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Batterygate??

I just did my first semi-controlled test of battery life compared to my old iPhone 4.

With the 4, I took daily walks for 2 hours, using RunKeeper to track my course and time by GPS. I always cleared the multifunction tray, turned off wifi, and turned screen brightness full on, with auto brightness off. During the walks I would occasionally respond to texts, or check email, but only once or twice.

On the 4, I would return home with 78-81% battery according to the indicator.

I just did the same thing with the 4S, and had 74% charge. There is a definite difference, but not much. I'll keep checking throughout the week to see what deviation I experience.
 
Jimbo47 said:
I was wondering the same thing to, simply for the fact facebook kept sending me random notifications for games I haven't played for years now. I actually deleted these games months ago, and turned off all push notifications for facebook, yet I still get them. So I signed off of facebook by opening the app, going to account>log off. Since I started doing this Friday evening, I made it through the remainder of Friday, and the entire day Saturday, so almost 2 full days of standby time, around 7 hours usage if I remember correctly. Put it on the charge last night and I took it off the charge at 9 am this morning, and with heavy usage, still have 82% left.
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Thanks for the tip, I'll give it a go
 
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As today being my tenth official day owning this phone I can say without a doubt that battery life has greatly improved with a few charge cycles. The iPhone 4 battery was so good, I think everyone only expects apple to get way better from year to year, and u just don't get way better from a true smartphone battery than the ip4. Period. I think during actual usage, and not standby, the 4S is srltarting to last longer. Def can tell its faster. You notice the speed in certain areas like camera, opening folders on honescreen that are full, and I've yet to see this phone studder. Can't wait to play these A5 optimized games!!! But battery life is for sure getting better, at least for me.
 
My 4S battery history...

Case 1:
- 1 to 3 bars on Sprint (signal strength varies)
- Strong 802.11n WIFI signal
- Location services turned on for 9 apps, including Reminders (no reminders set), Siri, and Find Friends
- Notifications turned on for 9 apps, including Find Friends, IM+, GV
- Bluetooth off
- No email push notifications
- No apps running in the background
- signed onto IM+ (4 different IM accounts)

* Starting with full charge, 5% loss 6 hours later with no use. (still had 95% charge left)


Case 2:
- Same setup as Case 1, but brightness turned up a little past half way

* Starting with full charge, watched 55 minutes of video over a local WIFI web server, ended with 11% loss.


Case 3:
- Same setup as Case 2

* Watched 4 episodes plus a third of the Walking Dead using the Netflix app, ended with 40% loss (also did some light web browsing). Left the phone at 60% charge, picked it up 12 hours later and it was down to 33%.


Case 4:
- Same setup as Case 1 except...3-4 bars on Sprint and strong 802.11g WIFI signal

* 2% loss after 4 hours of light use (few text messages).


I think the better idling in Case 4 is due to a stronger cell signal than Case 1. If I start using Siri over 3g, battery life plummets quickly (ie 8-10% in 10-15 minutes). I'm satisfied with the 4S's battery life, especially while it idles. My Palm Pre would be at 10% loss in 3.5 hours with no use. The battery would be completely drained in Airplane mode after 3 hours of video. I don't think I could go 24 hours without recharging with any kind of use on the Pre.

I haven't tried going out to different places where I know Sprint has weak signals, ie desert. We'll see how that goes. Also, Sprints speed varies greatly. Some places have faster uploads than downloads (.1 mbps down and .4 mbps up). A few miles away I'll get 1.2 mbps downloads.
 
Would also like to say, over the weekend (I got my phone Friday) I was getting 7.5-8 hours of usage with a decent amount of gaming (just 30-45mins)

Right now my phones battery is draining much quickly and I have just used twitter, facebook, texting, and music.
 
This is me

img0005tr.png


- Siri is on
- iCloud is on Push
- Gmail - Manually
- Brightness at 35% - Auto
- Location services on for - Cam - Facebook - Nike+ - Find My iPhone - FB Messages - Sports Centre
- Wifi on
- Bluetooth off
- iAds services are off


I think thats a pretty good battery Life or maybe not

what do you guys think
 
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Did a restore and setup as new and my phone actually seems worse!

I am at 3 Hours, 21 minutes usage and 6 hours, 3 minutes standby and I am at 44% from a full overnight charge.

My iPhone 4 was at least 30% better if not more.
 
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I turned off the iAds service and left everything else alone and my battery has improved quite a bit.
 
Okay, here's some more pictures. Used for words with friends - a lot. Texts, emails and some safari. Wifi on all day. Bluetooth off. Emails and tweets pushed to me as well as words with friends notifications.
Left was earlier right is right now.
Took off charge at ~9AM.
 

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The Tos said:
The problem is def something running in the background that cannot be stopped. I unplugged my phone at 8:16am after a full recharge. I have used it for MAYBE 20 mins...usuage says 1 hour 3 min standy is 1 hour 9 min. It has been sitting with the screen off for most of that time.....i do not know what is keeping the usuage going. Cellular network data says 39.0 kb sent. I reset it to watch during this time. Received is at 0. What is going on?
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i have the same thing, the usage seems a lot higher than the time i use it.
is your phone gets warm very easily ?
 
I haven't been able to get more than 5.5-6 hours of usage. This is considering all the times I've run the phone down to less than 10% is when I'm streaming things on netflix or using my navigation.

