Batterygate??

[JimKirk]

I too have poor battery life

I am showing 23% now.

Usage 3 hours 23 minutes
7 hours 50 minutes standby.

I know something is jacked. Total time adds up to 11 hours 13 minutes.

I unplugged phone at 8:30am and it is 6:30pm now. That should be 10 hours total.

Some thing is jacked.

64GB 4S. Does anyone think this is normal?

Usage today was mostly 3g browsing.

2 5 min calls some text messages.

 

[Avatar74]

I set up as a brand new phone.. I lose 1% for every minute I have the phone on.. And 1% every 2-3 minutes in standby.. All push and sync options have been turned off...

I would say in your case, and not necessarily all the others mentioned here, you've got a definite issue... but the question is whether it's a hardware or firmware problem... or you've got too many background processes running. But allow me to elaborate, as I had the same issue arise earlier today.

For people saying that they went to bed and eight hours later they were down 30% I wouldn't say that's an issue. This battery IS going to drain faster especially if several apps are "listening" for more input, including location based reminders that may need to be sampling GPS every minute or less...

HOWEVER, what you describe here is the same unusual problem I started experiencing today and the phone set was unusually warm even when idling. I took it to Apple, they did a full factory restore. Problem gone. The first ten minutes prior to the restore I saw battery power drain 10% while idling. The next ten minutes after the full restore, I saw battery power decrease only about 3% and that was during active use with three or four app installs included within that time... and then hardly any drain thereafter with normal continued use and no installs.

What this problem suggests to me is a couple things. The firmware may have become corrupted and not managing the power consumption properly. The CPU may have hung on a process somewhere in the background and simply needed a reset or restore to eradicate the issue... and possibly the software causing the problem.

A third possibility which I am not sure about but definitely noticed a pattern... there may be issues using some poorly designed third party car chargers (ignore if this doesn't apply to you), which don't necessarily short the hardware but possibly a compatibility issue with the physical connection hangs a process somewhere in the firmware's power management.

I can't completely confirm any of these, but given how easily I've seen memory management and CPU management problems arise on a DAILY basis with every single Windows product I've ever owned, I've come to accept the occasional (meaning one out of every twenty or so devices I buy from Apple) battery issue as pretty benign, especially considering how Apple's pretty willing to readily replace rather than service the unit if it's within your warranty (and sometimes even when it's not).

 

[Sedrick]

Oh for the love of... Stop the "gate" stuff... Please, please just stop it. So far after a few days of use I see no difference, at all, between my old 4 and the new 4S.

Well I guess all these folks are making things up since your phone is working ok. Got it.

 

[Marksest]

Quick question, say my iPhone is about to die and i charge it to 20ish percent so it makes it through the day then drain it to 0 and charge all night, will this accurately calibrate the battery? The little charge I gave it shouldn't affect the calibration as long as the battery is completely tapped out then charged to its capacity correct?

 

[Reach9]

Quick question, say my iPhone is about to die and i charge it to 20ish percent so it makes it through the day then drain it to 0 and charge all night, will this accurately calibrate the battery? The little charge I gave it shouldn't affect the calibration as long as the battery is completely tapped out then charged to its capacity correct?

I believe any charge you give has an effect.

But i would also like this clarified, how does one calibrate the batteries? Do i just drain it until the phone shuts off and charge it overnight to 100%?

 

[Avatar74]

Quick question, say my iPhone is about to die and i charge it to 20ish percent so it makes it through the day then drain it to 0 and charge all night, will this accurately calibrate the battery? The little charge I gave it shouldn't affect the calibration as long as the battery is completely tapped out then charged to its capacity correct?

Battery "memory" was a bigger issue with older Nickel-Cadmium (NiCd) batteries... not as much with the current technology. It used to be you had to completely drain and recharge NiCd's three or four times at first to make sure their capacity wasn't diminished. It happens with Lithium Ion batteries sometimes, but usually not until many hundreds of cycles, and to a much smaller degree.

UPDATE on my previous post... I am looking at my restored iPhone, after charging it and letting it sit idle now for ten minutes, it's still at 100%, rather than having drained ten percent in that time as was the case before the restore. So, I wouldn't call this battery gate... sometimes one out of every few thousand units is going to have an issue here or there, and as long as it gets fixed promptly, it's not really a scandal.

 

[ECUpirate44]

Honestly, this "battery gate" issue comes around every time apple releases a new iPhone and iOS software. Once 5.1 comes out, most of the bugs will be fixed.

