Batterygate??

[Macmaniac]

Today's results from a fresh charge, day started at 5:45am, phone died at about 7pm:
13 hrs standby
5 hrs use

I use Exchange push and get a ton of emails, have iCloud for backing up, iTunes match and photo streaming, reminders, find my phone and have location services all on. I was connected to wifi most of day. Also my office is in a poor cell area, so I'm constantly searching for sig throughout day. I have brightness set to about 1/3rd, but keep auto on. I could turn off a significant amount of stuff, but I would rather leave it all on and deal with less battery.

I think this is reasonable, but expect it to improve over the next few charge cycles. Typically my new iPhones start off poor and improve after first full week or two of charges. Plus the novelty of a new phone tends to increase your typical usage.

The Exchange and the weak signal is the biggest drop. Weak signal alone will eat through your battery like a hungry kid likes cake. Location is probably one of the biggest factors when it comes to battery loss, if your in an area of poor signal your phone works harder to try to get signal. My CDMA iPhone will work for 2 days straight when I am not at work, when I am at work I get 1 bar of Verizon and my phone is dead in a day. Simple to explain.

 

[username008]

Hey Everyone -

Sorry if this question has already been answered... but what is a "normal" usage time before the phone runs out of battery?

I am assuming 6 Hours because the apple site says up to 6 hours on 3G?

Is that correct? - Just trying to compare my phone to a time to see if I am having any problems.

Thank you

 

[pup555]

I deleted my 2 email account..turned off and then turned it back on and reset network settings...lets see if it changes anything

 

[Fissure]

i came here to post this. battery was at 98% before going to sleep. Wake up and its 85%. Shouldn't be that much of a drop w/o doing anything.

And no, iCloud does not back up when the device is not plugged in.

False statement.

You CAN backup your phone to iCloud with it not plugged into power.

iCloud backups aren't scheduled, it's a manual thing YOU initiate and it doesn't matter if the phone is plugged into power or not.

 

[aberrero]

Reading the iLounge review, it seems that the 4S is geniunely more power hungry than the 4. I can easily make it through the day with a 30 minute top up in the afternoon though. I'd much rather do that than turn off everything I bought the phone to do. I'm just disappointed that it really isn't too much better than what I got on my old Android phone.

I think I'll be keeping an eye on the Nexus Prime. With a 2000mah battery it should have massively better standby and talk time than most other phones.

 

[sddabrow]

False statement.

You CAN backup your phone to iCloud with it not plugged into power.

iCloud backups aren't scheduled, it's a manual thing YOU initiate and it doesn't matter if the phone is plugged into power or not.

Correct. I just changed my settings today to see if it helps battery life. Go to mail, contacts > fetch new data > advanced > iCloud > manual.

I will see how this affects battery, but it says iCloud will only sync when I'm in the particular application.

I also turned my exchange account to fetch every hour instead of push. I'm hoping these two changes fix my battery drain.

 

[digitalfx]

Elaborate, if you have a minute? I don't use my phone all day but I'm used to charging my 3GS every other day even after 2.5 years...

Ive never had an iPhone last 2 days on a charge. I charge it every night, been doing this since my first iPhone.

even if it did, the second day would be half a battery...why wouldn't you just plug it in every night when you go to bed? Expecting 2 days on an iPhone is not realistic. And turning everything off to get longer battery defeats the purpose...unless you were camping and didn't have access to power.

 

[maddog91]

Reading the iLounge review, it seems that the 4S is geniunely more power hungry than the 4. I can easily make it through the day with a 30 minute top up in the afternoon though. I'd much rather do that than turn off everything I bought the phone to do. I'm just disappointed that it really isn't too much better than what I got on my old Android phone.

I think I'll be keeping an eye on the Nexus Prime. With a 2000mah battery it should have massively better standby and talk time than most other phones.

Honestly you are right..Im going right now without charging my phone but I rather enjoy all the features and just charge my phone when I'm driving or something..If I'm int he car pop it in the charger.At home no because that annoying. I can see myself getting in trouble on those weekend nights where i got maybe a day or so away from home but then i guess ill just go in and start turning features off.

