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Restore as new in iTunes. Run it without apps and mail setup. See if that continues. Should cure it. You should get at least 24hrs of standby with 4-7 hours of screen on usage out of a 4S.

At that point why bother with it, just pick up an old razr on eBay or $20
 
I, honestly, don't see why this is being touted as such an issue.

I mean it would be one thing if it was an ongoing issue for many generations of the OS, or a physical hardware issue. The thing is since, lets say the iPhone 4, these devices were fine until iOS 5 we know it's a software issue on either how it handles things, or whatever. So it's just a matter of time.

It's not like the antennae issue which they could, while still a big overblown IMHO, show it was a hardware issue and that can't be corrected.

I'm not too irked as my iPhone 4 and iPad (1g) don't seem to have much of an issue... if at all.
 
I had terrible battery when I went from ios 5.0 to 5.0.1 (I went the way of the OTA update as opposed to a normal iTunes mediated update). But then I reset the network information? (something along the lines of that) and it fixed my battery, but YMMV, I'm just stating for those who are interested. Here's a screen shot. No clue if this screen shot even works...tried using box as I'm on my iPhone. http://m.box.com/view_shared/jq8b82igsz7i4b8d3uik

EDIT: for those that can't see the usage time was 5 hours and 8 minutes, with a standby of 1 day and 8 hours with 4% charge left (and no it was never plugged in) :)
 
Turned off everything I absolutely didn't need. Used it mostly for emails today--no music, no video, no Siri, no location services, only a little bit of Internet. Lost all power by 3:30PM. Un-*****-acceptable. I've had tons of Apple products and this one is the most disappointing. YMMV.
 
Turned off everything I absolutely didn't need. Used it mostly for emails today--no music, no video, no Siri, no location services, only a little bit of Internet. Lost all power by 3:30PM. Un-*****-acceptable. I've had tons of Apple products and this one is the most disappointing. YMMV.

Did you restore as a new phone yet?
 
Can't speak for anybody else but I have seen a good deal of improvement in battery life since turning off icloud back-up.

when at work where my 4s was draining alot in standby due to searching for a 3G connnection...no 3G connection at work....but my usage stats were so high even when i wasn't using the phone...now that is gone.

Before I was losing a good 6% an hour before turning off icloud back-up...now i barely lose 1-2% which is great when on edge.

The reason that is not true is that iCloud Backup is continent on WiFi connection and being plugged-in.

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Sorry, I can't go without Siri for 8.5 days. Love that girl. But I can pull almost 4 days with almost 10 hours of use with only Wifi on, I'm sure you remember ;)

So what do you think that Standby will be with no usage or Wifi on... yeah I'd say about 8 days :cool:

I've HAD to go without Siri for two days now because to compound the battery issues I have had outages since 3pm yester-yesterday.

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Finished calibrating battery, so got to test my iPhone properly... used BatteryDoctor to really squeeze the juice into it, I only really use this app rarely

Seems good enough for me, my 3GS averaged 5-7 hours at max with same standby... I expect around 6-7+ from any of my iPhones

Mostly 3G and wifi browsing, email, sms, phone calls, no games.

Also using all my tweaks, no push, clear NetStat list, diagnostics off, Ping off, system location services off, automatic clock setting, stuff like this...

"All my [sic] tweaks" = Handicapped the device and turned-off all features that I paid good money for in order to make it through the day.

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My battery life seems to be amazing from what was a pretty bad start.

7 hours 37 mins Usage
1 day 14 hours Standby before it switched itself off.

I have the following set up and enabled on my phone:

Exchange Push for email, calendar, contacts and reminders (1 month of mail and calendar)
Hotmail Push for email only (1 month again)
iCloud backup only, everything else OFF
Location Services - Everything ON
Push Notifications - Everything ON
Bluetooth - ON
WiFi - ON
3G - ON
Roaming (for switching between T-Mobile and Orange in the UK) - ON
Brightness - 50% with auto adjustment ON

To fix my battery I did the following -

Calibrate once a month leaving the phone for 1 hour before charging again Overnight

DFU restore, restored backup from iTunes, delete email/iCloud accounts, RESET ALL SETTINGS, re-add all email/iCloud accounts, set up phone as you wish.

I did this to my dad's phone which was worse than mine initially, it now lasts 2 full days with around 8 hours usage on average, however he mostly uses wifi and only has 1 push account.

So detailed yet you missed the major question. iMessage! Is it on or off?
 
Why would turning off iMessage help battery life?

Persons utilizing NetStat have noted that iMessage (particularly when driving) will maintain a persistent connection to 3G tower and hang (or repeatedly attempt to connect without timing out) and refuse to switch to WiFi even when it is available; compounding the drain.

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I am sorry to disappoint but I did a setup as new iPhone on beta 5.1 and here are my stats. iPhone settings are factory except for turning off the individual items that use location services such as time zone setting. iCloud ON. Siri ON. iMessage ON. Push ON.

Usage: 5 hours 30 minutes *50 minutes of phone calls - 3 hours of web browsing - no music playback
Standby: 14 hours 30 minutes *used Airplane mode while asleep
 
Updating to 5.1 somewhat helped my battery issues. It seems my standby drain has gone from 4-5% an hour to 1% an hour in standby. Usage drain however is still pretty extreme. This was after upgrading from 5.0.1.

