Apple engineers working with iPhone 4S users to fix battery woes

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Comments

  • Reply 21 of 98
    charlitunacharlituna Posts: 7,217member
    I myself would say hell no if someone contacted me claiming to work for Apple in this sort of situation. It sounds like a great scam for getting folks info.



    They have built in diagnostic info already that they can retrieve if you go in for help. Supposedly there is a way they can do it over the phone as well. and it seems more Apple to ask them to go back to the store and trade their bad phone for a new one so the engineers could get the dud in their hands.
  • Reply 22 of 98
    I turned off syncing calendars from iCloud and disabled ping and battery life has increased somewhat. All Apple is going to do is ask them to install the power profile on their phones and return the results.
  • Reply 23 of 98
    palegolaspalegolas Posts: 1,361member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by MacInsider2 View Post


    Ridiculous. Reading the people with problems, most of them don't understand their settings -such as turning on iCloud which during first backup will use lots of battery as it uploads your data to apple which will use battery on wifi!



    Otherwise, people need to stop doing restores and do "setup as new phone"

    6 hours since last full charge i am at 77% left with occassionally email etc.

    Overnight, lost about 8% charge.

    All great to me.



    Yeah exactly my thoughts. iCloud and Siri alone is probably stealing a great deal of precious CPU cycles. If you turn off all these great features, turn off 3G, turn off Notifications, iCloud, Siri (can you turn her off?), push e-mail, GPS, "find my iPhone" etc.. it'll probaby last for a week on one charge!

    The same with the iPad. Turn off all these features and it'll last forever.
  • Reply 24 of 98
    saareksaarek Posts: 1,520member
    I've had major problems with my iPhone 4S' battery life, drains about 10% an hour in idle. This morning I dropped 20% in one hour with 45 mins idle and 15 mins light web browsing....



    iCloud is turned off and I rarely use Siri, signal was strong the whole time.



    Really weird, never had an issue with my 3GS, serious case of buyers remorse right now!
  • Reply 25 of 98
    zoetmbzoetmb Posts: 2,654member
    When I first got my iPhone 3G, the battery life seemed awful and I panicked and bought one of those external batteries that you can plug in to charge the iPhone's battery, but in 2 1/2 years, I've only used it about five times.



    I turned down the brightness, shut off Bluetooth except when I'm in the car and using a headset, shut off notifications, shut off push and shut off location services, except when I'm outside.



    I can always go one full day without recharging, sometimes two.



    I suspect making the same settings on the iPhone 4 might help.



    The other thing I've found (and I found this with traditional phones before I got the iPhone as well) is that in a crowded city like New York, where the phone is always hunting for a cell, battery life is much worse than when I'm "on the road". I'm always amazed how much better the phone works (and the battery lasts) when I'm in other cities, like San Francisco, Chicago or London. (My iPhone works especially great in London...it was like having a new phone.)
  • Reply 26 of 98
    maltzmaltz Posts: 453member
    I had this problem, but it doesn't do it now. It turned out to be a calibration issue for me. I have pretty much every feature you can think of turned on. Bluetooth, Siri, push email, etc. I use them all, so turning them off kind of defeats the purpose, imo.



    Anyway, to recalibrate:



    1) Drain the battery until the phone shuts off on its own.



    2) Charge it non-stop back to 100% (Should take 2 - 3 hrs)



    When I first started draining the phone, I was losing about 5-7% per hour in standby. As the battery drained, the rate the percentage was dropping got slower and when it got to 1%, it sat there for almost an hour. Then it finally shut itself off. I recharged back to 100% in one sitting, and now it's got the same or better battery life my 3GS had that I was upgrading from.
  • Reply 27 of 98
    neosumneosum Posts: 113member
    My 4s battery goes down about 1% per hour on standby, with everything enabled including bluetooth, wifi, notifications and location services. I have my brightness turned all the way up. With regular usage, I'm usually down to 30% at the EOD so a nightly charge is definitely required. But then again, it's always been this way with all the iphones I've owned.



    I do suspect something with the ios5 software that's causing some people to experience faster battery drain though. And I think it involves the mail app. The ones who had the battery drain issue that I've troubleshooted for had their mail app stuck on updating. For the most part, deleting the mail accounts, resetting the network settings, then re-adding the accounts fixed the problem.



