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Batterygate??

2005CTS said:
My last phone - a Motorola Atrix4G - lasted longer than that! I could easily get through a full day on a single charge.
Click to expand...

The atrix has a much larger battery.

Today I noticed my 16gb 4s battery draining pretty quickly. I'm gonna run some tests to see of I can track down what's causing it. I also wish apple had a battery diag tool like android so I can see what's using the most battery.
 
11hrs 20min standby
3hrs 42 min usage

Very light internet usage..2 short phone calls..email set to fetch 15min

not sure if this is good or bad..Im at 17% now
 
Updates...

I called Apple Care on my way home from work. Explained what I'm seeing, and was told that I was the 4th person that specific rep. had dealt with this week regarding poor battery life on the 4S. Take that for what it is... lol

Anyways I was told that Apple would cross-ship a brand new phone to me, or I could call a local Apple Store and if they have one in stock, I can just walk in and swap it for a brand new device.

Apple return policy is 30 days for the iPhone.

So with that knowledge I called my carries, AT&T, and was told that I am covered with their "30 day no remorse" guarantee and as long as I called them before Nov. 7th I can cancel the new plan and revert back to my old phone at any time.

Additionally they told me that I would need to bring my old phone, a 3G, into a AT&T store so they could update it with a new SIM card... free of charge. I asked why, and they said when you upgrade to a new device they "kill" your old SIM in their system and it cannot be reactivated.

Basically I have two more weeks to really make up my mind, and I'm going to call and see if I can find one at the local (hour+ away) Apple Store...

I like the device enough to try replacing it, but if that one shows any signs of similar behavior then it's refund time.

The AT&T rep. told me that he's been given documentation on how to help people optimize their batteries, and to tell them that the 4S is supposed to be draining the battery much faster than a 4 or 3GS because of the A5 chip... their words not mine.

Anyways hope this info is helpful to someone else. I won't have time to drive to the physical store until next week, so for now I'm going to try cycling the battery a few more times over the next few days and see what's up.

I was really pissed this morning when after 7 hours on the AC charger, I saw 91% on the phone when I unplugged the cable... that was a first, and not a good sign IMO.

So how's my usage after seeing that this morning, 12 hours later? Well I am at 8% and these are my stats... just awesome #'s

6265129848_34d3b07c1b_m.jpg
 
I've been saying it's the A5, but noooo... everyone here thinks they're so smart and I must be so stupid.

If ONLY they knew what I did for a living, they'd know I know what I am talking about. ;)

Regardless, the battery life is still the best for a phone of this spec.
 
isoft7 said:
I've been saying it's the A5, but noooo... everyone here thinks they're so smart and I must be so stupid.

If ONLY they knew what I did for a living, they'd know I know what I am talking about. ;)

Regardless, the battery life is still the best for a phone of this spec.
Click to expand...

Hi, here is tons of great stuff... For me what worked was to turn off location services I don't need, manual fetching mails and turned off data & document backup off in iCloud. I now have my iPhone is use for 48h and it's down to 6%... I think that's ok.

But to your point with the A5, I do feel that using the phone heavy, it's taking more energy from power than it may should... Not sure yet what to do.

However if there is a real issue with that phone I am sure there will be

A) Massive recall on phones
B) Class-Action lawsuit

Again, that's just my experience with the 4s

Cheers
D
 
Sorry for cross-posting, but would you be so kind as to check whether you are experiencing the same effect? Thanks.



Check your cellular data usage.

With iCloud enabled, data is constantly being sent and received, regardless of whether iCloud features are actually turned on or off.

Once I deleted the entire iCloud account from my 4S, it stopped.
Battery life is much (!) better now.

I don't know why, but iCloud seems to be communicating constantly, even if its features are not enabled. Great feature, not so great implementation..
 
isoft7 said:
I've been saying it's the A5, but noooo... everyone here thinks they're so smart and I must be so stupid.

If ONLY they knew what I did for a living, they'd know I know what I am talking about. ;)

Regardless, the battery life is still the best for a phone of this spec.
Click to expand...

I honestly don't think there is a problem with the hardware. I agree that it's the chip. Do you think there is anything apple can do in an update to help improve battery life ?
 
atomwork said:
Hi, here is tons of great stuff... For me what worked was to turn off location services I don't need, manual fetching mails and turned off data & document backup off in iCloud. I now have my iPhone is use for 48h and it's down to 6%... I think that's ok.

But to your point with the A5, I do feel that using the phone heavy, it's taking more energy from power than it may should... Not sure yet what to do.

However if there is a real issue with that phone I am sure there will be

A) Massive recall on phones
B) Class-Action lawsuit

Again, that's just my experience with the 4s

Cheers
D
Click to expand...

I agree that if there is a problem with these devices, beyond just more power consumption from better hardware, Apple will do what it takes to fix it. Via recall, or replacement.

No way they'll let their name get too tarnished.

Guess we'll have to wait and see. And good luck!

----------
Lone Wolf said:
I honestly don't think there is a problem with the hardware. I agree that it's the chip. Do you think there is anything apple can do in an update to help improve battery life ?
Click to expand...

I would suggest they might be able to disable one core of the A5, or give the user an option to turn it off, however, I know very little about software so I really couldn't say.
 
isoft7 said:
I've been saying it's the A5, but noooo... everyone here thinks they're so smart and I must be so stupid.

If ONLY they knew what I did for a living, they'd know I know what I am talking about. ;)

Regardless, the battery life is still the best for a phone of this spec.
Click to expand...
But how would that explain great battery life that quite a few report with 4S? Or how does that explain very similarly horrible life that quite people with 4 who have upgraded to iOS 5 suddenly started experiencing as well? Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to explain it.
 
