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Here's my experience so far with the 4S. I put it on the charger last night at around 1130pm. At that time it had 54% battery showing. When I took it off the charger this morning at 6am it still showed less then 100%, 94% to be exact. In my opinion that's enough of a time span for it to have charged twice! Of course under usage it still shows " usage time will be displayed after full charge" I put the 4s back on the charger before I left for work and still did not charge to 100%. Took it back of the charger about 3hrs ago and it's already at 33%. The only things that I've done is to run a few speedtest and have been On the Internet for about 20 minutes. I'm not sure if there is a problem with my battery but this is utterly ridiculous!
 
Do you guys think battery drain is related to restore from i4 backup? I'm getting bad battery life too but thinking of restoring and setup as new instead of from backup. How many of you started as new and getting bad battery?
 
Do you guys think battery drain is related to restore from i4 backup? I'm getting bad battery life too but thinking of restoring and setup as new instead of from backup. How many of you started as new and getting bad battery?

Might be related but I doubt it. I set mine up as new and I am still getting less than great battery life.
 
One thing we all need to do... post WHICH iPhone you are using exactly.

I have the AT&T 64GB 4S...

Anyways when I got to work, I checked my battery and after the 40 minute drive listening to Spotify my battery had dropped from 58% to 47% and when I got inside I switched the phone into Airplane Mode...

8:45am = 47%
9:32am = 47%
10:33am = 47%
12:08pm = 47%

So ya... it doesn't appear to be a faulty battery... something is NOM'ing on it :eek:
 
Okay, here is my usage so far today. I took it off charge at 10AM UK time and it was at 100%.

My usage is now at
Usage: 3hours37minutes.
Standby:7hours13minutes.

Battery left is 55%. I've been connected to wifi for 5 of those 7hours and been using it to check twitter a few times, check my emails and used find my friends twice. I also have been sending a lot of texts and imessages (probably sent about 140 in total and received roughly the same). I used the camera for about a minute as well.
Also had a location based reminder on for 30minutes.

So battery seems pretty good for me today.

Edit: I have an unlocked 64GB white btw.
 
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Do you guys think battery drain is related to restore from i4 backup? I'm getting bad battery life too but thinking of restoring and setup as new instead of from backup. How many of you started as new and getting bad battery?

Nope; I tried a new install and still had the same issues.
 
Okay, here is my usage so far today. I took it off charge at 10AM UK time and it was at 100%.

My usage is now at
Usage: 3hours37minutes.
Standby:7hours13minutes.

I also have been sending a lot of texts and imessages (probably sent about 140 in total and received roughly the same).

140 texts? How do you find the time!?
 
140 texts? How do you find the time!?

Honestly I have no idea :p. Being a student isn't too taxing most o the time. Though that was a rough guess, I know it's over 100.

Plus I sometimes press send instead of enter for when I want a new line.. Damn the iPhone text conversation looking like an IM :p. It doesn't bother people who have iPhones though, and everyone I've been texting does.
 
There is definitely something to this. I had the 16 gig and after 4 hours of usage it went from 100% to 1%. Right as I got to the AT&T to exchange it for a 32. Now with the 32, the drain is not nearly as fast. After one hour, I'm down 10% and I'm sure the battery isn't fully conditioned yet. Much happier with the battery life now.
 
I was just playing Tiger Woods golf for 7 minutes, (I timed it) and phone got warmer to the touch and battery dropped 5%, brightness probably around 80%. 64gb on verizon. Normal? didn't seem to drop that much when playing the same game on my 4th gen touch back when I had that.
 
def something going on...

So I have the 64gb 4S on Verizon. Just came from the 32gb iPhone 4 on verizon, and I can tell you for sure so far that there is something going on with the battery. You can actually notice the battery drain on this 4S. After unplugging the phone it will go from 100% to like 98% in just a few minutes of use (quick FB check, Email check). This was just not how my iPhone 4 was, sure if I kept it on and watched videos I would see a drain, but nothing like this. Also I have drained the battery twice and recharged up to 100%, but like people said this is really not even necessary anymore like it used to be years ago.

I really hope it's not the new iCloud features because this would be a big change for apple. They seem like they make it a priority to make their batteries pretty useful and I think that is part of the reason they did not want to jump into 4G just yet(that and they obviously like to make as much money as possible on current models).

I am willing to bet Apple releases some sort of software update that helps out with the battery at LEAST a little. Keep in mind not only is iOS5 brand new, but all of these features (Siri, iClould, etc) are also brand new. We shouldn't have to be turning off notifications and such to save battery as this was a never an issues at all for the 4 model, and would basically defeat the purpose of using a 4S if it was required just to get decent battery life.
 