 

[Maverick1337]

Just wanted to post final statistics:

Usage: 6 Hours, 32 Minutes
Standby: 2 Days, 1 Hour

I think it's pretty solid so far.

 

[aberrero]

I'm at 12% now

Usage: 6 hours
Standby 9 hours 15 minutes.

I'm not too happy about that. It can't make it through a full day. I'd like it to last from 8am to 2am. That's 18 hours.

Edit: are you supposed to add up the Usage and Standby time to get the total time, or does Standby include both?

 

[pokershark]

I am pretty sure the people who restored from a previous iPhone backup are having issues, and the people that set up as new phone are fine.

My phone was set up as new and I'm having issues with the battery!

Why are Apple claiming it to have better battery life than the 4?!
My 4 lasted much longer, and with more usage.

Last night I went to bed with the 4s fully charged 100%.
Woke up this morning and it was at 64% with no usage at all!!!

If it was my iPhone 4, it would have went down to 99 or 98%!

WTF?!

 

[Reach9]

iPhone just died..

Final results:

Usage- 7hours and 20minutes
Standby- 23hours and 53minutes

Mind you, my usage was much less than average. I spent most of the time texting, and didn't even listen to music. The battery dropped 1% every other minute, and i saw battery dropping even in standby. This is really appalling..

 

[SoonerFan303]

Don't most people plug in their phones when they go to sleep? I figured that was a general routine, since skipping a day will probably result in the phone dying halfway through the second day.

Lot's of people like myself are letting it run at night without charging for multiple reasons.

#1 let the battery drain all the way down to help calibrate the battery.
#2 Test battery consumption issues

For those laughing this issue is pretty serious for some of us. I have restored my phone, let the battery drain twice, and messed around with a number of settings. Sorry to say, but this baby is draining really fast even idle. Last night I restored and let it charge at 100% for 2 hours. Went to bed with it off the charger and I lost 40+%. No apps running, just restored it. That is a problem.

Today I let it drain agian. I also made sure wifi sync is off. Once thing I noticed, my battery performed better when I was away from the house. Somehow I feel this issue is related to WiFi.

 

[malevolant]

Usage: 12 Hours, 22 Min
Standby: 13 Hours, 14 Min

Still at 35%.

Sucks people are having some issues...

 

[canadianpj]

Well I guess all these folks are making things up since your phone is working ok. Got it.

Hold on a moment. Okay I was right. I'm not finding where I said that. I cannot help it you are reading into things. IM not not having a problem, what I meant to say (more clearly and slowly) is that this is not a problem with ALL of the phones.

I was commenting on the use of putting "gate" after things, not the legitimacy of peoples claims.

 

[Reach9]

Usage: 12 Hours, 22 Min
Standby: 13 Hours, 14 Min

Still at 35%.

Sucks people are having some issues...

lucky guy.
What were you doing for 12 hours? what is your setting like?

 

[aberrero]

Usage: 12 Hours, 22 Min
Standby: 13 Hours, 14 Min

Still at 35%.

Sucks people are having some issues...

What do you do with your phone?

 

[adamvk]

I'm at 91%...

1 hour 12 minutes standby
42 minutes usage


Is this normal? This is my first iPhone, from switching from Android.

I was on the phone (phone call) for about 30 seconds, the rest has been playing Words with Friends mostly.

 

[Megalobyte]

What do you do with your phone?

9 hours of music I'm guessing?

 

[aberrero]

Mine died at

U: 6:28
S: 10:42

 

[OCJeff]

I lose 10% every 3 hours

I am having very poor battery life. I tested with a full charge at 4:30 pm yesterday and constantly lost 3% every hour or about 10% every 3 hours.

I did very little use. Maybe 15 minutes of calling and 30 minutes of texting. Almost all the time the phone was locked and idle with only background tasks running.

This is not good. Maybe a restore as new phone would work? I don't want to lose my Angry Birds status.

Usage 4:40
Standby 29 Hours.

-Jeff

 

[ikeyes]

My 4S battery is horrible...

I did make a backup of the 3G it replaced, and restored it to the 4S... so tomorrow I will try wiping it clean.

Last night I went to sleep and the battery was at 38% and when I awoke not 6 hours later it was completely discharged / powered off.

I used the AC power to charge it back up to 100%, and I even left it for another hour after I saw that it was supposedly at 100%. I took the phone outside, and started my initial tests with the camera, and shot a 10 minute video.

I snapped 50 pictures, and took the 10 minute video and the battery was at 75%... I thought that seemed ridiculous.

