Significant Battery Life Variance

[Tknull]

After using my iPhone 4S for several days, my battery life has gone from horrid to decent.

1st Full Charge: Just under 2 hours usage, and around 10 hours standby. The phone was on all stock settings.

2nd Full Charge: After reading the battery life posts, and suggestions, i made a few tweaks from the stock settings. Little over 3 hours usage.

3rd Full Charge: Modified all settings that would save energy and weren't important to me... turned off most push settings, adjusted the screen brightness, turned off location services that weren't needed, and turned off wi-fi and bluetooth when not needed. Made a HUGE difference. I'm currently at 6 Hours 17 Min Usage, and 1 Day 4 hours standby... and still have 10% battery.

Bottom line... like others, i initially thought that i must have a battery problem. I never would have imagined that changing the settings could result in such dramatic variance in battery life. I would have assumed 10% to 30% variance... not 300%. This makes me skeptical that there is a serious issue going around with battery problems. Rather, the initial settings just chew up battery life. And I have comfort that with iOS5 updates, things should only get better.

 

[Kyotoma]

After using my iPhone 4S for several days, my battery life has gone from horrid to decent.

1st Full Charge: Just under 2 hours usage, and around 10 hours standby. The phone was on all stock settings.

2nd Full Charge: After reading the battery life posts, and suggestions, i made a few tweaks from the stock settings. Little over 3 hours usage.

3rd Full Charge: Modified all settings that would save energy and weren't important to me... turned off most push settings, adjusted the screen brightness, turned off location services that weren't needed, and turned off wi-fi and bluetooth when not needed. Made a HUGE difference. I'm currently at 6 Hours 17 Min Usage, and 1 Day 4 hours standby... and still have 10% battery.

Bottom line... like others, i initially thought that i must have a battery problem. I never would have imagined that changing the settings could result in such dramatic variance in battery life. I would have assumed 10% to 30% variance... not 300%. This makes me skeptical that there is a serious issue going around with battery problems. Rather, the initial settings just chew up battery life. And I have comfort that with iOS5 updates, things should only get better.

I don't think it was ever a software setting. The batteries inside the iPhones were just so new that they have to be broken in. Cycle the battery a few times like you did and boom, instantly better/more normal.

 

[takeshi74]

The batteries inside the iPhones were just so new that they have to be broken in.

Citation? I've never heard from any credible source that break in is required.

People quite often overlook the new toy effect as well.

 

[tempusfugit]

If you have to turn off all that stuff to get good battery life then something is clearly wrong. Doing these things is such an android-esque solution. My iPhone 4 absolutely had fantastic battery life despite high brightness, BT and wifi always on, etc.

My 4s has good battery life but it's not like my 4. Plain and simple. It gets me through the day so I'm not fretting just yet but I'm looking forward to a possible software update to address some battery issues.

Like I said, it gets me through the day reliably so I can't complain too much, but I feel like it should be better.

 

[Tknull]

If you have to turn off all that stuff to get good battery life then something is clearly wrong. Doing these things is such an android-esque solution. My iPhone 4 absolutely had fantastic battery life despite high brightness, BT and wifi always on, etc.

My 4s has good battery life but it's not like my 4. Plain and simple. It gets me through the day so I'm not fretting just yet but I'm looking forward to a possible software update to address some battery issues.

Like I said, it gets me through the day reliably so I can't complain too much, but I feel like it should be better.

Well, I agree and disagree with you. It'd be nice to not have to turn anything off in order to save power. But I think the point here is that clearly these settings have a dramatic impact on battery life.... something that they perhaps should not be having.... and if this is so, its a software issue. Software issues do not worry me at all, because Apple WILL fix them. Hardware issues are what worry me.

 

[Kyotoma]

Citation? I've never heard from any credible source that break in is required.

People quite often overlook the new toy effect as well.

http://www.apple.com/batteries/iphone.html

 

[pdaviesoz]

Battery Life

My wife also has shorter battery life issues. Compared to my phone, also a 4s, hers goes down way faster. Apparently, Apple are working on a solution.