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How bad is the iPhone 4S' battery life exactly?

S

superstrongboy

macrumors member
Original poster
Feb 23, 2011
39
0
Okay so im thinking of switching to iphone 4s, because of battery life issues with my current SGS and the fact that android apps suck!

now i have a ipod touch 4g so im well familiarized with iOS and decided to move to iphone 4s! but i've heard it has battery issues. My SGS currently gets me barely through a day of usage and it's really annoying.

Will iPhone 4s be able to gimme decent battery life with the following usage?
My average daily usage is as follows:

texting - throughout 7 am to 10 pm ish, light to moderate texting.
web browsing - 10-15 mins a day
facebooking - 20-30 mins a day
music - maybe for 2-3 hours a day
games - 30 mins - an hour a day.

music and games is not a big deal since if iphone 4s cant support ALL of that, i still have my ipod with me, but i'd prefer to carry only 1 device instead of 2.
 
The 4S' battery is very good. It should last you long enough, as long as you set it up correctly.
 
Best way to put it is, shave about an hour off your daily usage compared to an iPhone 4. Unless your making phone calls constantly, then you'll actually get a little over an hour of extra juice. But standby/wifi is an hour less for a 24 hour usage window.
 
The battery life is good. It's comparable to previous iPhones. You're just reading posts of people who have problems, but not the other people who have none, which I suspect is a lot more. I can last a whole day, almost 2 if I use it sparingly, about 6 hours of total usage time. For your use, it definitely can last you a whole day.
 
Intell said:
The 4S' battery is very good. It should last you long enough, as long as you set it up correctly.
Click to expand...

any guides so as to set it up correctly?

Jare said:
Best way to put it is, shave about an hour off your daily usage compared to an iPhone 4. Unless your making phone calls constantly, then you'll actually get a little over an hour of extra juice. But standby/wifi is an hour less for a 24 hour usage window.
Click to expand...

ah no i rarely call lol, kinda ironic since that's a phone's main use but still :p

thatoneguy82 said:
The battery life is good. It's comparable to previous iPhones. You're just reading posts of people who have problems, but not the other people who have none, which I suspect is a lot more. I can last a whole day, almost 2 if I use it sparingly, about 6 hours of total usage time. For your use, it definitely can last you a whole day.
Click to expand...

aight thanks mate! much appreciated.


does having the icloud features on have a big impact on the battery life?
 
It's bad enough to make small children cry, weak men doubt themselves, and clergy to question their faith.

No seriously, the battery life is fine, how you use the phone will determine how long it lasts. My phone sat idle for today for 8-9 hours. Missed multiple calls, recieved text and MMS messages, a ton of emails... etc. Went down 2 percent.

On my way home talked on it the whole way, used data, did some light surfing around the house, and I'm just now dipping into the 89 percent range.
 
superstrongboy said:
aight thanks mate! much appreciated.


does having the icloud features on have a big impact on the battery life?
Click to expand...

There's bit of a controversy on that. As far the "normal" features, mail, contacts, calendar, etc synching, that's fine. However, the backup I've found seems to affect the battery life. I won't ever restore from an iCloud backup so I don't use it. But, on the off chance I do, I do a manual every couple days. Some will say no, of course. Another thing I found out is that some apps left running in the background can drain the battery, so clearing the task bar regularly will help.
 
Initially i had some issues with the battery but after calibrating and turning off a couple things not needed my battery life is awesome .

I game alot on my phone and i can kill the battery in approx 4 hours doing that but for talking occasional browsing etc i can get a couple days idling etc.

Got my mom the same phone for example and she is a light user but i know she talks on the phone quite abit so today she told me she has not plugged in the phone for 2 days to charge. When she first got it the battery was draining like crazy and she hated it.

I upgraded hers to 5.01 while mine is still on 5.0 but we are both more the happy - ill bet it will get even better with updates or maybe slightly better.

Some people have serious issues though and i will never discount them like i have seen others do because they dont have problems. I know all to well that all electronics are not created equal regardless if they look the same :).
 
When you open it, charge to 100% and restore as New Phone.

Then, cycle it till the phone shuts down.

Then, charge it up to 100%.

Repeat power cycle once more.

This is how I get really great battery life out of mine - 9 hours of normal usage for me, which is much longer than I actually need.
 
Here some tips to help extend your battery life:
1. Turn off unnessary programs like push e-mail, GPS tracks, Bluetooth, WiFi, notifications.
2. Manually terminate background apps.
3. Lower the screen brightness.
4. Don't always put the device in your pocket: The hotter your iPhone gets, the faster the battery will die.
 
I use mine to talk, I get about 200-300 emails a day, and play with mine. i get a fulls days worth out of it. At 10:00 still going strong.
 
etalk said:
Here some tips to help extend your battery life:
1. Turn off unnessary programs like push e-mail, GPS tracks, Bluetooth, WiFi, notifications.
2. Manually terminate background apps.
3. Lower the screen brightness.
4. Don't always put the device in your pocket: The hotter your iPhone gets, the faster the battery will die.
Click to expand...

