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I can confirm what another poster said: the Genius Bar does NOT want you to do a factory restore PRIOR to visiting.

Last time we went to the apple store for a battery was with my wife's 3GS. The genius just told me to go home and restore the phone...if that didn't work i would have to make another trip (however it did resolve the problem)

What if you restored at home only to find the problem still there, does the genius make you restore again?
 
I was getting about 5-6 hours of battery life and decided to turn off the iCloud stuff. I just got 2 hours of usage (browsing) and still have 75% which is about what my iPhone 4 has. Now the phone should last about 7-8 hours. I think iCloud definitely hits the battery hard.

iCloud is like Jersey. We go hard.
 
yea, why would i want to search for cell networks anyways...

It would be nice if we had some sort of explanation or definition of what these settings actually mean.

Doing a google search yields some results claiming that it's for "region monitoring" for use with geofence/reminders.
 
wouldn't this prevent your phone from going from 3G to edge, or vice versa?

probably. but this is what is causing the battery to deplete to fast.

the phone is constantly searching and deciding from all signals once any change in the current signal occurs
 
I've gone through alot of battery issue posts and disabled just about everything... still having battery issues. I'm doing training at my work from 8:30 to 12pm all this week so it is always in stand by.

Took my phone off the charger around 8:00AM...

8:26 am - 94%
12:02 pm -53%

Says current standby usage is at 4 hours and 9 minutes since last charge, currently at 51% as of 12:15pm.
 
I was getting about 5-6 hours of battery life and decided to turn off the iCloud stuff. I just got 2 hours of usage (browsing) and still have 75% which is about what my iPhone 4 has. Now the phone should last about 7-8 hours. I think iCloud definitely hits the battery hard.

did you just turn everything off in the icloud settings? or is there a main switch to turn off the whole icloud?
 
It's looking more and more like its something that the phone is doing in standby that is the culprit. From what I've seen from my own use and from others on the forum, the phone actually seems to get pretty decent battery life when it is actually doing something. For example, I listened to Pandora on a 30 minute bus ride home yesterday and only lost 4%. Today, I used voice memos to record a 50 minute lecture and lost 6%. Even browsing the web or doing other tasks that involve the screen being on, we all seem to be getting about 4-5 minutes for every 1% of drop. That translates into 400-500 minutes of usage (about 6.5-8 hours), which is in line with what Apple is claiming.

HOWEVER, it seems like every time I pick my phone up off my desk or take it out of my pocket to check the time, the battery meter has dropped at least 1-2%, even though the phone has been doing absolutely nothing (except listening for new information as normal).

I'm going to try to do some quantitative measurements of standby battery drain and see what I come up with. I'll post results later today. We already know it's going to be worse than the iPhone 4 though. I used to leave my 4 off the charger overnight when it ended the day with >50% battery. When I woke up, the battery would be down by 3-4% (after roughly 8 hours of standby). We are already seeing the 4S drop several percentage points per hour while in standby. That stat alone pretty much accounts for the diminished battery life everyone is experiencing. I think Apple know this as well, which is why they quoted a significantly diminished standby time.

What I don't understand is why this is happening. Conventional wisdom would say the reduced battery life is due to the increased power consumption of the dual core A5 chip and the much more powerful GPU. That's fine, except the screen is off in standby and the phone is not doing any processor-intensive tasks. When the screen is on and the phone is doing something that relies heavily on the dual core processor, the battery life seems to be roughly on par with what we got on the iPhone 4 (ok, it's a bit less, but that CAN be explained by the A5 chip). So the question is, what the hell is the 4S doing the in standby that is causing it to drain battery like this? And, more importantly, why would Apple let a product out the door that drains battery almost as fast when it's off as when it's on?
 
