from my 3GS, and the aftermarket charger that worked fine charging my older iPhone every night, doesn't quite do the job on the 4s. When I wake in the morning, the 4S is only about 97% charged. Found this thread trying to see if anyone else reported similar charging issues (looks like no one else has).

I haven't been paying close enough attention to notice if my 4S is going through the batter much faster, I'll try to keep an eye on it today.

 

[gslrider]

So an update after testing all day yesterday. My 4S after 3 hours of no use, had no battery drain. Started using apps that didn't require a network connection, battery drained about 5% after 45min. That's using processor intensive photo editing apps. But when I use FB or Twitter app, the battery drains about 3% in 10min of constant use. Using SIRI also drains the battery pretty quick as well. So I'm guessing, at least for me, the quick battery drain has to do with network connectivity. With the new dual antenna, the 4S is able to use the 3G network more effectively and closer to it's true speed. This will definitely but a drain on the battery. I can only imagine what it would have been like if the 4S was LTE ready and using the LTE network.

 

[phxoutdoorsman]

I am having terrible battery life as well. EVERYTHING turned off, and I can still watch it loose 1% every 2 minutes with nothing running, not to mention the heat issue. I had mine replaced at the Apple store yesterday, and the new one is still having the exact same issues. I'm thinking about returning it all together and going back to my iPhone 4. I really like the 4S, but I am not in a position to charge during the day. The Apple rep at the store was rather rude, and said that the heat issue is normal, that is until it popped up with a warning that it was too hot and shut down. He was still reluctant to replace it, and did it "as a favor to me" . I've never had such a bad experience with Apple before this damn 4S. Guess I'll be waiting until the next one is out for a while before jumping on board.

 

[linkandzelda]

I am having terrible battery life as well. EVERYTHING turned off, and I can still watch it loose 1% every 2 minutes with nothing running, not to mention the heat issue. I had mine replaced at the Apple store yesterday, and the new one is still having the exact same issues. I'm thinking about returning it all together and going back to my iPhone 4. I really like the 4S, but I am not in a position to charge during the day. The Apple rep at the store was rather rude, and said that the heat issue is normal, that is until it popped up with a warning that it was too hot and shut down. He was still reluctant to replace it, and did it "as a favor to me" . I've never had such a bad experience with Apple before this damn 4S. Guess I'll be waiting until the next one is out for a while before jumping on board.

He was probably sick of exchanging the phones on that day lol.

As an update ive been using mine todayw ith casual use of a few games, browsing, siri and other stuff and the battery is on 31%. Thats since about 7:30 am until 5:15 pm. Thats well.. a sort of almost full work day, in some cases.

 

[linkandzelda]

Well something strange happened, i was thinking about the people here talking about 3G, and talking about how you cant turn it off etc. Then it occured to me that i never tested 3G on my i4s yet. So i turned off Wifi and i got reception, but it didnt work. I got no data message. Turns out I had the wrong settings for my carrier from the get go, and after changing them to the right ones Ive had the phone on standby for the past 30 mins and it didnt drop any %. This is a good imprvoment over my no icloud with no apps installed and stuff one where it dropped 1% over 30 mins with no apps running. Also to mention that I have all my apps installed and even a few games backgrounded.

I wonder if this was a useful post to anyone else, or if im over reacting or if 30 mins isnt a long enough test lol. Who knows...

 

[bdbdbd]

Fixed! I think!

I think I've fixed it on my iPhone 4S.
I had turned off Siri, bluetooth, Notifications, Location and Push Email
Battery life suddenly improved to levels I was used to with my iPhone 4.

I've now turned on bluetooth, Some notifications, most location services (not the time zone one as it seemed to use the GPS all the time).

The main one I've left off is the email push. I've set it to fetch every 15 mins for both the iCloud and google accounts.

I've been using the iPhone to play a podcast, asked Siri a few things and gone into the app store over the last 45 minutes and the percentage hasn't changed at all.

So I've got all the services I need to have and I reckon I can turn on more notifications so I'm happy again.

 

[Bill C.]

I think this maybe part of the issue, I been show off Siri today and my battery is going down way to fast...

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Did you turn your phone off and back on, sounds like something is stuck running?

Well something strange happened, i was thinking about the people here talking about 3G, and talking about how you cant turn it off etc. Then it occured to me that i never tested 3G on my i4s yet. So i turned off Wifi and i got reception, but it didnt work. I got no data message. Turns out I had the wrong settings for my carrier from the get go, and after changing them to the right ones Ive had the phone on standby for the past 30 mins and it didnt drop any %. This is a good imprvoment over my no icloud with no apps installed and stuff one where it dropped 1% over 30 mins with no apps running. Also to mention that I have all my apps installed and even a few games backgrounded.

I wonder if this was a useful post to anyone else, or if im over reacting or if 30 mins isnt a long enough test lol. Who knows...

So what exactly was the "right settings" for your carrier and who is your carrier?

 

[linkandzelda]

So what exactly was the "right settings" for your carrier and who is your carrier?

I just put the pieces together and it all makes sense now. My 3G didnt work at all, so when i went to standby the phone was forced to continue using wifi. And the quoted time for wifi was 9 hours browsing.

Now that I changed the settings i hav sent 2 texts, turned the screen on a few times and its dropped only 2 % since my last post which i think is rather reasonable.

My carrier is o2 and i'm in the UK, not on a iPhone price plan. So the settings were configured to use the iPhone plans settings rather than standard o2 internet ones. TBH if somone was as dopey enough as me to not notice 3G didnt work, i cant see how it can be a solution to them lol!

