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Cdaddy112

macrumors member
Original poster
Oct 10, 2011
85
0
I was getting pretty bad battery life from my sprint 16gb, would start the day at 8 am with 100% and with very light email and browsing on 3G I would be at 40 or 45% by around noon, this morning I got a brand new AT&T 4s (sprint data speeds sucked) and my battery is way better, I have been using HEAVY since 10 am on 3G and I am at 72% right now, so if maybe there is a bad batch of batteries? I don't know, but this new phone is like night and day as far as battery usage.
 
Well, it's definitely not the carrier. I have an AT&T model and I am down to 50% by noon just like you. I'm going to try cycling the battery once again tonight and if it's not better by tomorrow afternoon, I'm going to take it to my Apple store and have them look at it.
 
Well, it's definitely not the carrier. I have an AT&T model and I am down to 50% by noon just like you. I'm going to try cycling the battery once again tonight and if it's not better by tomorrow afternoon, I'm going to take it to my Apple store and have them look at it.

I would highly encourage that, I just thought oh well the battery isn't that great, I would have never known it was supposed to last this long if I didn't get a new one.
 
The battery life is terrible. It is terrible on my wife's 4 (which previously has excellent battery life) and my 4S both on AT&T. I think it is an iOS5 defect rather than a hardware issue
 
The battery life is terrible. It is terrible on my wife's 4 (which previously has excellent battery life) and my 4S both on AT&T. I think it is an iOS5 defect rather than a hardware issue

I'm not sure, my battery life is so much better with my new 4S

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Also I have not changed one setting at all from my previous 4S
 
I calibrated my battery last night. Unplugged at 845am and 3 hours later, my battery is at 70% from a full charge. I have Verizon.
 
I have everything including locations services ON and fetch my email every 5 minutes and still have 70% left on my battery at the end of the day. I average 30-50 emails as day and 2000 minutes of talk a month
 
I'm not sure, my battery life is so much better with my new 4S

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Also I have not changed one setting at all from my previous 4S

GSM phones are known to have a better battery life, especially when CDMA phones like Verizon or Sprint have bad signal reception.
 
i drained my battery last night for the first time. the battery meter was way off as it showed 1% on pandora for over 20 minutes, sound all the way up and i went through 4 or 5 songs on 3g..
 
Well I noticed that if you turn on the location based reminders, then it keeps the GPS on all the time. How else would it know you've left work?
 
The following are some settings I have in my 4S and I seem to be getting good battery life:

iCloud > Documents & Data > Use Cellular > OFF
iCloud > PhotoStream > OFF
iCloud > Mail > OFF
iCloud > Storage & Backup > iCloud Backup > OFF
Location Services > System Services > Setting Time Zone - OFF, Location Based iAds - OFF
Weather - Local Weather > OFF
Notification Center > Stocks > OFF
Bluetooth > OFF
General > About > Diagnostics & Usage > Don’t Send > ON
General > Restrictions > Ping > OFF
General > Spotlight Search > Mail - OFF, Messages - OFF
 
iCloud really sucks the battery big time! My iPhone 4S was warm all the time:(
Carefully check your iCloud settings if you are using it. You do not need to turn on everything.
 
I was getting really poor battery life too. I found that bluetooth was on even though it wasn't showing an icon on the screen. I shut it off and the phone seems to be acting normally. HTH!
 
Well I noticed that if you turn on the location based reminders, then it keeps the GPS on all the time. How else would it know you've left work?

There's definitely something to this.

What it is supposed to do is use a low-power alternative where the phone notices that it has switched cell towers and only then turn on GPS for more precision. I think this isn't working the way it is supposed to. I charged my phone to 100% last night, switched to charging my iPad in the middle of the night when I was up, and this morning the phone was down to 83%! I deleted all of my geo-fenced reminders and usage seems to be back to normal now.
 
I dunno, I'm seeing anywhere from 5.5 to 9 hours of use (not standby) time. And by use, I mean fairly heavy use, lots of web surfing (mix of WiFi and 3G) including many page changes, videos, games, mapping, stocks, photos and video recording, Siri, Find My Friends, some iBooks, email (which is pushed), iCloud sync on, and a few voice calls (Verizon). Bottom line is the 4S easily has enough battery to get me through a day pretty much no matter what I'm doing with it, which is all I need since I always charge it overnight. Now if I were on a 15 hour flight yeah, it's not gonna make it through that, but for a normal day I've found it to be pretty good, much better than my 3GS battery.

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The following are some settings I have in my 4S and I seem to be getting good battery life:

iCloud > Documents & Data > Use Cellular > OFF
iCloud > PhotoStream > OFF
iCloud > Mail > OFF
iCloud > Storage & Backup > iCloud Backup > OFF
Location Services > System Services > Setting Time Zone - OFF, Location Based iAds - OFF
Weather - Local Weather > OFF
Notification Center > Stocks > OFF
Bluetooth > OFF
General > About > Diagnostics & Usage > Don’t Send > ON
General > Restrictions > Ping > OFF
General > Spotlight Search > Mail - OFF, Messages - OFF

Yeah but where's the fun in that? That's like vegetarian meatloaf.
 
CDMA iPhone users should put the phone on Airplane Mode when in low coverage areas - such as when you're inside an older building that blocks the wireless signal - this will improve your battery life somewhat.
 
is it anecdotal or do you have real evidence?

just curious.

Just my experience from using the sprint phone for about 3 days and then using my new 4S all day today, I'm not saying its a certain carrier, I feel there is a bad batch of batteries, the one I bought happens to be a different carrier, but honestly the battery life is way better
 
I dunno, I'm seeing anywhere from 5.5 to 9 hours of use (not standby) time. And by use, I mean fairly heavy use, lots of web surfing (mix of WiFi and 3G) including many page changes, videos, games, mapping, stocks, photos and video recording, Siri, Find My Friends, some iBooks, email (which is pushed), iCloud sync on, and a few voice calls (Verizon). Bottom line is the 4S easily has enough battery to get me through a day pretty much no matter what I'm doing with it, which is all I need since I always charge it overnight. Now if I were on a 15 hour flight yeah, it's not gonna make it through that, but for a normal day I've found it to be pretty good, much better than my 3GS battery.

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Yeah but where's the fun in that? That's like vegetarian meatloaf.

No.. it's called turning off stuff you don't really need or use. If you turn every single option on it's going to drain fast. Do we really need iAds using our location? In my opinion no.
 
OMG! There is NO comparison!

Are you sure. Look at this chart (from Anandtech):

41017.png


In Web browsing, Galaxy SII - 5.016 h, iPhone 4 - 6.65. Now, we see that iPhone 4S will have shorter battery life (some report that it's much shorter).

Now, let's look at the talk time:

41019.png


And finally, Engadget has just reported that iPhone 4S' battery time while shooting video is just horrendous (compared to iPhone 4 or SGSII).
 
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