After a few hours went by with the phone sitting on my desk, doing NOTHING I checked it again and it was in the 50-60% range (don't recall exactly) and so I cranked the brightness to 100% and played an episode of southpark I had downloaded over, and over, until the battery hit the 10% warning.

I stopped all video, and put the phone down for about 30 minutes while I finished doing some stuff around the house, and when I picked up the phone to plug it in it was at 3%!

Once connected I decided I would disable every single thing possible in the phone... the only thing on is Cellular Data and WiFi. Granted there are some new features in iOS 5.0 but otherwise I've had a 3G for the last 3+ years so I'm pretty familiar with all the tricks to squeeze the battery for all it's got.

I took screenshots to track what happened from there...

7:04PM - Battery at 3%

10:05PM - Battery at 100% (at least 45+ minutes to an hour after it said 100%, I kept checking it until it got up to 100% and then waited a good while longer)

12:06AM - Battery at 82% and I haven't even touched it.

12:29AM - I just checked it again, and it's at 72%... still haven't even touched it but now that I picked it up the phone is warm... something is most definitely running in the background and KILLING the battery.

Since I'm sure it will be dead by tomorrow night I am going to try putting it in Airplane mode and see what happens... if it still drains? It's going back... if not then I'll chock it up to iOS 5.0 and hope 5.1 is out sooner than later with the fix.

 

[Abyssgh0st]

I can confirm that my battery life on my 4S (16GB AT&T) is significantly worse than my 4 (16GB AT&T). My 4 was running iOS 5 since June and never had any issues with battery life- now with my 4S I lose 1% every 5 minutes when not in use, and 1% every 2 minutes when in use. Pretty bad if you ask me- something has got to be fixed.

I originally thought it was location based reminders, so I turned off reminders access to location, and it's still terrible.

PS: I did restore my iPhone 4S to factory settings prior to ever using it.

 

[SoonerFan303]

This is some of the same exact behavior I have seen. I even went as far as to restore fresh and never open a single thing. Let it sit idle for 5 hours or so and I had lost almost half the battery.

Some of us have serious battery issues. If this doesn't get better after my 2nd full battery charge than I will consider asking for a replacement since many others aren't having this issue.

My 4S battery is horrible...

I did make a backup of the 3G it replaced, and restored it to the 4S... so tomorrow I will try wiping it clean.

Last night I went to sleep and the battery was at 38% and when I awoke not 6 hours later it was completely discharged / powered off.

I used the AC power to charge it back up to 100%, and I even left it for another hour after I saw that it was supposedly at 100%. I took the phone outside, and started my initial tests with the camera, and shot a 10 minute video.

I snapped 50 pictures, and took the 10 minute video and the battery was at 75%... I thought that seemed ridiculous.

After a few hours went by with the phone sitting on my desk, doing NOTHING I checked it again and it was in the 50-60% range (don't recall exactly) and so I cranked the brightness to 100% and played an episode of southpark I had downloaded over, and over, until the battery hit the 10% warning.

I stopped all video, and put the phone down for about 30 minutes while I finished doing some stuff around the house, and when I picked up the phone to plug it in it was at 3%!

Once connected I decided I would disable every single thing possible in the phone... the only thing on is Cellular Data and WiFi. Granted there are some new features in iOS 5.0 but otherwise I've had a 3G for the last 3+ years so I'm pretty familiar with all the tricks to squeeze the battery for all it's got.

I took screenshots to track what happened from there...

7:04PM - Battery at 3%

10:05PM - Battery at 100% (at least 45+ minutes to an hour after it said 100%, I kept checking it until it got up to 100% and then waited a good while longer)

12:06AM - Battery at 82% and I haven't even touched it.

12:29AM - I just checked it again, and it's at 72%... still haven't even touched it but now that I picked it up the phone is warm... something is most definitely running in the background and KILLING the battery.

Since I'm sure it will be dead by tomorrow night I am going to try putting it in Airplane mode and see what happens... if it still drains? It's going back... if not then I'll chock it up to iOS 5.0 and hope 5.1 is out sooner than later with the fix.

 

[ama0219]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A334 Safari/7534.48.3)

I'm having a hard time killing mine. Unplugged this morning at 11:30. Went to work for eight hours. I work in the dead zone in my building. Left work, and it was still at 76%. Came home and messed with apps and websites trying to kill it. Finally gave up and plugged it in at 30% at 12:30am.

 

[maddog91]

I'm trying to kill mine right now. made a location reminder...I really hope i get awesome battery life because i can se myself using location reminders ALOT and to be honest,I will use it. its a eat feature to have when you have it and need it.