Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Batterygate??

One thing I noticed last night after giving it a full charge, it drops from 100 to 99% really quick if you use it right after charging. I think in a matter of 31 mins standby and 17 minutes of use, my battery had already went down to 97% which doesn't seem right.

Also, overnight I put it on airplane mode so no one could call/text and wake me. I lost 2% in 8 hours with airplane on, that part seems normal, I think.

I'm gonna give it a few more charges/discharges before I'll determine if this battery isn't getting better. Maybe I'll take it to Apple so they can plug it into their "diagnostic meter" and they can give me an answer.
 
ecwhite4S said:
One thing I noticed last night after giving it a full charge, it drops from 100 to 99% really quick if you use it right after charging. I think in a matter of 31 mins standby and 17 minutes of use, my battery had already went down to 97% which doesn't seem right.

Also, overnight I put it on airplane mode so no one could call/text and wake me. I lost 2% in 8 hours with airplane on, that part seems normal, I think.

I'm gonna give it a few more charges/discharges before I'll determine if this battery isn't getting better. Maybe I'll take it to Apple so they can plug it into their "diagnostic meter" and they can give me an answer.
Click to expand...
Same here. It's really weird because sometimes it drops down to 99% in a matter of minutes while other times it takes quite a while to drop down to 99% for me, don't really know what to think of it.
 
Certinfy said:
Same here. It's really weird because sometimes it drops down to 99% in a matter of minutes while other times it takes quite a while to drop down to 99% for me, don't really know what to think of it.
Click to expand...
Interesting. I think having the "percentage" on is driving me nuts... but I really DON'T think it's normal that it will drop to 99% with just a few minutes use. It's like it's not really charging fully to 100%.
 
I usually have to charge once during the middle of the day, what do you guys think?
 

Attachments

  • photo.PNG
    photo.PNG
    106.2 KB · Views: 86
ec.

Got the phone on launch day, setup as new iPhone.
Use is a little facebook & twitter here and there
probably 15 minutes of web browsing
maybe 20 text messages today if that
and one 5 minute phone call.
 
Stop using the default mail app in any form, delete all accounts and watch how fast your battery gets better. There is a bug in that app somewhere and it kills the battery.
 
defc0n1 said:
Source?:confused:
Click to expand...

Me, lol. I went from an iPhone 4 to a 4S and while I wasn't having the HUGE drastic problems some people in this thread had, I couldn't go a workday without being at 10% or less, which NEVER happened with the 4. I could go a day and a half sometimes and still have 30% left. But Apple did say battery life was worse so I just shrugged it off as acceptable.

The other day I found Gmail app in the App Store and since I use only gmail I just tried it out. I liked it better than the stock app so I deleted my account in the stock app and set it off to no longer fetch (at one hour intervals) and now it's like I have the battery life of my Iphone 4 back and the Gmail app is using push, so it's constantly sending me any new emails, not just checking once an hour...

I don't understand it, but ever since I've done that, I can stream music, play games, have huge standby numbers...and my battery doesn't drain quick. And I only have 1 email account btw.
 
The cause of my battery gate was one song - I checked the file formats of all my songs in iTunes and there was one song in WAV format. I deleted it and since then my battery drain was gone.
 
I think a good idea is to not pay attention to the battery percentage, but rather actual usage time instead. The battery percentage is going to drop. That shouldn't be alarming, and the rate at which it does shouldn't, either. I've seen people get upset that it dropped to 89% after only an hour of usage, but if you think about it, that's roughly 10 hours of usage on a 100% charge, which is stellar. Chances are the percentage will fluctuate because it doesn't seem be very precise.

Charge your phone to 100%, turn battery percentage off until it tells you 10% is remaining, then turn it back on and take a look at your usage and standby time in settings and see how much you were able to get out of it. If it's anywhere over 6-7 hours, that's a pretty good battery and normal, but if it's between 4 and 5 or lower, that's a problem battery.

All this turn this off, turn that off, turn this off when not using, turn that on only when you have to, only use your phone to text and check email stuff is pointless because you're basically getting rid of the stuff that makes an iPhone an iPhone in order to use the iPhone the way you would any other non-smartphone. Use your iPhone how it's intended to be used, otherwise, what's the point of having an iPhone? Might as well save some bucks and get a non-smartphone if you're not even going to use the smartphone features.

I have one of the problem batteries and have tried everything to no avail which leads me to believe that it's probably a hardware issue rather than a software issue because if it was software Apple would have fixed it by now. It's been close to 3 months and Apple has some of the most top notch people in the field working for them and if they can't figure it out in 3 months, something else is up, which is probably hardware. I think it's a problem in one of the production facilities because it's only happening to some iPhones and not others.
 
It depends on 3g or Wifi. 5 hours of usage on 3g is actually good. Close to apple 6 hours standard. But for Wifi it is a problem.
 
ecwhite4S said:
I think in a matter of 31 mins standby and 17 minutes of use, my battery had already went down to 97% which doesn't seem right.
Click to expand...

