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OK just like everyone I've been worried about my battery as well. I decided after spending the day working on the 1000's of tweaks on the innerwebs that I, based on Oppressed's testing sequence from the Apple Store, probably do not have a bad battery. I think the culprit is I have just been PAYING TO MUCH ATTENTION TO IT!!! :eek:

Here is my setup and process of events since I got my phone Friday at 5:00 PM EST....

AT&T 32GB Black Phone

Restored from backup right out of the box from a non-jailbroken AT&T 32GB Black Phone 4.

After spending the first day with the phone which was only half a day I didn't notice anything out of the ordinary. The next few days I started paying attention to the battery more and noticed the meter dropping 1% every few minutes. Sunday I did the "battery conditioning" and ran it down until the phone turned off and charged it back up. I noticed a bit better battery the next day. I spent alot of that day checking fantasy football scores. Monday night I decided to leave the phone on all night unplugged instead of leaving charged like usual. I noted the percentage before I went to sleep which was 86%. Woke up... 82%. My conclusion was I was getting poor usage times and great standby time.

Today was my real test. Kept the phone charged all night and woke up too 100% at 10:00 AM EST. Here is my phone settings and sequence of events today..

Settings Set Before Taken off the Power Source

Airplane Mode: OFF
Brightness: 75% with Auto Brightness
Wifi: ON
Notifications: ON with both Widgets
Location Services: ON with some app customization OFF
Diagnostics and Usage: OFF
Location Based iAds: OFF
Setting Time Zone: OFF
Traffic: OFF
Siri: ON
Raise to Speak: OFF
Diagnostics and Usage: DONT SEND
Bluetooth: ON ALL DAY
iTunes Wifi Sync: OFF
Spotlight Search: OFF
Restrictions: Ping OFF

MAIL ACCOUNTS

iCloud: MANUAL
WORK: POP3 FETCH
GMAIL: IMAP FETCH

Subscribed Calendars: 1 iCal
Fetch set to 30 minutes


iCloud Settings

Mail: ON
Contacts: ON
Calendars: ON
Reminders: ON (No locations reminders being used)
Bookmarks: OFF
Notes: OFF
Photo Steam: OFF
Documents and Data: ON Cellular Data: OFF
Find My Phone: OFF
Storage and Backup: ON

Checked and answered about 20 emails from work.
Answered approx 10 emails in my gmail account.
Checked Twitter for 10-15 mins
Checked FB real quick to clear out annoying badges.
Played a few turns of WWF.
Played two levels of Tower Defense.
Played around at Starbucks on the crappy Wifi for about an hour doing various things such as Twitter, WWF, Safari browsing, Reeder.
Showed off Siri for a few people. Set it up to call me master.
Got a haircut for about 30 minutes. This is important b/c signal sucks here. Literally dead. I put it to the test and used Twitter while waiting for my haircut. Also uploaded 4 screenshots to dropbox over 3G. Signal dropped to Edge a few times.
Tonight did various crap on Twitter.
Conducted 25 minute test on Stopwatch.


I should note that while running the Stopwatch test I had various apps running in the background (Tweetbot, WWF, Mail) Airplane Mode Off and BT on. Various Push notifications from WWF and Sportacular were coming through during the test. Few pushes from Tweetbot as well.


My conclusion. Considering I usually plug my phone in numerous times during the work day and also at home when I am not using it. This is fair results and I shouldn't be worried. I am leaving for Vegas in a few days and will really put it to the test with alot of photo taking. I was going to run into the Apple Store before my trip but figure its not worth it. My luck I will get a phone thats even worse. I should add my phone has never gotten warm at all. Been in a case since I took it out of the box. Check the screen grabs.

Sorry for the long post. I have gotten so much quality info from this site I figured I would share my experience today.

Thanks for listening.

Those 6 min + results are shocking, even for the iPhone 4. And this was an iPhone 4S? :eek:
 
Those 6 min + results are shocking, even for the iPhone 4. And this was an iPhone 4S? :eek:

Yep. I don't know anything in the least about batteries and how they function. These tests were done when the battery was in the red. I even had a low battery warning pop up when I was running the test. Whether or not these tests would show different results tomorrow when the phone is fully charged and after a full drown of the battery today is anyone's guess.

Thanks for the idea for the test from the store. I only expect it will get better after usage and perhaps a software fix.
 
I'm averaging about 7 minutes per lap on the 1% lap test during 4 "laps" from 67% down to 63%.

Details: 4S 16GB on Verizon with 4-5 bars of signal during the test. Wifi on (connected to my router) and Bluetooth on (not connected to my headset). I also made sure the screen stayed illuminated during the test. Whenever it started to dim, I touched the screen.

Additional details:

I've calibrated the battery twice by completely draining it and charging to 100%.