C DM said:
But how would that explain great battery life that quite a few report with 4S? Or how does that explain very similarly horrible life that quite people with 4 who have upgraded to iOS 5 suddenly started experiencing as well? Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to explain it.
Click to expand...

I argue strongly that it all depends on usage, I really believe those who report positive results are simply not using their phones in the same ways those who have seen issues are.

What is "moderate use", what is "heavy use"? It's all open to personal interpretation.
 
I'm using both cores of my chip I think, ;) and I'm averaging over 7 hrs use, little to none of it being music, and it seems to be improving a bit each cycle. So, if people are getting 3-4 hours use, seems to me the dual core chip isn't the culprit. I will say my ip4 seemed to give me an hour more, and that I'd attribute to the chip.

I don't baby the phone, I use it pretty hard.
 
spectre51 said:
The atrix has a much larger battery.

Today I noticed my 16gb 4s battery draining pretty quickly. I'm gonna run some tests to see of I can track down what's causing it. I also wish apple had a battery diag tool like android so I can see what's using the most battery.
Click to expand...

What like this iStat

unfortunately it doesn't look like its been updated in awhile.
 
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isoft7 said:
I argue strongly that it all depends on usage, I really believe those who report positive results are simply not using their phones in the same ways those who have seen issues are.

What is "moderate use", what is "heavy use"? It's all open to personal interpretation.
Click to expand...
Some of that certainly can play a role. I can say that from personal experience, comparing to what I've been noticing, in my case, on my iPhone 4 with iOS 4 and then iOS 5, with my usage remaining the same as before, there's a noticeable drop in how long a full charge lasts--basically each 1% of the battery gets used up noticeably faster when the phone is in use. Even comparing to another iPhone 4 configured in the same way but with iOS 4, performing the same exact actions over a period of some time, the battery goes down almost twice slower with iOS 4 compared to iOS 5.

There's definitely something to all of it, between iOS 5 and maybe even 4S in particular. Hopefully some iOS updates will start coming out in the very near future to address these kinds of issues (as well as various other issues/bugs that have been popping up here and there for different people).
 
If I can get 10-12 hours on a charge with "normal" usage...whatever that is..I'll be happy. Right now I'm a little over 12 hours standby and 6 hrs usage. Battery reads 8%
 
Yesterday, my phone made it to 5 hours use, 12+ hours standby. I charged it and then left it unplugged overnight.

Today, it is about to die at...5 hours usage, 20 hours standby. Can't seem to get past 5 hours (and that's a very technical 5 hours, I didn't use it nearly that much). Pretty poor in comparison to my launch day 3GS.
 
hey folks....

16GB black iPhone 4S...Canadian provider Telus...serial #C39xxx series.

I, too, could literally watch the battery drop 1% every 5-ish minutes when I first got the phone. Even placing phone in Airplane mode caused the same swift drop of power. .. However, this happened -after- restoring from a backup of an iPhone 4.

I tried out the solution(s) provided here...which was to factory restore and turn off all System Services...iCloud (doesn't matter to me since everything I need is saved in iTunes anyway)...and charge the phone to 100% and then some using Battery Doctor.

After doing this, in Airplane mode..with approx. 40 minutes of basic usage (just moving around through menus, playing an audio book in iTunes..no other apps running..no surfing..still in airplane mode)...and just over 10 hours standby time...90% charge left...got to class, turned Airplane mode off..and could see the battery drop more quickly..but, then..around Noon-1pm..something happened..which was the battery reached around 65%..and has finally just now dropped to 64% 5 hours later. This was with using Siri 2-3x..sent about 4 texts..snapped several photos...and made a 5 minute phone call, checked Voice Mail a couple of times..and more iTunes use.

So, hmmm...maybe for some of us (at least me) the problem was just letting the battery stabilize (which doesn't make scientific sense to me) with time. Certainly, though, restoring from an old iPhone 4 backup f**'d my battery usage over! Won't be doing that again.

Good luck, everyone.

edit: it seems the (grudging?) consensus in the very long Apple support thread re: the battery issue is that one must drain battery, charge, drain, charge 2-3x for the "heat" issues and the short battery life problems to disappear.
 
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I bit the bullet and made an appointment to see a Genius (using that term very loosely)... I will be going on Saturday unless there is a miracle and my phone keeps charge. What are everyone's serial numbers? Mine begins with C38GJW - I wonder if it's the batch?
 
i'm willing to lose app save data etc, but i don't want to lose contacts and text messages.

any way to extract those and start a fresh of new?
 
Had mine replaced by Apple

jeffm5690 said:
I bit the bullet and made an appointment to see a Genius (using that term very loosely)... I will be going on Saturday unless there is a miracle and my phone keeps charge. What are everyone's serial numbers? Mine begins with C38GJW - I wonder if it's the batch?
Click to expand...

I have a Sprint 4S 32gig Black. Original phone received on launch day had serial number that started DNP. I was experiencing horrendous battery life. Random usage meter increases, poor standby time (going to bed with 95% and waking up to 75%), and lots of heat being generated by the phone. Geniuses replaced it no questions asked, and now my new phone starts C39GH.

It took 4 hours of heavy use after I got it (30 texts in/out using Siri, numerous calls using siri, and web browsing), it dropped from 81% to 63%. Given how hard I was using it, this does not seem unreasonable but only time (ha) will tell over the next few days. I have charged it up to 100% and will let you know how it goes.
 
Back from the Apple Store with a new Phone.

Old serial number began with C38G.
New serial number begins with C39G.

I will post tomorrow with some results.

While I was waiting at the store I did a lap test and took a screen shot of one of their only floor model that was NOT similar to the ones above. The results were in line with others that I have tested in the C38G serial numbers. The screenshots of the floor model are below.

That first lap was going from 100% to 99% to disregard it.
 

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