I think the biggest things will be
-screen
-gps apps..So location and ****.

 

[xraytech]

You're kidding right?

Turn of all the features that make a Smart Phone "Smart" just so I can go the full day with maybe 20% or whatever percentage is the Holy Freakin' Grail for a Smart Phone. Oh wait a minute, all the features are off so it is now a Dumb Phone.

 

[Reach9]

You're kidding right?

Turn of all the features that make a Smart Phone "Smart" just so I can go the full day with maybe 20% or whatever percentage is the Holy Freakin' Grail.

Tell me about it.

I ventured to use Siri for about 2 minutes within the 56 minutes i've been using my iPhone (i've just been texting and browsing the App Store), and i'm already at 86%

That is unacceptable. I'd prefer to get an iPhone 4 if this is how the 4S runs.

 

[nishishei]

iCloud and Locations are definitely the two biggest power drains.

With both turned off (deleted iCloud account), I get same battery drain as my wife's iPhone 4.

I have Exchange sync with Google turned on, with push enabled.

iCloud is a joke. This is what, the third iteration and Apple still can't get cloud right.

 

[xraytech]

Tell me about it.

I ventured to use Siri for about 2 minutes within the 56 minutes i've been using my iPhone (i've just been texting and browsing the App Store), and i'm already at 86%

That is unacceptable. I'd prefer to get an iPhone 4 if this is how the 4S runs.

Umm...

I think you are missing the tone of my post.

You're kidding right?

Turn of all the features that make a Smart Phone "Smart" just so I can go the full day with maybe 20% or whatever percentage is the Holy Freakin' Grail for a Smart Phone. Oh wait a minute, all the features are off so it is now a Dumb Phone.

People obsess much?

 

[7timethecrystal]

I started a sensitivity test when I got home. My situation as posted earlier: I had noticed my wife's identical iPhone 4S had no battery issues, I have a major one. After similar usage today, at 5:30pm, her phone had 52%, mine died.

So, I did a full charge of both phones back to 100%. Before taking them off power, I ensured the phone's key components were identical (WiFi, Mail, Location Services, etc.). At 9pm CDT, I unplugged them. My phone took a long time to get from 99% to 100%, her phone didn't. Mine also went to 99% upon unplug, her's didn't.

At 10:15pm CDT, all in standby mode with no usage...her phone remains at 100%. Mine is now at 92%. That's roughly 1% every 10 minutes on my phone, same thing I saw earlier.

I think this, for me at least, confirms the diverse results folks are seeing. Some folks are seeing major battery issues, some are seeing better battery life over other iOS devices. It just so happens in our house, we have one of each. Why would two identical phones behave so differently? I've exahusted all possible options on my phone, including the recently posted attempt at deleting e-mail accounts and resetting network settings.

Now, I am off to restore my phone. If this fails, it's the Genius Bar. And I'll be taking both phones with me to show the issue.

 

[VydorScope]

I have icloud running, I have 2 exchange push accounts, I have 1 imap account, I have Siri on, and all the location stuff in on. Bluetooth is on. I have not killed tasks, turned off features, limited my use, etc.

Unplugged my phone at 6am, and now its 11:17PM I have 10% battery life.

Coming from an Android phone thats a big change for the better. More testing is needed, but I think I can live with this. A full day use from single charge.

 

[maddog91]

I want to see how the phone works if i leave it on overnight unplugged from 100%..that should be interesting.

 

[Megalobyte]

If you have iCloud backup set to manual, and no push, how can it drain your battery?

 

[bcbryanc]

If you have iCloud backup set to manual, and no push, how can it drain your battery?

I have iCloud set up to manual and seems like I still have the battery drain and my email is not on push, confused.

 

[nishishei]

If you have iCloud backup set to manual, and no push, how can it drain your battery?

