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Iphone 4s Battery Drain (on Standby) with certain wireless routers?

H

Hambones

macrumors member
Original poster
Jul 15, 2008
86
0
Ok, so, I purchased the IPhone 4s on launch day and hooked it up to the same wireless router (Netgear WPN802) that I have used with every iphone I've ever owned without issue. In my house currently, I have an iphone 4s, iphone 4 and iphone 3gs - all hooked up to that same wireless router.

When I put the phone to sleep or standby, I come back in about an hour and check the usage in settings > general and it will have an hour of standby but also oddly about 45 mins of usage - clearly the phone was not used. I have also disabled pretty much every service (icloud, location, siri, etc.) and it still drains. When i disable the wifi it doesn't drain at all. All of my other iOS devices in the house do NOT drain like the iphone 4s does on the same wifi network.

I have a second wifi router in the house (linksys), so I decided to try that one and see if it had the drain. Followed the same standby procedures as above and there was no drain. I have swapped them back and forth numerous times, performed all of the tests and am 100% confident it's the router that's causing the drain on standby.

Can anyone explain how this could happen, or if you're having similar issues? Maybe some routers are constantly pinging devices? Maybe some require more power consumption to stay connected?

FYI - both routers are setup the same (same encryption, location in the house, etc.)

Thanks!

-Scott
 
Last edited:
Hambones said:
Ok, so, I purchased the IPhone 4s on launch day and hooked it up to the same wireless router (Netgear WPN802) that I have used with every iphone I've ever owned without issue. In my house currently, I have an iphone 4s, iphone 4 and iphone 3gs - all hooked up to that same wireless router.

When I put the phone to sleep or standby, I come back in about an hour and check the usage in settings > general and it will have an hour of standby but also oddly about 45 mins of usage - clearly the phone was not used. I have also disabled pretty much every service (icloud, location, siri, etc.) and it still drains. When i disable the wifi it doesn't drain at all. All of my other iOS devices in the house do NOT drain like the iphone 4s does on the same wifi network.

I have a second wifi router in the house (linksys), so I decided to try that one and see if it had the drain. Followed the same standby procedures as above and there was no drain. I have swapped them back and forth numerous times, performed all of the tests and am 100% confident it's the router that's causing the drain on standby.

Can anyone explain how this could happen, or if you're having similar issues? Maybe some routers are constantly pinging devices? Maybe some require more power consumption to stay connected?

FYI - both routers are setup the same (same encryption, location in the house, etc.)

Thanks!

-Scott
Click to expand...

Could it perhaps be how often the router checks to see what devices are connected to it? (can someone confirm if your router does this). and how about how many times a connection is reset?
 
Hambones said:
Ok, so, I purchased the IPhone 4s on launch day and hooked it up to the same wireless router (Netgear WPN802) that I have used with every iphone I've ever owned without issue. In my house currently, I have an iphone 4s, iphone 4 and iphone 3gs - all hooked up to that same wireless router.

When I put the phone to sleep or standby, I come back in about an hour and check the usage in settings > general and it will have an hour of standby but also oddly about 45 mins of usage - clearly the phone was not used. I have also disabled pretty much every service (icloud, location, siri, etc.) and it still drains. When i disable the wifi it doesn't drain at all. All of my other iOS devices in the house do NOT drain like the iphone 4s does on the same wifi network.

I have a second wifi router in the house (linksys), so I decided to try that one and see if it had the drain. Followed the same standby procedures as above and there was no drain. I have swapped them back and forth numerous times, performed all of the tests and am 100% confident it's the router that's causing the drain on standby.

Can anyone explain how this could happen, or if you're having similar issues? Maybe some routers are constantly pinging devices? Maybe some require more power consumption to stay connected?

FYI - both routers are setup the same (same encryption, location in the house, etc.)

Thanks!

-Scott
Click to expand...
Instead of swapping out the router did you try turning off wifi on the phone and see if you get the same results. It sounds like the phone is having difficulty maintaining connection with the router and is constantly connecting and disconnecting.
 
nebo1ss said:
Instead of swapping out the router did you try turning off wifi on the phone and see if you get the same results. It sounds like the phone is having difficulty maintaining connection with the router and is constantly connecting and disconnecting.
Click to expand...

Turning off WIFI stops the drain on standby. However, like I mention above I connect to a different router (identical in all "setup" aspects but make & model) and it doesn't drain. It must be some new hardware in the iPhone 4s conflicting with certain routers as I have the other iphones in the house and they do NOT have the drain on standby with this particular router.
 
Yes! Yes! yes! This is happening to me. My 3gs has always been fine. I got a new router last week. One by AOL. It all seemed fine. The internet worked ... but then 2 days later I discovered my macs were not seeing each other when they were on in the Shared tab on Finder (Bear with me, this is relevant!) How annoying. It took me a few days but then I started to wonder about trying out our previous router, netgear, and see whether there was the same issue. All of a sudden the Mac computers see each other again.... hmmmm interesting....

So I carry on with the AOL router for a week (not needing regular access to the other macs). All this time my phone is dying a terrible death in less than 24 hours. Like you, I have switched everything off - it just connects via wifi on my home network. At night the router is turned off. So I discover that over night the iphone doesn't lose much charge (back to what it had been up until last week). So I came to the realisation that it is the wifi that is the issue - although I had no idea why or how as it had never been an issue before.
I hadn't checked the usage though, that would have been very interesting indeed.

Anyway, today I turned off the AOL router and back on the netgear because I needed access to my other computers... And that's when I suddenly realised... my iphone has lost hardly nothing in charge (and it is connected to wifi!) and netgear has been on all day.

So, like you, my conclusion is that it's all about the router. But why it is, I don't know!
 
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