I've also made the following changes:

Notifications - removed stocks, added mail & facebook
Location Services - Turned Siri & Find My iPhone Off
Location Services>System Services - Cell Network Search & Compass are the only ones I've left "On"
General>About>Diagnostics & Usage - Don't Send
General>Siri - Off
General>iTunes Wifi Sync - Off
General>Restrictions >On>Set Ping to Off
Weather app>Local weather off

I also deleted all iCloud/Email accounts & rebooted via a hard reset.
I then re-added my 2 email (Exchange) accounts with push enabled and enabled iCloud for notes only as I use my Exchange accounts for contacts, calendar, etc. I have no accounts set to "fetch" - all push.

I then reset the network settings

Hope this helps someone!
 
Yep. I don't know anything in the least about batteries and how they function. These tests were done when the battery was in the red. I even had a low battery warning pop up when I was running the test. Whether or not these tests would show different results tomorrow when the phone is fully charged and after a full drown of the battery today is anyone's guess.

Thanks for the idea for the test from the store. I only expect it will get better after usage and perhaps a software fix.

Oh, well someone can correct me if I'm wrong but I believe the way in which a battery is measured results in a descending graph that almost plateaus at the peak and low points. I wish I could find a graph online to illustrate.

Its why it may take 10 mins to go from 100% to 99, and the same to go from 1% to 0.

@ 7 min results: Shocking, need more data to see if there is a trend and figure out the norm.
 
I'm averaging about 7 minutes per lap on the 1% lap test during 4 "laps" from 67% down to 63%.

Details: 4S 16GB on Verizon with 4-5 bars of signal during the test. Wifi on (connected to my router) and Bluetooth on (not connected to my headset). I also made sure the screen stayed illuminated during the test. Whenever it started to dim, I touched the screen.

Additional details:

I've calibrated the battery twice by completely draining it and charging to 100%.

I've also made the following changes:

Notifications - removed stocks, added mail & facebook
Location Services - Turned Siri & Find My iPhone Off
Location Services>System Services - Cell Network Search & Compass are the only ones I've left "On"
General>About>Diagnostics & Usage - Don't Send
General>Siri - Off
General>iTunes Wifi Sync - Off
General>Restrictions >On>Set Ping to Off
Weather app>Local weather off

I also delete all iCloud/Email accounts & rebooted via a hard reset.
I then re-added my 2 email (Exchange) accounts with push enabled and enabled iCloud for notes only as I use my Exchange accounts for contacts, calendar, etc. I have no accounts set to "fetch" - all push.

I then reset the network settings

Hope this helps someone!
The only thing I have not done is delete my email accounts and reset network settings which I am planning on doing tomorrow after a full charge over night. Do you recommend doing the reset of network settings AFTER redoing the email accounts?

What exactly does that reset do? Just erase wifi passwords and dns settings etc... ?


Thanks!

----------

Oh, well someone can correct me if I'm wrong but I believe the way in which a battery is measured results in a descending graph that almost plateaus at the peak and low points. I wish I could find a graph online to illustrate.

Its why it may take 10 mins to go from 100% to 99, and the same to go from 1% to 0.

@ 7 min results: Shocking, need more data to see if there is a trend and figure out the norm.

Indeed. I can tell you that I do notice after unplugging it in the morning it does take a bit to get down to 99%.
 
Do you recommend doing the reset of network settings AFTER redoing the email accounts?

What exactly does that reset do? Just erase wifi passwords and dns settings etc... ?

The order doesn't matter, no. The reset will restore your network settings to their defaults, including all wi-fi settings, saved networks/passwords, etc.
 
Was having the battery issue and noticed the back of the phone was warm. Deleted and reinstalled my Gmail account and all seems to be normal now.

Will check this out.

But how does this affect battery life? I've turned off push, and kept it to Hourly.

Also..I went to the Apple Store, but i couldn't get my 4S replaced.

Looks like us 1st day-ers have to wait until the next shipment, as they're completely sold out of iPhone 4S'

Also...why is my iPhone 4S heating up so much (right side), when i'm just charging it? It's also taking it hours to charge right now, when it took just 1 and a half hours yesterday.
 
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Dude.. Theres something wrong, gor real. Just sitting here reading this thread in the tapstalk app, im losing one percent every three or four mins.my iphone 4 never did that, i could surf for a lot longer before dropping a percent. Havent tried any fixes yet, gonna use it til ot dies n check my stats first... But theres definitely something wrong :(
 
Did a DFU restore of my wife's phone. Bone stock settings -- only added two apps, FB & 1Password, and added a Wifi network. Otherwise completely stock install, no email accounts or anything.

Did lap test starting at 74% and averaged just over 7 mins each.

Early this evening was able to kill 20% of battery on 20 mins, simply doing Siri texting.

Gonna charge up to 100% & do standby drainage test overnight.

My 4S, on the other hand, since starting this post in TapaTalk has dropped from 17 to 14% (about 5 mins of usage). (Granted I do not currently have a stock install.)
 
Charged by phone to full overnight. Woke up with 99% at 8:00am. I did not make any calls or texts today. Looked at facebook, safari, and some medical apps.
 