I charged mine to 100% last night, and left it plugged in at 100% for a couple hours before disconnecting and going to bed. That said, I have NOT calibrated the battery yet, nor have I let it get below 75% since I got it. When I woke up nearly 11 hours later, I was still at 99%.

I had bluetooth off, iCloud off, push on, wifi on, siri on, location based services on, notification center on (though I don't turn on apps for that, just mail/messages/calls/voicemails/weather).

Though, for whatever reason, it says I have 13 minutes of usage and 10 hours, 47 minutes of standby. The standby sounds fine, but I should have 0-1 minute of usage...didn't touch it at all after I unplugged it and went to bed until I pressed the home button to check the battery this morning.

One thing though--if you are going to test the battery, it would be a good idea to actually power the phone off completely and then back on at night right before you are about to test it to kill any background apps. I did this since there doesn't seem to be any real way to tell what apps are or aren't running in the background (double tapping the home button just shows you recent apps that have been used, not the ones running), so this way I knew I had no extraneous background processes running overnight.
 
So ya... it doesn't appear to be a faulty battery... something is NOM'ing on it :eek:

Try turning off the Airplane mode and as you get time turn off all location, email, push etc one at a time and see if you can find the culprit. For me it seemed to be the System Location Services that brought the icon up and seemed to warm the phone up very quickly, although my battery life has not been bad, it's also not been really good eithor

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it says I have 13 minutes of usage and 10 hours, 47 minutes of standby. The standby sounds fine, but I should have 0-1 minute of usage...

Time taken for remote checking and downloading of emails, facebook push messages etc all seem to add to this time as well.
 
How to tell which apps are actually running?

To my understanding, tapping the home button twice doesn't show you the apps that are actually running in the background, but rather just the apps you've recently used.

So how can we know what apps are or aren't running in the background?
 
Something is definitely up with the battery..my 16GB GSM iPhone 4S battery life is mimicking my iPhone 3G's crappy battery life.

I'm at 86%
Usage of 1Hour, 15Minutes
Standby of 3Hours, 17Minutes

I barely used the phone! I just sent out text msgs, checked reminders (no location based), checked another light app, checked Twitter.

I was hoping to stay at a 95% range after such usage, or is that wishful thinking?

Also, to the people who are saying "why are you complaining about battery life, just charge it at night". Well, the battery isn't even lasting a day's worth of average usage! I'm using it sub-par and it's already at 85%
 
Im glad I have an iPhone at all so dont take this as a complaint, but the battery life is terrible IF I use it the way I originally thought I would.

~ Siri. Nobody can confirm, but it does seem like Siri is treating our batteries like a juice box so I quit asking her things.

~ Find my Friends. I invited a bunch of friends but since it uses GPS which seems to be a big drain. We were planning a Disneyland trip too but I dont want to lose battery so we'll just text where we're at instead.

~ iCloud. It says it only sends info on WiFi but if you're pushing data like a shared calendar then its still using battery

~ Camera. This one is a big deal because I thought I could replace my point and shoot but after we went out for only 30minutes of shooting about 20 photos and one 60second movie then my battery went down 18%. So a day at Disneyland would kill the battery by noon.

~ Instagram/Facebook. These are apps Ive always wanted on a phone but when I use it then i can see my battery percentage trickle down and im not even uploading yet.

~ Games. Im not a gamer but I figure this would kill the battery completely so I took it off to remove the temptation. Having a phone at the end of the day is more important than playing Fruit Ninja

I do love my phone and feel that maybe the next update can fix the battery drain, but for now its tough because its a brand new product that I cant use the way I thought.
 
White iPhone 4S 16 GB AT&T.

Currently at 58%

Usage: 2 hours 11 mins
Standby: 5 Hours 9 mins

Usage includes streaming Spotify on the drive to work (30 mins), texting (10 messages), Reeder and email checking, using wifi hot spot during lunch (30 min).

IMO, Apple should release a software update to have the processor intelligently switch between one and dual cores to conserve batter life. For example, Facebook, use one core while something like Infinity Blade use dual core.
 
Currently at 46%

Usage - 1 hour 55 minutes
Stand by - 5 hours, 3 minutes

Checked one website and twitter once.

All apps closed, mail being fetched every 30 minutes... I've had the phone in my pocket most of the day because of training here at my new job. I hope this improves some how.
 
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