Batterygate??

[Nullvector]

Anyone else noticing that the "usage" data seems off?

I just charged my 4s to 100% during lunch break at work. Unplugged it, put it in my pocket, and 55 minutes later, I'm at 85% battery.

I just took a look at usage, and it says since last charge, my usage has been 1hr, the same as standby time.

How can a phone be in "usage" when it's in my pocket, and the screen off, location off, all apps closed, and no incoming calls or texts?

It's also gotten really really hot within that 1hr. The reason I took it out of my pocket is because it was really warm. I was wondering what it was until I pulled the phone out, and noticed that it was really really warm.

The phone went from 100% -> 89% in the 4hours I was at work before lunch. I charge it back to 100% during lunch break, and it's already at 84% with just being in my pocket for the last hour.

I've turned off every service that was recommended on this forum. Wifi is on, Location is off, Siri is off, Time zone is off....

It's getting to the point where I've disabled every service that makes this phone usable, and I still get these spurts of TERRIBLE battery drain.

 

[ap3604]

I feel like my battery life hasn't been all that great. how does this compare to findings that others have had?

Your battery life picture means nothing without actually documenting exactly how much time you did what with the usage and the brightness settings...

8 hours of music while the screen is turned off? terrible...

2 hours of wifi internet browsing and 6 hours of music? terrible...

8 hours of wifi internet browsing? Ok (should be more around 10 hours though)...

People don't really keep track of what they are doing and then ask if its good or bad battery life are going to get a false answer.

 

[sparks9]

I'm holding off buying the 4S until this whole battery "issue" is solved. I would be very unhappy with 4 hours of battery life. I hope Apple will bring out some kind of update soon to fix it.

 

[Brazzy]

Your battery life picture means nothing without actually documenting exactly how much time you did what with the usage and the brightness settings...

8 hours of music while the screen is turned off? terrible...

2 hours of wifi internet browsing and 6 hours of music? terrible...

8 hours of wifi internet browsing? Ok (should be more around 10 hours though)...

People don't really keep track of what they are doing and then ask if its good or bad battery life are going to get a false answer.

tl;dr

 

[jamesarm97]

Here is my latest. Everything in location services disabled but Cell Network Search and Compass Calibration. I have not used the phone purposely over the last day. I have only taken a few phone calls and check email / had text messages. I ran it down to 2% and got the following:

3 hours 32 min usage which I think is bad for little usage. There has to be something in the background still running the battery down or just a bad batch.

 

[deellow]

I have disabled my iCloud account from my iPhone and will see how my battery does without it. If it does great, then I may wait until an iOS patch to fix the issue before turning it back on. I'll keep the account active and up to date on my ipod. I can report back if anyone has any interest.

 

[isoft7]

Well, I've had two iPhone 4s phones since launch and both demonstrate the exact same battery life pattern. Here's a screenshot from this morning.

I still feel like nearly all phones are free from batterygate issue, the problem is with everyones very different application usage and configuration.

The screenshot below was about 15 mins before it died, so 8:30 usage.

1 hour 3G browsing.
1 hour just goofing around with various apps.
45 mins gaming.
30 mins appstore / app downloads
Several emails
Several texts
Couple mins phone call
the rest, about 5+ hours was streaming internet radio via 3G (Slacker radio) screen on and off a lot.

...all 3G, no wifi. About 600mbs downloaded.

 

[wbackner]

I just tried putting the phone in DFU mode and restoring. I set up the phone as new, didn't log into the wireless network, skipped entering an apple id, turned of location services and turned off Siri. So there are no apps or anything on the phone, it is as clean as can be with only apple code on it. I also put it in airplane mode. It is still showing the issue where usage time is mirroring standby time. as it is freshly restored there is nothing for it to do. So even as stock as it can get the problem still exists. It can't be due to an app or corrupted contact if there are no apps or contacts on the phone.