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Just wondering out loud...

I have Mobile Me. I haven't switched over to iCloud yet.

For the past 2 days, I've noticed that my email hasn't been pushing to the phone properly, while connected via wifi at work. I've had to manually check my email to get it. I've also been experiencing the same battery drain others seem to be having.

Finally this evening at work, I turned off wifi. My email started pushing instantly, and my battery has only gone down 10% in the last 6 hours, albeit with minimal use. Still, it seems to be draining slower than when I was on wifi.

No claims here, just an observation.
 
I can confirm that my battery life on my 4S (16GB AT&T) is significantly worse than my 4 (16GB AT&T).
I passed & kept my 4 on AT&T, then ended up buying a 4S to replace my wife's shattered 4. After a few days turning off nearly everything on hers the battery life is still horrible.

Then it came to me, there was a great excess of Android bashing on this forum, largely surrounding battery life. Now it's Apples turn. Karma has bit them in the ass :)

If I ignore Siri, the other problem, the 4S at least makes calls reliably. While it took Apple years, at least they got that right.

Too bad it's crippled with such a dainty little display. Otherwise I'd buy one.
 
I passed & kept my 4 on AT&T, then ended up buying a 4S to replace my wife's shattered 4. After a few days turning off nearly everything on hers the battery life is still horrible.

Then it came to me, there was a great excess of Android bashing on this forum, largely surrounding battery life. Now it's Apples turn. Karma has bit them in the ass :)

If I ignore Siri, the other problem, the 4S at least makes calls reliably. While it took Apple years, at least they got that right.

Too bad it's crippled with such a dainty little display. Otherwise I'd buy one.
your wife of all people should know that size doesn't always matter !
 
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)

vitzr said:
I can confirm that my battery life on my 4S (16GB AT&T) is significantly worse than my 4 (16GB AT&T).
I passed & kept my 4 on AT&T, then ended up buying a 4S to replace my wife's shattered 4. After a few days turning off nearly everything on hers the battery life is still horrible.

Then it came to me, there was a great excess of Android bashing on this forum, largely surrounding battery life. Now it's Apples turn. Karma has bit them in the ass :)

If I ignore Siri, the other problem, the 4S at least makes calls reliably. While it took Apple years, at least they got that right.

Too bad it's crippled with such a dainty little display. Otherwise I'd buy one.

Wait till updates start rolling out and then u will see how iPhones will still continue being the best phones out there . Your wife knows best
 
Was having horiblle battery life since I pulled my 4s out of the box. Restored as new phone today and tweaked some settings. Using all of iCloud except photostream and backing up to iCloud. Also turned off everything in the advanced location settings except cell network search and compass calibration. Have brightness set to 25%.

Moderate usage since I took off charger at noon. Used tweetbot off
and on for around 30 min, read through taptalk for a while, safari, played with siri, approx 30 min worth of phone calls, took a couple photos, some text messaging, Facebook, and some speed tests.

I am now at 26% with 4 hours and 20 minutes usage and 11 hours 15 minutes of standby.

Not as good as my 4 but defiantly better than what I was getting. Going to run it down to 0 and do a full charge tomorrow to calibrate. Hopping this gets me a little closer to my 4.
 
Well all just checking in, it's been about two hours since my battery test and I was at 74% at that point.

I've been playing around with the phone, few pics, installed some of my favorite App's, and I just installed my new case... IvySkin Wrangler... AWESOME btw!!! It has a glass screen protector, very nice and can't even tell it's on there. $50... but I am very happy with it.

Anyways I'm now at 53%... going to reboot it and leave it on the nightstand and not plug it in and see where I'm at in the AM. Apple you better not make me late for work! LOL I kid... and am confident I will be awoken on time. :D

I can't say if the battery is working properly yet, will take a few days of testing and a few charge cycles to see what's up... but it's 100% better since the Factory Restore I did last night that's for damn sure.

Sucks to have to start fresh... but if it fixes the issue then I can handle that.
 
my batter life has gotten much better since taking off local weather and one or two other things. I really think it is just the battery indicator having to calibrate like other said, because my improvement is ALOT better. doesn't seem like it should've made this much of a difference

2e9d5b00.jpg


Thats right at if not a little over 6 hrs usage it should be getting. Before I was getting a little over 3 hours usage with 30-35% left. now its well over 3 hours at 40-45%
 
i took it off full charge yesterday morning , have not charged it yet, now i have 25% battery left , usage : 5 hours 43 mins, standby 15 hours , 13 mins, brightness around 20% auto brightness off... Took some advice from many people posting on which settings to take off as well. basically mostly texting and web browsing on wifi and normal talking on phone. Looking to do my first calibrate of battery waiting for battery to die down to fully charge again. have not done 2nd factory restore either. when i first receive phone as set up as new , just did the mail, calendar, notes, ect backup..
 
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can we just bring in to exchange for a new one?
i just disappiointed at this battery life... worse than my 3gs.. and gets hot very easily .
 
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