Turning off that compass thing did the trick for me. My phone would last through the day but I was getting those slight percentage drops even in standby. turned off that compass It was 100% at 7:30am and now at 9:30am It is still 100% :D
 
Update 1: Now achieving implied baseline standby times
After turning everything off conceivable and still dropping battery percentage every 5 to 6 minutes (since i received pre order), I bit the bullet and did a restore as new device and did NOT use my backup.
I then disabled everything except wifi (location off , notifications all off, no email accounts installed, iMessage off , siri off, no diagnostics send, no wifi iTunes sync, cellular data off, ping off, no third party apps, no apps running). I started a standby test at 60% battery. During my standby test I received two missed calls and periodically i flashed the screen on to check battery measurement. 2hrs and 15 min later I dropped 1% to 59%, which extrapolates slightly beyond the 200hr standby time (which you would hope with nothing but housekeeping OS processes running). I am stopping this test now and plan to test implied 3G call times and implied internet on wifi times. I then plan to add back in one exchange email account with no push and reconfirm all run times.
 
I have not done a restore yet, i do have some settings off that were recommended to turn off, and i have screen brightness about 25% i just like it that way , sometimes at 20% am just used to having my devices dimmed down mac , ipad or iphone. this was yesterdays usage ,mostly web browsing on wifi , and texting , normal talk, no games yet, no streaming of music or movies . i have two gmail accounts set up as exchange for push, last night i let it go till it turned off to do first calibrate. Going to check it out today see how it goes, even though i didnt feel i had problems towards the end i had to force the phone to die played some youtube vidoes and ect, in all am satisfied with my battery for now, hopefully it doesnt get to bad once i really start using it.

by the way , i love my screen , no yellow tint, no huge bluish tint , just perfect
and my phone has not heated up on me, ill try netflix or some games and test it out more
 

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Last time we went to the apple store for a battery was with my wife's 3GS. The genius just told me to go home and restore the phone...if that didn't work i would have to make another trip (however it did resolve the problem)

What if you restored at home only to find the problem still there, does the genius make you restore again?

Well, that's exactly what I told him. I restored the phone so they wouldn't tell me to go home to restore it! Ha! Sounds like a catch 22. For me, the restore did absolutely nothing, though other people have had luck.
 
How does this affect phone usage?

The Cellular network search option has nothing to do with calls. It's disabling cell network triangulation for location services. This is a bad idea IMHO. Without triangulation you're going to be hitting satellite GPS every time which takes far more battery power than the triangulation from towers. I wouldn't shut this option off.

What I've seen: 87% 4 h 30 min after taking it off charger. Last night I removed iCloud and this morning I removed the stock and weather widget from notification center. At the pace I'm going I'll be at 61% at 8 pm. I'm a fairly heavy user and this is my typical usage pattern (about 1h 30 minutes). Last night when I plugged in at 8PM I was at 33% and 4h usage. I've got everything turned on except BT.
 
probably. but this is what is causing the battery to deplete to fast.

the phone is constantly searching and deciding from all signals once any change in the current signal occurs

This is VERY interesting. Testing this out now.

----------

what is the purpose of this service? anyone.

To determine which cell tower or network gives you the best cellular signal, I assume.
 
Turning off that compass thing did the trick for me. My phone would last through the day but I was getting those slight percentage drops even in standby. turned off that compass It was 100% at 7:30am and now at 9:30am It is still 100% :D

What do you notice in regards to functionality with compass off?

I'm assuming it will only affect the compass application and maps functionality? I would also assume that compass functionality isn't needed for majority of maps directions, unless you are walking?
 
go to location services > system services

turn off "cell network search"

wala no more battery problems.

wala? parlay voo frawnsaze?

I turned off cell network search this morning on the way to work. Then I hit a no-3G spot, which are all over NYC, and the phone went to edge and wouldn't go back to 3G until I turned network search back on.
 
I have an iPhone 4 and iOS 5 and I have definitely noticed a reduction - once a crazy reduction that made no sense, around 30% gone in 3 hours with little running but in general it has stabilised to something a little worse than typical iOS 4 usage. Remember this is an iPhone 4 with a well optimised and disciplined battery (I have it 10 months).

The facts are that iOS 5 does more, there is no doubt about it, hence it's heavier on the juice. The other facts are that maybe the 4S should have got a revised and better battery for the sake of all this extra functionality because I hear it got the SAME battery as the 4, well at least one that wasn't radically better than the 4 anyway.
 
My 4S seems to lose battery much quicker than my 4 did as well. However, I have yet to not charge it at night, and have not noticed any weird overnight battery loss. During the day though, it dies much quicker even when its locked in my pocket.
 
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