Battery Life Worse on iOS 5.1

[Leonard1818]

Terrible battery life now days after the update and many complete drains and recharges. Absolutely didn't have this problem before the update.

"Restart the device!" "Reset and restore!" ...sounds like exactly the kind of balderdash the Apple crowd used to make fun of others for!

balderdash? I love that game!

Restore to a backup from before you updated your phone. Then try the update again. or, sell it on craigslist/ebay and get an android.

 

[mzd]

if your usage and standby are the same, something isn't right.

I have this problem too. I updated to 5.1 on release and didn't notice any issues. but yesterday I noticed my usage and standby were exactly the same (something around 22 hours!?). last night when I went to bed, my phone was somewhere above 20% (not sure exactly, but the 20% warning hadn't come up yet). this morning it was dead when I woke up.
so I'm charging now and we'll see what this next cycle looks like. hopefully it fixes itself. it is an iPhone 4 and I've never had a battery problem before...

 

[Leonard1818]

I have this problem too. I updated to 5.1 on release and didn't notice any issues. but yesterday I noticed my usage and standby were exactly the same (something around 22 hours!?). last night when I went to bed, my phone was somewhere above 20% (not sure exactly, but the 20% warning hadn't come up yet). this morning it was dead when I woke up.
so I'm charging now and we'll see what this next cycle looks like. hopefully it fixes itself. it is an iPhone 4 and I've never had a battery problem before...

chances are you have a rogue app, email account, or contact that won't sync and it keeps trying and trying and trying. I've also noticed that if you try to send a pic via email or txt and your signal is too low or it's taking forever to go thru, there's no way to cancel...

If it continues, I'd recommend deleting the apps one-by-one until you find the culprit and do the same with your email accounts. The contacts would be more difficult but if it's not apps or email accounts, maybe it IS a contact.

 

[mlmwalt]

My battery life is way down too. Before bed I close all apps, shut off my wifi and location services, and I still lose 15% or more. I use my phone as my alarm clock, and it's frustrating if I forget to do those things, as it usually kills my phone if it's below 30%.

 

[BigBurd]

Mine Battery Life Is Significantly Worse!

This is ridiculous, iOS5.1 hasn't even been out for 24 hours yet and people are already claiming its worsening battery life. Making subjective judgements over such a short period of time are almost certainly going to be wrong. Test it for at least a week then see if its really had an impact on battery life, I'd be willing to bet that it hasn't.

It's true. The life of the battery on my iPhone 4S is being sucked right out ..... at an alarming rate. Before I updated to 5.0 it did the same thing. With 5.0 is was good. Now, it sucks!

 

[3460169]

Just curious -- did you guys with poor battery do an upgrade from 5.0.1? And do you see loads of diagnostic log messages in Settings/General/About/Diagnostics & Usage/Diagnostics & Usage Data? And if so, do they pertain to awdd?

I had a similar issue & just want to share my experience. I had actually done a clean install of iOS 5.1 (in DFU mode actually) and then a restore of my 5.0.1 backup which lead to the excessive diagnostics & perceived crappy battery life.

As the one reply in that thread suggested, I did a clean install of 5.1 and did not restore from backup -- I instead set up the phone as new. With various utilities -- namely PhoneView and iPhone Backup Extractor -- I selectively restored various app data as needed, which admittedly is a little bit of work and requires a bit of tech know-how. (I really wish iTunes allowed selective restoring of app data rather than its current all-or-nothing approach.)

Anyway, FWIW, I have two push email accounts, lots of push-enabled apps, all location services enabled (except for location-based iAds and Find My iPhone), and I think my battery life is pretty acceptable -- nearly 13 hours of standby and 10% down opposed to 40% dead in 6 hours. Yeah, I think that's better.

 

[k3roro]

Something I noticed.

Before iOS 5.1, when you check the weather via the notification centre, it doesn't open the weather app (it opens but doesn't show up on your mult-tasking pane). But now, if you do, a weather app will stay open in the mult-tasking pane and continue to check weather (I noticed the GPS signal) in the background, so what I've been doing is checking the running apps list via multi-tasking menu every once in a while to ensure that all unnecessary apps are closed.

 

[supenakrisnadi]

I experienced two scenarios with the 5.1. As for iPad 2, I definitely experienced significant improved battery life. In average, I guess it increase my usage time about 2-3 hours more.

For the 4S, it seems that upgrading is not giving constant performance. In most cases I experienced it was increased about 110-115%, but in one of the day, the performance was dropped until about 40%.

Hadn't try the hard reset yet. Will do next time when the indicator up to 100%.