It also still is not recognizing when it is plugged in or unplugged when the cable is in the AC adapter.

I went to a "Genius" yesterday and he insisted that there was nothing wrong with the phone and it is all software. He kept insisting that the battery is good even though that is obviously not the problem. he refused a replacement. My wife's is fine and she gets 2 days off a charge with light usage so i know there are good 4s's out there.

 

[isoft7]

I just tried putting the phone in DFU mode and restoring. I set up the phone as new, didn't log into the wireless network, skipped entering an apple id, turned of location services and turned off Siri. So there are no apps or anything on the phone, it is as clean as can be with only apple code on it. I also put it in airplane mode. It is still showing the issue where usage time is mirroring standby time. as it is freshly restored there is nothing for it to do. So even as stock as it can get the problem still exists. It can't be due to an app or corrupted contact if there are no apps or contacts on the phone.

It also still is not recognizing when it is plugged in or unplugged when the cable is in the AC adapter.

I went to a "Genius" yesterday and he insisted that there was nothing wrong with the phone and it is all software. He kept insisting that the battery is good even though that is obviously not the problem. he refused a replacement. My wife's is fine and she gets 2 days off a charge with light usage so i know there are good 4s's out there.

How much time are you getting before the battery dies? Any social networking aps running in the background?

Your wifes phone will probably last longer no matter what due to how often you probably goof around with your phone vs. how often she does.

 

[marty11]

I'm almost through my first charge cycle and am impressed with the battery.

After unboxing yesterday I charged to 100% before even unlocking the screen. I'm now at 19% after 6:53 usage and 19:45 standby. Pretty good in my book. Heavy surfing, downloading apps, a little garageband, ipod and siri.

All system location services on except time zone. Fetsch email, push facebook.

I'm going to run her to shutdown before recharging.

EDIT: And this was set up as a new phone, not off a backup.

 

[wbackner]

How much time are you getting before the battery dies? Any social networking aps running in the background?

Your wifes phone will probably last longer no matter what due to how often you probably goof around with your phone vs. how often she does.

With my phone as it was, with my apps and settings on it, it was making it until I had to go to bed to plug in. and there was about 6 hours of usage registered on it. However, that was with it sitting on my desk most of the day and only about an hour of real usage. So if the usage numbers were correct it wouldn't be that bad. I am also concerned that the phone doesn't recognize that it is connected to power even though it's charging.

And actually my wife has been using hers more than me. It's her first smart phone and she discovered the Martha Stewart recipes app and her sister just had a baby. Although you are right I would normally be the higher user.

 

[itsmemuffins]

I feel like my battery life hasn't been all that great. how does this compare to findings that others have had?

How can you say that's bad?

 

[Philgr]

Comments on my iPhone 4s Batttery life please

On a course all day took no calls, sent 3 txt messages and received a couple of emails, no usage apart from the above and to wake the iPhone to check battery

8:30 - 100%
10:30 - 79%
12:05 - 58%
14:29 - 29%
15:41 - 9%
16:12 - 1%
16:20 - Dead

Location services off, Bluetooth off, wireless off,

Colleague sat next to me with a iPhone 4 with iOS 5 over the same period with everything enabled dropped from approx 95% to 75% over the same period

 

[jollyreaper]

Pulled mine off the charger at 4pm, sent a few text messages, read some things, down to 79%.

 

[isoft7]

Comments on my iPhone 4s Batttery life please

On a course all day took no calls, sent 3 txt messages and received a couple of emails, no usage apart from the above and to wake the iPhone to check battery

8:30 - 100%
10:30 - 79%
12:05 - 58%
14:29 - 29%
15:41 - 9%
16:12 - 1%
16:20 - Dead

Location services off, Bluetooth off, wireless off,

Colleague sat next to me with a iPhone 4 with iOS 5 over the same period with everything enabled dropped from approx 95% to 75% over the same period

You have to ask yourself, if all you're really using an iPhone for is to check the battery life, perhaps you should downgrade to a less complicated phone.