I tried that today but still felt like it was draining faster than it should. Maybe it's the placebo effect, but with iCloud completely turned off, my percent drop is about identical to my wife's on similar usage now.

 

[puma1552]

You guys definitely have a problem.

I've got 2 hours, 23 minutes of usage and 21 hours, 32 minutes of standby and I still have 60% battery. Those 2.5 hours of usage also are with FULL brightness, 100%.

On:

--Location
--Wifi
--Push
--Siri
--Gmail Exchange

Off:

--Bluetooth (don't need)
--iCloud (don't use)

I still haven't calibrated my battery, and this is the first time I've let it drop below 75% since I got the phone Friday, so tbh I'm expecting better results as I calibrate and get a few cycles on the battery. My usage was pretty general, a good bit of surfing, texting, played a game for a while, but no calls or pictures.

My wife's phone shows similar stats, with a little less usage and she still has just under 70% of her battery after nearly 24 hours since the last charge.

 

[rkeato1]

Ive never had an iPhone last 2 days on a charge. I charge it every night, been doing this since my first iPhone.

even if it did, the second day would be half a battery...why wouldn't you just plug it in every night when you go to bed? Expecting 2 days on an iPhone is not realistic. And turning everything off to get longer battery defeats the purpose...unless you were camping and didn't have access to power.

Dang, maybe I'm just not a heavy phone user. Hopefully this means I won't have issues when I get my 4S. I remember when I first got my 3GS I was very aware of the battery and only had to charge it at the end of the second day. Even recently, before upgrading to iOS 5, it would last me a full 24hrs, plus about a quarter/half of the following day. After upgrading to iOS 5, I've had to charge my phone every single night... therefore I still think this is an iOS 5 problem.

I just hope this gets fixed soon. It's also curious that people are having opposite experiences with similar settings.

 

[BiggAW]

I've got more battery life than my old Android phone. A LOT more. That, and the battery meter works really well, and I found they added the % option that I had to JB for on 3.1.3 on my ipt3G. I'm happy. That and it charges up really, really fast.

----------

The goal of a phone is to last through a really, really long day. Anything more is dumb, since you'd plug it in at night. If you're camping, you most likely have batteries or a generator, and if not get an external battery from Monoprice and plug that thing in to juice it back up. The worst would be camping where there's like a shady bar of service.

 

[nishishei]

I just checked, I average about 4-5 minutes per 1% decline on the 4S (at the level of ~50% battery), surfing Safari via WIFI. I have brightness at 1/3, autobright off. This is exactly the same rate that my wife's iPhone 4 on iOS4 is going.

Here's my configuration:

iCloud off (deleted account)
All locations except for Map off
Bluetooth off
WIFI on
Siri on, raise to talk off
Google sync through Exchange on, with push enabled
imo.im on
notifications: only phone, calendar, text messages and imo.im are on (weather and stocks off)

 

[tl01]

Yes and now after about 2 hours, mine is at 56% and I have been doing barely nothing.

Has anybody called Apple about this???

Have you.? Don't ask... Do.

 

[strausd]

So if this is a hardware thing, they should replace it for free. With my iPad 2 it had some serious backlight bleeding and I just got it replaced.

 

[MacDevil7334]

Well I guess I spoke to soon when I said yesterday that my battery seemed ok. I could chalk it up to playing with the phone all weekend. But today, I was at work and did not use the phone much (certainly no more than normal). My phone died at 11:15 this evening. I have not had an iPhone die on me after a single day of normal use since my iPhone 3G. In fact, most of my use today was simply clicking the screen on to see how much the battery had dropped. On my iPhone 4, I would have had at least 40-50% left at the end of the day with my usage today. I'm fine with trading a little battery life for extra performance. But the battery should still be able to get me through the day before it dies (and should have at least a little to spare if I've not be using the phone excessively). The current situation is unacceptable.

I'm going to let my phone recharge undistrbed to see one last time if it's just the battery calibration (unlikely at this point). If the battery is dying before the end of the day tomorrow, I will be headed to the Apple store for sure.