I don't know why people need 24+ hours of standby with the phone. If it's enough to get you through an entire day then that's a great battery.
 
Turn off iAds...

Scramble the letters around and whats its spell...AIDS...thats right iAds is AIDS for your 4S

Truth is my phone has gotten better over the past few days...
 
Signal strength definitely has something to do with the quick drop in battery life. I had the phone in my pocket in an area that only gets 1-2 bars reception. After taking the phone out of my pocket, I noticed that it was warmer than usual, and the battery had drained about 20% in 2.5 hours just sitting idle! The iPhone 4 never exhibited this behavior, at least not to such an extreme degree.

After I returned to an area with good reception, the battery started to drain at a more reasonable pace of 1-2% every hour, although that is still significantly more than the old iPhone 4.

I believe iMessage also has a bearing on battery life drain, as its most likely constantly communicating with Apple's servers at regular intervals, letting it know that the phone is still "available" for iMessages instead of standard texts. I am going to run some tests to see how turning iMessage off affects battery drain.
 
CubeHacker said:
I believe iMessage also has a bearing on battery life drain, as its most likely constantly communicating with Apple's servers at regular intervals, letting it know that the phone is still "available" for iMessages instead of standard texts. I am going to run some tests to see how turning iMessage off affects battery drain.
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I have not noticed a difference with iMessage off vs. on. Also, it doesn't constantly communicate with the server as far as I know. If it did, then iMessages would instantly convert to SMS when you didn't have a data connection (i.e. Verizon while on a call). But this is not the case - iMessage tries to deliver the message for 5 minutes and then automatically re-sends it as an SMS if unsuccessful. Therefore, no constant communication with the server or the 5 minute time out wouldn't be necessary since it would immediately know if you were offline well before 5 minutes.
 
People might as well stop asking "is this normal?" and posting usage screenshots. There is no way to determine normal drainage based on a single screenshot. I could listen to premium spotify over 3G on high quality and another person could listen to their iPod, both for an hour, and show huge % differences. If you want a somewhat more scientific test then do a lap test. Use the stopwatch app to measure the time it takes for your iPhone to drop 1% with no other apps open and 100% brightness. As far as I can tell 4 mins 20 seconds seems to be a very solid average.

Keep a few things in mind with this number. This will go down when using cellular data, playing games, watching movies, and so on. This will go up with features turned off, brightness down, and on wi-fi.

Lastly if you are dropping more then 1% per hour in standby without turning on the screen to even check the time might be a sign of something wrong.
 
I had really terrible battery performance. It was draining to less than 9% after about 4 hours of standby use. I took my 4S to the apple store and had it swapped for a new one...

I charged the new phone overnight and used it all day today from 6:30 am to 9:40 pm, phone and texting mostly. Some Siri and some browsing with wifi on. I'm at 55% battery still! YES!!!

Now for the interesting part, here's a picture of the usage screen... I've never seen this before, no usage data... WTF?

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I get 2 min 20 seconds with this test. 4 bars on Verizon and wi-fi on.
Overnight I seem to lose only 1%.

My 3rd gen iPod touch has horrible battery life after upgrading. There is no battery percentage but with airplane mode on it barely moved for 3 days with very little usage. When I turned airplane mode off I got the 20% warning right away.

Something strange going on.


Oppressed said:
People might as well stop asking "is this normal?" and posting usage screenshots. There is no way to determine normal drainage based on a single screenshot. I could listen to premium spotify over 3G on high quality and another person could listen to their iPod, both for an hour, and show huge % differences. If you want a somewhat more scientific test then do a lap test. Use the stopwatch app to measure the time it takes for your iPhone to drop 1% with no other apps open and 100% brightness. As far as I can tell 4 mins 20 seconds seems to be a very solid average.

Keep a few things in mind with this number. This will go down when using cellular data, playing games, watching movies, and so on. This will go up with features turned off, brightness down, and on wi-fi.

Lastly if you are dropping more then 1% per hour in standby without turning on the screen to even check the time might be a sign of something wrong.
Click to expand...
 
ross77 said:
I get 2 min 20 seconds with this test. 4 bars on Verizon and wi-fi on.
Overnight I seem to lose only 1%.

My 3rd gen iPod touch has horrible battery life after upgrading. There is no battery percentage but with airplane mode on it barely moved for 3 days with very little usage. When I turned airplane mode off I got the 20% warning right away.

Something strange going on.
Click to expand...

Did you ignore the first lap? It is because you didn't start it right when it dropped. Also do it for like 4-5 mins for an average.
 
After charging to 100, then draining to 0 and then chafring to 100 again my phone was great for about 2 days. Then it start to drain in standby at around 2percent an hour (the same I was getting previously).

BUT... I drained it again last night and charged to 100 and having taken it off the charger this morning at 7:30am and it now being almost midday (in Japan) I'm still sitting at 100 percent. I've sent a few imessages during this time only. Perhaps leaving the messages app in the background drains in stand by? Because this is the first time deleted the messages app in the multitasking dock.

This is getting more mysterious by the day. I wonder if I power down the phone and turn it back on if my percentage will still be 100? Hopefully the double drain and charge has done the job.
 
Is anyone having trouble reading their pms
It keeps telling me im logged out and I cant post new threads I can only reply something is bugged.
 
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