Just to be clear, the article source states the IR is only active when the screen is on.
while this is true, I'm always texting and surfing the web on my phone, so in theory the IR device would be on a lot since my screen is on a pretty decent amount of time out of the day. Like I said before, I did notice a very noticeable battery difference with this feature turned off... for what it's worth...
Cannot believe you just called me out as a lurker. Owned.
As much as "always-on" IR might affect battery life, I'm doubtful that it's responsible for a battery draining at a rate of 10% per hour. My bet's on software.
It surprised me as well lol. If anything I wouldn't say it's necessarily the IR power consumption itself, but sometimes SIRI would just activate without actually be facilitated to turn on. Basically by mistake. This would happen a lot while texting. I noticed this happened when I would put the phone down, so maybe some part of that motion coupled with my hand over the screen activated it? I have a feeling that not technically the IR device, but rather the constant on and off of Siri + searching of when the user is"raising to the face" may amplify battery consumption, at least more than normal.
The raise to speak feature is cool, but buggy to say the least. I wouldn't say it's software, because I have done multiple restores and set up as new, and have been using 5.0.1 (both beta 1 and beta 2).
Who knows if this is the main cause... the battery issue is a whole other crazy, complex, story. What I do know is that I turned off "raise to speak," and my battery is definitely better, and I have two iPhone 4S and had them in a pretty controlled environment for comparisons.