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iPhone 4S battery drains ~20% in 7hrs in airplane mode

B

bripab007

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Oct 12, 2009
529
26
I can't say I've paid extremely close attention to battery drain, but if feel it has gotten markedly worse in recent weeks.

I tried a fresh restore, reloaded all my apps and reconfigured things, charged to 100%, put the phone in airplane mode, and when I woke ~6-7hrs later, it had drained to 80%.

Does anyone else have any baselines for 4S battery drain while in airplane mode? I feel like my iPhone 4 drained more like 2-3% overnight in airplane mode.
 
I just went out of the country and had my phone in airplane mode. It lasted days... and even then, it was only at 50-something percent.

One thing I also did though that I didn't hear you mention (but I'm not sure it matters since I thought airplane mode was supposed to do this automatically) was go into settings > general > network > and turn off Celluar Data and everything under roaming.

I can fully assure you though that I turned my phone to airplane mode on 5/23 with a decent charge (not full) and used it as a camera/video camera and even connected it to wifi once but never plugged it into a charger until mid-day on 5/29 and it was at 50%+. Now, with that said, it was not turned on all of those nights. I would turn it on during the day to take pics, but it was not on at night most nights (I think I forgot to turn it off one night or something).

I know it's nothing very precise or scientific but it's better than the other replies you've gotten in this thread :p
 
Leonard1818 said:
One thing I also did though that I didn't hear you mention (but I'm not sure it matters since I thought airplane mode was supposed to do this automatically) was go into settings > general > network > and turn off Celluar Data and everything under roaming.
Click to expand...

Yeah, Airplane mode does this, so that's not the problem.

OP - Do a hard reset (hold power and sleep button for 10 seconds until the phone restarts) and then try another Airplane mode experiment overnight. If the results are still this poor (and yes, those are bad numbers) then try restoring it from a backup. If that STILL doesn't fix it, take it to an Apple store.
 
bripab007 said:
I tried a fresh restore, reloaded all my apps and reconfigured things, charged to 100%, put the phone in airplane mode, and when I woke ~6-7hrs later, it had drained to 80%.
Click to expand...

So yeah, I tried a fresh restore, not a restore from backup, intalled all apps and components manually. And a few days prior, I had tried a restore from backup, also to no affect. So doing a fresh restore again or restoring from backup have already been tried to no avail.

I'm 2.5hrs away from the closest Apple store, so this stuff is always fun :mad:

Thanks for the ideas, and I guess I'll try once more by doing a fresh install but not even installing any apps, setting up Siri, iCloud, etc., just a clean slate and see what happens.
 
Okay, I did a fresh restore of 5.1.1 (again!) but this time did not install any apps, did not connect to iCloud, did not even put in my iTunes ID, just go through the welcome dialog screens, charged it to 100%, put it in airplane mode, and when I woke up this morning ~7hrs later, it was still showing 100%. Now it's a few hours later, I've had just a small, 35min of usage on the thing while at work this morning, and it's at 95%, which probably sounds about right.

Sooooo...the mystery continues. I guess I'll just try to slowly add apps and services back and see what happens.

I'll post back if I find anything concrete of interest.
 
bripab007 said:
Okay, I did a fresh restore of 5.1.1 (again!) but this time did not install any apps, did not connect to iCloud, did not even put in my iTunes ID, just go through the welcome dialog screens, charged it to 100%, put it in airplane mode, and when I woke up this morning ~7hrs later, it was still showing 100%. Now it's a few hours later, I've had just a small, 35min of usage on the thing while at work this morning, and it's at 95%, which probably sounds about right.

Sooooo...the mystery continues. I guess I'll just try to slowly add apps and services back and see what happens.

I'll post back if I find anything concrete of interest.
Click to expand...

did you find anything else out??? i am having the sort of the same problem but not in airplane mode. 100% when i go to bed and 79% when i get up. NOTHING running in the background. i have even turned off location services and push notifications. also, it shows i have used the iPhone 5hrs 55mins while i was sleeping but there wasn't any data used. odd.

i have been running 5.1.1 since it came out. everything was fine until i had to perform a recent remote wipe. since then its been acting up. Apple doesn't know what the problem is...
 
I'm sorry I never posted back. I did some testing and tracking of usage over the next few weeks and, after a few phone calls with Apple support, ended up just getting a replacement phone. This one, I'm assuming a refurb model, is without a doubt better with battery life, though it was not a night-and-day difference.
 
TofSanity said:
did you find anything else out??? i am having the sort of the same problem but not in airplane mode. 100% when i go to bed and 79% when i get up. NOTHING running in the background. i have even turned off location services and push notifications. also, it shows i have used the iPhone 5hrs 55mins while i was sleeping but there wasn't any data used. odd.

i have been running 5.1.1 since it came out. everything was fine until i had to perform a recent remote wipe. since then its been acting up. Apple doesn't know what the problem is...
Click to expand...

I had the same problem and they replaced my phone as well. I went from charging every night to making it 2 days sometimes before a charge. It was a huge improvement. You will have to restore and setup as a new phone before they will give you a replacement though. It’s not bad if you sync everything in itunes. Redoing all the setting is kind of a pain but worth it to get a good battery. My 4s battery was never as good as my 4 until I got the replacement but now I would say its on par with the 4.
 
it wasn't the battery (according to the Genius Bar). the last four days i have reset settings, installed from a backup & reinstalled from the iPhone itself. All with the same result. (going to bed at 100% waking up with 79% and around 6 hours being used with barely any 3G usage. I kept everything the same, location serves on, no bluetooth, only mail set to push, and nothing running in the background. so, yesterday i did something different. i ran the battery down to 5% performed a reset of settings only. then at 3% i erased all content and settings. once that was complete the battery died. proceeded to charge to completion. once charged i set the iPhone up to the normal way i use the phone. went to bed at 100% woke up 8 hours later at 100% with only 2 mins of usage. the two minutes it took me to complete the setup.

computers, phones, ipads etc... can be so finicky
 
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