PS: I always charge all my Apple devices when go to bed and leave it overnight. My iPod Touch 1 still perform superb battery performance. I was told once that charging methods develop by Apple is clever enough to maintain the current flow of electricity. It will pull the electricity, not being pushed by the adaptor. So the current will drop to 1-2% when the battery is full, just to keep maintain the 100% level of the capacity. This prevents the battery to being overcharged. Is someone can confirm about this?

 

[mlmwalt]

PS: I always charge all my Apple devices when go to bed and leave it overnight. My iPod Touch 1 still perform superb battery performance. I was told once that charging methods develop by Apple is clever enough to maintain the current flow of electricity. It will pull the electricity, not being pushed by the adaptor. So the current will drop to 1-2% when the battery is full, just to keep maintain the 100% level of the capacity. This prevents the battery to being overcharged. Is someone can confirm about this?

Never heard of this, but if it's true it's awesome. I'll ask at the genius bar when I purchase my iPad.

EDIT: Never mind, check this link http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1384

"The battery stops charging when it's full, so you don't have to worry if you leave it plugged in overnight (leaving your iPod connected to an electrical source all the time doesn't continuously charge it). Once the battery is charged, disconnect your iPod. If you're using your computer to charge iPod, make sure that you disconnect your iPod correctly when it's finished charging."

 

[supenakrisnadi]

@mlmwalt: wow, thank you for the link. So the info is true...

Can't wait to see the wireless charging system apple would develop in the near future...

Btw, just update the info, my 4S reach 100% at 2:00am today... I unplug it and leave it standby till 7:00am, use it quite intensive during the day and the battery dies completely at 4:00pm. Total only for 14 hours from 100%...
- about 5 hours standby
- about 5 hours intensive used
- about 4 hours moderate used
Connected to 3G, wifi always on even not connected to any AP to improve the location based for map and directions. 20-60 min used for voice n sms, around 45 min for the iMessage, YM apps and Whatsapp always on, moderate usage.

Damn, this is the worst case ever. The phone was not even survived during the daily task... It is still not showing the usage and standby time after the hard reset now.

Need to charge untill 100% again, and see if the battery improved tmw...

 

[BigBurd]

Great advice!

chances are you have a rogue app, email account, or contact that won't sync and it keeps trying and trying and trying. I've also noticed that if you try to send a pic via email or txt and your signal is too low or it's taking forever to go thru, there's no way to cancel...

If it continues, I'd recommend deleting the apps one-by-one until you find the culprit and do the same with your email accounts. The contacts would be more difficult but if it's not apps or email accounts, maybe it IS a contact.

This was great advice, as I noticed I had a continuous "sending 1 of 1 message" at the bottom of my email page (on the iPhone 4S).

The problem I had was that I could not delete a message that was stuck in my outbox. I finally discovered that, in order to delete the stuck outbox email, while in the outbox, I had to put 1 thumb on the message (highlighting and holding the thumb on the message), and hold the other thumb on the "home" button. After a second a red "delete" box appeared on the screen. I pressed the "delete" button, followed the directions, and the stuck email disappeared!

My iPhone was on for 4 hours prior to deleting that email. During those 4 hours my phone drained from 100% to 49% battery life. In the 3 hours since deleting the stuck email, my battery life has drained from 49% to 41%! Nice change, but I'll keep a good eye on it tomorrow.

Thanks for the advice!

 

[Leonard1818]

This was great advice, as I noticed I had a continuous "sending 1 of 1 message" at the bottom of my email page (on the iPhone 4S).

The problem I had was that I could not delete a message that was stuck in my outbox. I finally discovered that, in order to delete the stuck outbox email, while in the outbox, I had to put 1 thumb on the message (highlighting and holding the thumb on the message), and hold the other thumb on the "home" button. After a second a red "delete" box appeared on the screen. I pressed the "delete" button, followed the directions, and the stuck email disappeared!

My iPhone was on for 4 hours prior to deleting that email. During those 4 hours my phone drained from 100% to 49% battery life. In the 3 hours since deleting the stuck email, my battery life has drained from 49% to 41%! Nice change, but I'll keep a good eye on it tomorrow.

Thanks for the advice!

Woah! Excellent find on the deleting thing... I'll have to try that next time I have one stuck. I'm glad you were able to find what was *hopefully* causing the excessive drain. Keep us posted if it doesn't correct your issue.

I'm actually really surprised that apple doesn't make it easier to cancel a message in progress. Mine will usually timeout after a while but I've seen them kill over 10% battery before doing so and the timeout doesn't seem to have any set "time" lol.... it just stops whenever.

 

[cynics]

I experienced two scenarios with the 5.1. As for iPad 2, I definitely experienced significant improved battery life. In average, I guess it increase my usage time about 2-3 hours more.