Dropping 3% with 17 minutes of usage would equate to over 9 hours of usage for the whole battery. When you say that "doesn't seem right", are you saying you think you're not getting enough usage or you're getting too much usage? The battery percentage meter seems to drive a lot of people crazy for no reason.

Here's mine tonite:
battery.png


Two and a half days standby and 8 hours usage. Yeah, there really is a problem with battery life on the 4S. :rolleyes:
 
Phone Junky said:
Dropping 3% with 17 minutes of usage would equate to over 9 hours of usage for the whole battery. When you say that "doesn't seem right", are you saying you think you're not getting enough usage or you're getting too much usage? The battery percentage meter seems to drive a lot of people crazy for no reason.
Click to expand...

Woah now, I dont think my battery is horrible, I just cant tell because I'm such a light user. I've only had it for over a week. And I think with all the people complaining about there battery, it's making me paranoid. But you are right, the percentage meter does drive me crazy, it's probably better if I turn it off altogether.
 
ecwhite4S said:
Woah now, I dont think my battery is horrible, I just cant tell because I'm such a light user. I've only had it for over a week. And I think with all the people complaining about there battery, it's making me paranoid. But you are right, the percentage meter does drive me crazy, it's probably better if I turn it off altogether.
Click to expand...

Don't pay attention to the battery percentage. Instead pay attention to how much usage you get on a full charge. Sometimes the battery may stay at 100% for 20 minutes and sometimes it drops after only a few minutes. Sometimes it will last a long time on 1% then other times will die.

Instead charge it to 100%, turn the battery percentage off and use it as you normally would until you get the 10% left warning and then check to see what your usage is.
 
Bawstun said:
Stop using the default mail app in any form, delete all accounts and watch how fast your battery gets better. There is a bug in that app somewhere and it kills the battery.
Click to expand...

I'm also starting to suspect that, I was getting quick drain and I restored several times, the last one was from my sisters iPhone 4 which has no battery problems on iOS 5. The only thing I've done differently is not setting up an email account.

I got this. (The iPhone was plugged for less than 10 minutes for a short car ride , my FM transmitter charges the phone) I barely used 3g though, most of the time it was wifi. Stills, these numbers seem pretty good.

tl;dr: try restoring and don't set up an email account and see how that works.
 

Attachments

  • large.jpeg
    large.jpeg
    46 KB · Views: 86
adrian-cg said:
I'm also starting to suspect that, I was getting quick drain and I restored several times, the last one was from my sisters iPhone 4 which has no battery problems on iOS 5. The only thing I've done differently is not setting up an email account.

I got this. (The iPhone was plugged for less than 10 minutes for a short car ride , my FM transmitter charges the phone) I barely used 3g though, most of the time it was wifi. Stills, these numbers seem pretty good.

tl;dr: try restoring and don't set up an email account and see how that works.
Click to expand...

And honestly, before I stopped using the mail app, I remember thinking everytime I hit the sleep/wake button to check the time, if I had an email that hadn't come through yet, it'd beep and tell me it was there. It's as if it checks in the background for mail EVERY TIME you wake the phone up from a state where the screen is off. It would do this any time I had an email waiting, it wasn't just at one-hour intervals like I had it set in settings. I dunno, maybe I'm just nuts. LOL :D but it seems like the mail app has always done that to me.
 
Hexiii said:
Well, my 4S doesn't count to usage time over night, but the battery is still bad.
Click to expand...

Could be due to bad reception, as i see in your screen, you seem to have a bad reception where you are and if the phone is trying to get signal from either edge or 3G at all times it's going to take a lot of battery.. the usage and standby time is OK, not good, but still OK depending if you played games for the usage time shown.
 
For those of you with battery issues, why did you not exchange your iPhone for another? Just curious. My coworker's iPhone is afflicted with batterygate as well, and I'm going to ask him why he never bothered to exchange his iPhone as well.
 
SCARY GAY DAD said:
For those of you with battery issues, why did you not exchange your iPhone for another? Just curious. My coworker's iPhone is afflicted with batterygate as well, and I'm going to ask him why he never bothered to exchange his iPhone as well.
Click to expand...

Because close to 3 months ago Apple said they were aware of the problem and a fix was on the way. It hasn't come and it doesn't seem like it will if they haven't figured it out by now. They're already focusing on the next gen of gadgets.

I'm going to make the 3 hour trek to an Apple store to attempt to exchange it this weekend because I have a feeling the problem is hardware related and not software related as they originally said and everyone will eventually try and exchange their phones when it's acknowledged by Apple that it's a hardware issue and I want to do it before it's madness and difficult to get it exchanged due to demand.
 
SCARY GAY DAD said:
For those of you with battery issues, why did you not exchange your iPhone for another? Just curious. My coworker's iPhone is afflicted with batterygate as well, and I'm going to ask him why he never bothered to exchange his iPhone as well.
Click to expand...

They've tried. The genius runs the tests and says it's fine, wait for the update.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back