LOL no offense but that's what i had to do on my android and i'd rather go with a normal brick cellphone rather than a smartphone if i had to turn off the push email, push FB notifications and lower the screen brightness.

for my android i had to do all that and that's when i get "usable" battery life. so yeah i'd prefer to keep most of the stuff on except for bluetooth and wifi.

----------
Primejimbo said:
I use mine to talk, I get about 200-300 emails a day, and play with mine. i get a fulls days worth out of it. At 10:00 still going strong.
Click to expand...

the real question is, how many of those emails do you reply to :p because that's what actually counts haha :p
 
Got my 4S two days ago and still have 46% battery life, but since I plugged it to my pc to sync, it does not show me my stats.
 
the one thing that I think impacts my battery life the worst is having a weak signal.

It also likes to plummet when I use things such as navigation but that's somewhat to be expected.

I have come to realize that my android (samsung) phone wasn't *that* bad with battery...
 
trust me , iphone 4S has is good but battery is not good enough because they didn't build improve in it , they're hurry to release iphone but they don't go over it and test for battery ,maybe we should let apple spend 2/3 years to develope super battery for us ..........
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A405 Safari/7534.48.3)

iphone4s64gb said:
trust me , iphone 4S has is good but battery is not good enough because they didn't build improve in it , they're hurry to release iphone but they don't go over it and test for battery ,maybe we should let apple spend 2/3 years to develope super battery for us ..........
Click to expand...

What's sad is that the majority of 4S users have excellent battery life.
 
Yeah, the other day I TRIED to kill my battery playing games and finally gave up and went to bed...
 
w00t951 said:
When you open it, charge to 100% and restore as New Phone.

Then, cycle it till the phone shuts down.

Then, charge it up to 100%.

Repeat power cycle once more.

This is how I get really great battery life out of mine - 9 hours of normal usage for me, which is much longer than I actually need.
Click to expand...

New Phone??? Is that the only way to prevent issues?
 
fedecape said:
New Phone??? Is that the only way to prevent issues?
Click to expand...

No.

They recommend that you pull it out of the box and activate it (no charge) and then let it drain all the way down. Do a full charge and enjoy.

There is a LOT of false info going around on these batteries so I suggest you do your own research on how to best handle the battery. Numerous sources will tell you it's BAD to let the battery drain all the way down until it dies. Apple recommends you fully drain the battery once a month (which I believe is more for calibration than battery maintenance). Keep in mind Apple will also sell you a new battery for $80, so I don't think they're really concerned with you getting every last iota of useage out of your battery.

Either way, I intend to follow the recommendation. For what it's worth, here's what Apple has to say:

http://www.apple.com/batteries/

Another thing to keep in mind is how many millions of these phones are sold and how many people do NOTHING for/to the battery. Unbox and go.
 
My launch day 4S had horrible battery life, even after the iOS update. I went the apple store, had it replaced and this one has excellent battery life. I do a lot of texting, twitter/facebook, calls, web browsing and gaming and I normally have around 20-30% left every night when I charge it. I still think the initial battery issue was just a bad production run, but thats a whole different debate.

Long story short, battery life is really good, especially compared to other smart phones.

edited: I agree with Leonard1818. Once you properly "calibrate" the battery its great.
 
I got a new 4S yesterday, and the battery is terrible. I set it up as a new phone, I've turned off all notifications, all location settings, turned email to fetch, turned off Siri, and turned off wifi.
I have sent 5 texts, posted 3 facebook comments, and it has been locked in standby mode the rest of the time.
After 6 hours, my battery is down to 60 percent. My iphone 4 I replaced was a champ, and never had any battery issues.
Will a calibration power cycle solve this large of a battery drain? Or might I have to exchange for another one?
 
superstrongboy said:
Okay so im thinking of switching to iphone 4s, because of battery life issues with my current SGS and the fact that android apps suck!

now i have a ipod touch 4g so im well familiarized with iOS and decided to move to iphone 4s! but i've heard it has battery issues. My SGS currently gets me barely through a day of usage and it's really annoying.

Will iPhone 4s be able to gimme decent battery life with the following usage?
My average daily usage is as follows:

texting - throughout 7 am to 10 pm ish, light to moderate texting.
web browsing - 10-15 mins a day
facebooking - 20-30 mins a day
music - maybe for 2-3 hours a day
games - 30 mins - an hour a day.

music and games is not a big deal since if iphone 4s cant support ALL of that, i still have my ipod with me, but i'd prefer to carry only 1 device instead of 2.
Click to expand...

When I had a android (Thunderbolt, Droid Bionic) I was charging the phone at night, in the car to work, at work, in the car on the way home from work and at home. And I still had issues.

With my iphone 4s I charge in the car to and from work and that is it. Unless I am streaming all day or playing games, then I will have to charge it at home.
 
Just make sure that whichever service provider you choose has good signal where you normally travel (home, work, and in between). I find that on my trip to DC (via VRE) there are a couple areas where I get no service, which kills the phone much faster, regardless of actual usage.
On my 2 hour trip (my door to work) I lose about 11% battery life. iMessage and listening to podcasts is all I tend to do. Most of the time I read on my Kindle (device) to save (iPhone) battery.
 
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