For the 4S, it seems that upgrading is not giving constant performance. In most cases I experienced it was increased about 110-115%, but in one of the day, the performance was dropped until about 40%.

Hadn't try the hard reset yet. Will do next time when the indicator up to 100%.

PS: I always charge all my Apple devices when go to bed and leave it overnight. My iPod Touch 1 still perform superb battery performance. I was told once that charging methods develop by Apple is clever enough to maintain the current flow of electricity. It will pull the electricity, not being pushed by the adaptor. So the current will drop to 1-2% when the battery is full, just to keep maintain the 100% level of the capacity. This prevents the battery to being overcharged. Is someone can confirm about this?

That 1 - 2% would be referred to as a trickle charge. Lead acid battery use things like that, tech is probably older then apple itself.

With li ion battery it's very important you do not over charge it. It will charge fully then completely stop as if it's not plugged in at all. When battery voltage drops passed a certain threshold it will charge again. That's why sometimes you will see the charging lightning bolt actually come back on at 100%. Or that random time you unplug and the battery its at 99%.

Over charging li-ion battery will cause metallic lithium to plate the anode and the cathode will become and oxidizing agent and produce co2. This is when you see a battery swell like its going to explode.

You don't want to let the battery discharge too much either. When voltage gets too low the phone device or whatever will shut off. But if you let the battery sit too long and naturally discharge it can become damaged permanently. I think we've all pull some antique electronic out of the closet and charged to find out it can't hold a charge worth a crap. *Also when you see pics of swollen iPhones on here the thread usually starts with "So I pulled my old 3G off the shelf and tried to charge it."

Interestingly enough initially a battery is shipped a standby mode and if you charge or discharge it it will wake up. That's why all cell phones are precharged to about 40% and stay there until purchased.

Don't know why I went on that battery rant. Just something I find mildly interesting...

 

[supenakrisnadi]

@cynics: Woooah, very interesting insight... Thanks for sharing it.
Yes, I remember my sister reminded me to try keeping electronics on standby mode instead of kill the electricity at all... Maybe this is because the same cause? Some capacitor will die?

This was great advice, as I noticed I had a continuous "sending 1 of 1 message" at the bottom of my email page (on the iPhone 4S).

The problem I had was that I could not delete a message that was stuck in my outbox. I finally discovered that, in order to delete the stuck outbox email, while in the outbox, I had to put 1 thumb on the message (highlighting and holding the thumb on the message), and hold the other thumb on the "home" button. After a second a red "delete" box appeared on the screen. I pressed the "delete" button, followed the directions, and the stuck email disappeared!

My iPhone was on for 4 hours prior to deleting that email. During those 4 hours my phone drained from 100% to 49% battery life. In the 3 hours since deleting the stuck email, my battery life has drained from 49% to 41%! Nice change, but I'll keep a good eye on it tomorrow.

Thanks for the advice!

@BigBurd: I was also happened to have that stucked email due to bad coverage. In my case, I was turn on the Airmode to completely kill the connection. In that state, I was able to delete the stucked mail in the outbox. Just touching it then showed the red caution mark, and then you will have an option to delete it.

Well, thanks for sharing. Now I know there's another way to do it without kill the connection completely...

 

[BigBurd]

Battery Drainage Is Very Good Now!

@cynics: Woooah, very interesting insight... Thanks for sharing it.
Yes, I remember my sister reminded me to try keeping electronics on standby mode instead of kill the electricity at all... Maybe this is because the same cause? Some capacitor will die?




@BigBurd: I was also happened to have that stucked email due to bad coverage. In my case, I was turn on the Airmode to completely kill the connection. In that state, I was able to delete the stucked mail in the outbox. Just touching it then showed the red caution mark, and then you will have an option to delete it.

Well, thanks for sharing. Now I know there's another way to do it without kill the connection completely...

It's been quite a few days since I deleted the stuck email. Since then, the battery drainage has slowed, dramatically. The drainage level is quite good now.

 

[iceterminal]

I have the 4, and I have also noticed a dramatic change in battery usage since upgrading from iOS 5 to iOS 5.1. I have stopped all background apps, etc. Everything is basically the same as with 5.0, and I notice that throughout the day I have less than normal.
I don't have any specific numbers, mostly because I know battery percentage on the iPhone is far from exact. Just normal comparison on my daily usage.

However, knowing this I do plan to do a restore as new and then test it out. See how things go this weekend.
Will update.

 

[EngageWithRage]

The battery display meter needs to recalibrate. That will only happen after a few charge/discharge cycles. The display is whacked - the battery itself is fine. Give it some time.

I agree, I notice my batter looks like it is dropping then I respring and the battery percentage goes up.Ima need to let it die and then fully charge a few times to fix this. Although I am not on 5.1 yet..