I came from iPhone 1 som not sure what normal usage should drain when surfing on wifi or watching a video (not streaming) but so far I've seen about 1-2% drop in battery per 30mins of either activity. That can't be normal right?

Decided to test a restore from the 5.1 IPSW and see if that made things even better but made no difference apparently. Going to do a full reset and delete all content now and then restore, maybe it helps (hale mary, I know).

Anyways after doing the last restore I thought I'd check out the cellular usage since I was at home the entire time with WiFi and the counter was just reset and here you can see the three screenshots of cellular usage taken just after restore, about 40 mins in and about 2hrs in. You can also see the battery life, all I did during the 2hrs was a 1 minute phonecall.

photo-0.PNG


photo-1.PNG


photo-2.PNG


As you can see the cellular data is used even when on WiFi 100% of the time and no apps used (except one phonecall). The 30/200 kilobits used on the first screenshot can be explained by the setup process before you chose a WiFi network, but the usage from pic 1 to 2 and 2 to 3 has to be some background system thing because the phone was in standby with no apps open and no apps installed after restore.
 
Batt % low after charge.

So I have an 64GB iPhone 4s white with lastest updates. I charge my phone all night and i've noticed in the morning I take it off charger and use it for like a minute and the battery percentage is at 96% or around there. I turn off the phone and restart it and its at 100%.

Do I have a problem phone? I am using the original iphone charger.
 
So I have an 64GB iPhone 4s white with lastest updates. I charge my phone all night and i've noticed in the morning I take it off charger and use it for like a minute and the battery percentage is at 96% or around there. I turn off the phone and restart it and its at 100%.

Do I have a problem phone? I am using the original iphone charger.

Seems about there. My iphone 4s 32gb has excellent standby time, but just using the net for almost 2 hours causes the power bar to dip by about 40+%.

Currently: Standyby 23 hours 14 min, Usage 3 hours, 39 min, 28% charge. :cool:
 
The irony, is my iPhone 4S runs out of battery life in 1/2 the time of my fast, new Samsung Skyrocket with a gorgeous 4.5" display.

It's biggerbetterfasterneatersmoother, and oh so much fun

Now who's laughing ....ha...ha...ha.... :)
 
So I have an 64GB iPhone 4s white with lastest updates. I charge my phone all night and i've noticed in the morning I take it off charger and use it for like a minute and the battery percentage is at 96% or around there. I turn off the phone and restart it and its at 100%.

Do I have a problem phone? I am using the original iphone charger.

No, you don't. If you charge to 100%, run it to 98 or so and do a hard reset it will do the same. The level is based on voltage levels and it's not 100% perfect.
 
iOS 5.0.1 after Calibrating my battery again (2nd time since Launch day). AND I used it for Pandora another ten minutes after this shot!
 

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iOS 5.0.1 after Calibrating my battery again (2nd time since Launch day). AND I used it for Pandora another ten minutes after this shot!

Those are actually really good usage results. I'd be happy with anything over 6. I get about 4 and a half hours.
 
I updated to 5.0.1 the day after it was released and my battery life was still awful.

2 days ago, I calibrated the battery (let it drain fully and shut down, then charged fully overnight).

New GREAT stats:
battery at 27%
Usage: 4 hours, 35 minutes
Standby: 21 hours, 20 minutes

I'm impressed. Finally better results than my old BB Torch!
 
ill add my exp. Picked up the phone Friday the 25th. Didn't notice the battery droping till about sunday. I would take it off the charger and it would be down 10 % within the hour with minimal usage. Would drop at least a percent every minute during web surfing/etc.
Location services all on
Imessage on
Wifi and bluetooth off
3 push accounts, 1 non
find my iphone on

Restored the phone to new, re-setup mail accounts, apps etc
Now with the same settings it is better, but I still see about 1% drop per minute or two of web browsing, or other usage. I don't want to exchange phones, but I will if this is abnormal.

Today, took of charger at 920 so far 42 minutes usage (half a dozen texts, checked emails twice, 15 min web surfing and facebook) 2 hours 45 min standby. Currently at 88%. All location services on, no icloud wifi or bluetooth, 3 push accounts, imessage on. Still seems low compared to what I've seen here
 
my latest usage

Usage: 5 hours
Standby: 2 days, 4 hours

now my battery is at 20%

a couple of days ago i let the battery completely die, then charged it up.

i think thats pretty good.
turned icloud off, i mostly use wifi, some 3G, i txt, play games, use safari, make a few calls. i think that's it.
:apple:

oh, almost forgot, i'm on ios 5.0
 
I calculated that i should get 5.7 hrs usage, and 24.8 hrs of standby at 0 percent. I will see what I can actually get, but this seems ok given all location services on, imessage on, and several push accounts.
 
I'm not sure if this has happened to anyone but my phone dropped from 9% to 1% and promptly cut off. I put it on the charger and now it seems to be in a cycle where the apple logo would come on and get the the lock screen but then immediately cuts off. It's been doing this for about 10 minutes now.
 
I'm not sure if this has happened to anyone but my phone dropped from 9% to 1% and promptly cut off. I put it on the charger and now it seems to be in a cycle where the apple logo would come on and get the the lock screen but then immediately cuts off. It's been doing this for about 10 minutes now.

Hold home and power button for 15 seconds to hard reset.
 
This thing is unusable to me if it can't hold a charge all day, which it can't. Think I'm going back to my blackberry. Very disappointed.
 
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