EDIT: Oh nope... just sent 3 iMessages and 2 texts it dropped 2%

 

[Coronabeer]

I switched from a Droid X to an iPhone4s. It arrived Friday and quickly noticed the poor battery performance. Went from a full charge to 0% in 5 hours. After troubleshooting all weekend i think I finally figured out why it was doing that. If you have corporate e-mail, contacts and calendar this would apply. Make sure you have the following setting for e-mail.

Under Settings, Mail, tech new data. Make sure its set to manually.

Under Settings, Mail, Mail section (scroll down) make sure your default account is a non corporate e-mail, make it a yahoo or hotmail.

I had similar issues with my Droid

 

[DB2k]

Selfishly I'm glad others are experiencing my problem too.

I have a 64gb S on a gsm uk network. It gets noticablywarm even when it's not doing anything. I've rebooted it and it's still happening. Is it features on doing things? Or faulty? I have push mail disabled. Can it be Siri? It shouldn't be doing anything. I'd guess it's either a network connectivity issue with the antenna or the dual core CPU is doing something when it doesn't need to be. Will follow this thread as I'm very concerned.

Dave

 

[Nhwhazup]

So an update after testing all day yesterday. My 4S after 3 hours of no use, had no battery drain. Started using apps that didn't require a network connection, battery drained about 5% after 45min. That's using processor intensive photo editing apps. But when I use FB or Twitter app, the battery drains about 3% in 10min of constant use. Using SIRI also drains the battery pretty quick as well. So I'm guessing, at least for me, the quick battery drain has to do with network connectivity. With the new dual antenna, the 4S is able to use the 3G network more effectively and closer to it's true speed. This will definitely but a drain on the battery. I can only imagine what it would have been like if the 4S was LTE ready and using the LTE network.

Don't Facebook and Twitter have location services that use GPS? If so that definitely is a big drain on the battery. Also reminders that are location based will draw the juice using the GPS.

 

[gslrider]

Don't Facebook and Twitter have location services that use GPS? If so that definitely is a big drain on the battery. Also reminders that are location based will draw the juice using the GPS.

If it does, mine isn't set up for it. I don't use location service for those apps. Usually, when location service is active for an app your currently using, you will see an arrow beside the battery percentage. It doesn't show up for me using FB or Twitter. But you are correct that using location service will drain the battery that much more quickly. I never use Location Service unless I really need to. ie. The app I want to use won't run unless it's location service is turned on for that app.

 

[Nhwhazup]

It's really too bad to have a new phone with all the awesome features that you need to keep turned off in order to have the battery make it through the day.

 

[gslrider]

It's really too bad to have a new phone with all the awesome features that you need to keep turned off in order to have the battery make it through the day.

I use a lot of the new features, and some that I have no need of. I'm just glad that the 4S has a higher capacity battery, otherwise, it would really be crappy. I feel the woes of iPhone 4 and 3GS users who updated to iOS 5. It's all the same issues that 3G and 3GS users had when they updated to iOS 4 last year. Upgrading to the iPhone 4 was the only way for me to solve that issue. This year, because the iP4S already had iOS 5 installed, and a better battery, I'm not really having any issues like last year. I keep saying, I think Apple does it on purpose to make the new iOS to only be compatible with older phones, which means it will work, be not as well as it would with the newer 4S. Just saying.

 

[Nhwhazup]

I use a lot of the new features, and some that I have no need of. I'm just glad that the 4S has a higher capacity battery, otherwise, it would really be crappy. I feel the woes of iPhone 4 and 3GS users who updated to iOS 5. It's all the same issues that 3G and 3GS users had when they updated to iOS 4 last year. Upgrading to the iPhone 4 was the only way for me to solve that issue. This year, because the iP4S already had iOS 5 installed, and a better battery, I'm not really having any issues like last year. I keep saying, I think Apple does it on purpose to make the new iOS to only be compatible with older phones, which means it will work, be not as well as it would with the newer 4S. Just saying.

For me, I upgraded my 3GS to the iOS 5 3 days before I bought the new 4S and I had absolutely no issues with the upgrade on the 3GS or how it ran. Now I only used it for 3 days after the upgrade before getting my new phone but noticed no issues. Now on the 3GS, I didn't have all the new features that go with the new operating system due to the phone itself.

 

[linkandzelda]

Took phone off charge at 7 am, it's now 12:22 pm and ive sent 2 texts, answered a call and recieved about 3 alarms and 10 push notifications. It's at 86%. Thats not entirily impressive but its better. Guess i'll just have to disable some more stuff.

 

[rocknblogger]

I waited a few days before posting so I could check it out better. I charge over night and usually take the phone off the charger about 9:00 in the morning. I have about 40% to 50% of battery by about 11:00 pm.

This is my first iPhone so I can only compare it to my EVO 4G and in that regard this phone blows it away.

My use is moderate to heavy. Taking pictures, shooting a couple short videos, 4 to 5 calls, a number of texts, maybe 45 minutes of gaming, reading RSS feeds, ESPN app, Tapatalk for checking forums and probably a couple other things.

So is what I'm getting good for iPhone? Because if I did all the same things on my EVO I'd have to charge it by at least 5:00. So I'm loving it.

 

[mstrze]

I think the worst thing Apple did was to allow the phone to show the percentage of charge (%) along with the battery symbol. Give folks more stuff to obsess over.

 

[Katalysis]

Do any of you have wifi syncing on? I noticed mine was syncing even though it was not plugged in to power. I turned that off and the battery life improved significantly.