 

[superdudeo]

Comments on my iPhone 4s Batttery life please

On a course all day took no calls, sent 3 txt messages and received a couple of emails, no usage apart from the above and to wake the iPhone to check battery

8:30 - 100%
10:30 - 79%
12:05 - 58%
14:29 - 29%
15:41 - 9%
16:12 - 1%
16:20 - Dead

Location services off, Bluetooth off, wireless off,

Colleague sat next to me with a iPhone 4 with iOS 5 over the same period with everything enabled dropped from approx 95% to 75% over the same period

You just need to restore the phone and resync, it will be much better. Mine was the same.

 

[Philgr]

You have to ask yourself, if all you're really using an iPhone for is to check the battery life, perhaps you should downgrade to a less complicated phone.

I was on a course all day - a good time to get a good discharge rate for the phone , no time for chat and playing with my iPhone

 

[dhy8386]

iOS 5.0.1 is out that lists bug fixes affecting battery life. I will update and report back. Although probably should find my old testing data to compare but may have lost it.

 

[Oppressed]

"A small number of customers have reported lower than expected battery life on iOS 5 devices. We have found a few bugs that are affecting battery life and we will release a software update to address those in a few weeks.”

A few weeks? Gonna go see if I can download this now anyway.

 

[maclook]

iOS 5.0.1 is out that lists bug fixes affecting battery life. I will update and report back. Although probably should find my old testing data to compare but may have lost it.

Can you check if it fixes the volume issue that Siri causes? For me, the lock and unlock sound become SUPER loud if you activate Siri.

 

[Oppressed]

Can you check if it fixes the volume issue that Siri causes? For me, the lock and unlock sound become SUPER loud if you activate Siri.

I've found that Siri has it's own volume. Just activate Siri, don't speak, and adjust the volume. It will save the setting.

 

[sd13]

the battery drainage issue is definitely not due to iOS 5.0. I backed up my 4S and restored it to an iphone 4. I kept all settings on (all location services, icloud etc.). With almost identical style of usage, my iphone 4 would drain down to 70% with 2.5 hours of usage. On my 4S, my battery would go just about or even lower than 50% with the same 2.5 hours of usage. This clearly shows that all these battery tests by cnet and other review sources are completely inaccurate and that the "batterygate" issue is clearly hardware-related which means that we wont see a fix until the iphone 5 comes out unfortunately

 

[dhy8386]

the battery drainage issue is definitely not due to iOS 5.0. I backed up my 4S and restored it to an iphone 4. I kept all settings on (all location services, icloud etc.). With almost identical style of usage, my iphone 4 would drain down to 70% with 2.5 hours of usage. On my 4S, my battery would go just about or even lower than 50% with the same 2.5 hours of usage. This clearly shows that all these battery tests by cnet and other review sources are completely inaccurate and that the "batterygate" issue is clearly hardware-related which means that we wont see a fix until the iphone 5 comes out unfortunately

Thats incredibly inaccurate. Software is not completely abstracted from hardware and this is very basic. A simple example. The OS on the iPhone 4 would not be calling to the dual antenna system since the i4 doesn't have one but it does on the i4s. If there was a bug in how the software and hardware that changed the antennas worked, and drained battery, it would not present on the i4. There are countless other examples of this. Your test unfortunately, proves nothing unless you knew exactly what the battery bugs were and then understood whether the interplay between the hardware and software made it a fixable issue in the OS

 

[dhy8386]

Can you check if it fixes the volume issue that Siri causes? For me, the lock and unlock sound become SUPER loud if you activate Siri.

Not

 

[maclook]

I've found that Siri has it's own volume. Just activate Siri, don't speak, and adjust the volume. It will save the setting.

You're right but the loud sounds aren't part of Siri. It's the lock/unlock sounds that become full volume despite Siri and ringer volumes set to low.