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Need Advice: Should I start over...

F

fins831

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Oct 7, 2011
657
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I was the first person in my family to take the plunge into getting a 4S. Now my dad and my sister just got them....their phones batteries are 2x better than mine. After calibration, I average 4 hrs of facebook/safari/twitter use....my sister and father average 6-8 hrs with the same usage and standby time, give or take an hr or so of standby....

They both started over...as in, new contacts, new iphone, no backups, re-downloaded all apps...I am wondering since I upgraded from a 3GS and used my backup, if I should just bite the bullet and reset, setup as new phone, and just type in my contacts, only like 42, and just start fresh as well...

Is there any evidence that starting fresh vs using a restore is beneficial to battery life, because I am using 5.0.1 and my battery is the same as before....and I am growing weary of the battery life waiting for the next attempt at a fix.

Is this a hail mary, or something that should be done to know if its a faulty battery or just a corrupted contact/bad restore?

Thanks
 
fins831 said:
...something that should be done to know if its a faulty battery or just a corrupted contact/bad restore?
Click to expand...

I'm not sure anyone really knows the answer to this. My phone was getting 4-6hrs without any of the more major battery issues, set up from my old iPhone. The other iPhone on my plan was new and set up as such. It was the one with problems which worsened after the upgrade to 5.0.1. Took it in and it had major crashes with the springboard on diagnostics in addition to rogue sent data usage and ended up getting a new phone after restore didn't help. No problems with the new phone and great battery life.

Interestingly, I got terrible battery life after following some battery saving methods I read. I could see the battery counter dripping down without basically no usage. Switched back to the old settings, problem solved. Weird.

I think ios 5 is really to blame in the end. My iPad only began having stability issues after the upgrade. If you are up for the hassle, then try a restore and see what it does. If not, wait it out for the next update.

No way to know for sure. Personally from what you describe, I'd wait.
 
I made a huge mistake.

Thinking it might be something in the settings or preferences I tried everything suggested in this forum. After wasting hours of time I decided to make an appt with the genius bar.

They were very nice, apologized for my inconvenience & immediately gave me a new phone.

That only lasted a day, the battery life was no better.

Apple seems stumped. One wonders how long it will take them to find the problem. If it's like Antennagate we're screwed till the next new phone is released.

At times like this my SGS II is valued more than ever.

Perhaps next year Apole will get back on track, I'm looking forward to it.
 
I got an iPhone 4S a week ago, and I was upgrading from an iPhone 4 running iOS 4.1.

From my personal experience in computers, a straight upgrade from 2 different software or hardware architectures often means trouble. So I setup my 4S as a new phone, and manually imported my address books, application settings, and databases from my 4 to the 4S.

I calibrated my battery, and the battery on my 4S (5.0.0) runs as good as my 4 (4.1).

You will find iBackupBot extremely useful in this case.
 
thanks for the tip on the program, might export my contacts and then just do a clean reset tomorrow night after work.

and by manually imported, is that using this program, or you typed it all in on the new phone?
 
Restore as new. Restoring from a backup has been the cause of battery longevity issues for many folks and not just the 4S. As far as evidence you'll have to trust the folks in the forum. :) If the battery life is still poor, you'll have a good case for it being a hardware issue.
 
fins831 said:
thanks for the tip on the program, might export my contacts and then just do a clean reset tomorrow night after work.

and by manually imported, is that using this program, or you typed it all in on the new phone?
Click to expand...

I use a Mac, so I just let Address Book and Mail (applications that came with the Mac OS) re-sync my contact and notes to the iPhone.

I exported the SMS database and call history database from my 4, then imported back into the 4S. Your phone will automatically reboot when the restore completes.

You can restore each file individually, you don't have to do them all at once.

Although one caveat of the restore method is that it cannot restore a new file, i.e. if a file doesn't already exist on the 4S, it cannot restore to it. Keep this in mind when you try to restore some application settings. When you first install an app it may not have a default setting file, you will need to launch the app once to create the setting files.
 
Daytona 360 said:
I use a Mac, so I just let Address Book and Mail (applications that came with the Mac OS) re-sync my contact and notes to the iPhone.

I exported the SMS database and call history database from my 4, then imported back into the 4S. Your phone will automatically reboot when the restore completes.

You can restore each file individually, you don't have to do them all at once.

Although one caveat of the restore method is that it cannot restore a new file, i.e. if a file doesn't already exist on the 4S, it cannot restore to it. Keep this in mind when you try to restore some application settings. When you first install an app it may not have a default setting file, you will need to launch the app once to create the setting files.
Click to expand...

Was gonna do that also...except with the apps, I was going to transfer my purchases and then just load them on the new setup...unless you think I should just wifi download all of em again...I don't know what the proper procedure is...
 
I set up iCloud on my 3GS, put my contacts into the cloud (nothing else turned on to backup to cloud), then set up my new 4S as a new phone. Then downloaded my contacts and only from iCloud backup.
I know there are some rumors that something about corrupted contacts backups or whatever is related to battery issues, but my battery is doing great right now. (which it wasn't at the very start, which was before I put my contacts on).
I shut off cloud on the 4S and chose to not delete the info from phone after.
Worth a shot? I think you can delete anything you want after if it seems to do harm.
I also had upgraded to iOS 5.0.1 before doing this. My battery improved since everything, significantly.
 
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Just got done building my new computer, it is up and running so I am going to be updating my phone next...either tonight or tomorrow minute I get home from work.
 
Across all of its platforms, Apple continues to demonstrate that they do no know how to successfully upgrade their OS's.

It has been shown over and over that a clean install is the best install.
 
I bought a couple of iPhone 4s sim free.

My wife restored from an old backup from her previous iPhone, i started a fresh. There isn't any difference in battery life.

I'm a heavy user with all push services turned on, multiple accounts, bluetooth always on, wifi + twitter, safari, etc etc.....

I'm very pleased with battery life. It lasts about a day and a half.


There are a few things to note:

- have you enabled wifi sync with your iTunes library on the computer? try turning this off

- store in settings - check it isn't set to download all purchases over mobile data too.
 
My 4S comes in the mail tomorrow and rather than restore from a backup of my 4 I'm going to start over. Once I sign in with iCloud most of the work is already done. From there I just sync a couple of email accounts and download my apps again. I figure it's better to start fresh. Just make sure you remember all of the little settings that you had in there. It sucks to not be able to get it just right like you had it before.
 
I restored my 4s from my 3gs backup and i haven't had a single problem with my battery life. It tends to actually be better than my 3gs in most cases.

Always lasts me till the end of the day, my 3gs i usually had to plug it in around when i got home from work.

With my 4s i can just wait till i get in bed, its really nice.

I'd say try starting over and see what happens. I don't think its a problem with a backup of a 3gs.
 
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