    One one particular iphone I worked on, no matter what I did, the yahoo account was stuck on updating. I finally decided to add an icloud email account to that phone, then yahoo. After that, I deleted the icloud email account and the yahoo was then working normally and the battery drain was fixed.
  • Reply 28 of 98
    stelligentstelligent Posts: 2,680member
    Overall, my iP4S seems to last longer on a single charge than my iP4. Usage has not varied.



    My iP4 had the occasional tendency to heat up and lose 90% of charge within 1 hr. This has not happened with the 4S.
  • Reply 29 of 98
    I noticed some network activity that I couldn't explain, and which was very repetitive, like every other second.

    I tracked it down to iCloud documents.

    I went into the system settings, iCloud, and unchecked "Document and Data".

    my iPhone 4S used to go from 100% at night to around 60% in the morning, and now it's in the 90s.

    AND (most of all), the iPhone doesn't send the tcp/ip messages every second on my lan like it used to.

    (I tracked it down when I saw connexion logs from ubsd all over the place).



    Try it !



    (please forward to the apple engineers if you talk to them)
  • Reply 30 of 98
    I'm sorry, but to those of you who are saying there is no problem, you are wrong. As has been established in numerous threads and even in this article, SOME users are experiencing reduced battery life with the 4S. It's not a matter of how we use it, and it's not because we refuse to put it on the charger when we go to bed at night (in fact my phone is dead or so close to it by 11PM that I don't have a choice). I have actually been using my 4S less than I used my 4 because I worry about the battery dying before I get home from work each day. With the 4, I usually only had to charge it every other day. The drain is happening in standby mode as well. I charged my phone up enough that I could leave it off the charger last night. When I woke up 6.5 hours later, it had drained 18% doing nothing but receiving 5 emails and a text message. That's not my imagination running wild because I'm using the phone more than normal. That's a real problem, as it means I will lose around 48%(!!!) of my battery to standby alone over the course of a 16 hour day.



    There is a battery drain problem. It's not affecting everyone. Nobody knows if it's hardware or software related yet (I'm leaning towards software though). But, the people who are affected by this issue have a right to be irritated that the battery is performing well below Apple's specifications. I totally understand that a dual core processor means I'm going to see a small reduction in battery life. However, I should not have to worry about the phone dying before I get home even when I'm hardly using it.



    [edit]On the topic of this article, I am thrilled to hear Apple is at least tacitly admitting there is a problem here. I hope they can get a software update out soon![/edit]
  • Reply 31 of 98
    The first few days my new 4S had HORRIBLE battery life, I needed to recharge mid-day even when it just sat on my desk. Worse than the 3G it replaced and much worse the the 4 has ever been.



    Seems to have figured itself out, though: this week battery life has been fantastic. I'm on my third day of charge right now, though I just got the 20% warning.



    Battery Break In?

    iCloud server overload issues causing phones to over-connect?



    Or, the simple answer - I'm using it less.
  • Reply 32 of 98
    mactoidmactoid Posts: 112member
    I've had a problem with my iPhone 4 (not the S) since I installed iOS5. I find that I have to significantly curtail the location services and even iCloud. If not, the phone gets very WARM to the touch and the battery gets sucked down in a couple of hours. I was thinking my phone was hosed, but now it appears to be a software problem. I guess that's kinda good news...
  • Reply 33 of 98
    moxommoxom Posts: 326member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by MacInsider2 View Post


    You really need to take the 3G out to the pasture and shoot it.



    I already have!



    I love my new iPhone 4S (big jump from the 3G) but battery life is a big problem at the moment. I'm confident Apple will provide a solution very soon...
  • Reply 34 of 98
    cgjcgj Posts: 276member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by palegolas View Post


    Yeah exactly my thoughts. iCloud and Siri alone is probably stealing a great deal of precious CPU cycles. If you turn off all these great features, turn off 3G, turn off Notifications, iCloud, Siri (can you turn her off?), push e-mail, GPS, "find my iPhone" etc.. it'll probaby last for a week on one charge!

    The same with the iPad. Turn off all these features and it'll last forever.



    Siri's a woman, of course not!
  • Reply 35 of 98
    linkgx1linkgx1 Posts: 742member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by CGJ View Post


    Siri's a woman, of course not!



    You can always stuff something in her mouth....
  • Reply 36 of 98
    conradjoeconradjoe Posts: 1,887member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by [Greg] View Post


    Neither of us can comfortably make it through a day. I usually hit ~10% by EOD, and she has to stop using it in the evenings to make it to bedtime, or plugs it in when she gets home...



    I would find that to be completely unacceptable. Likely if you go to an Apple store, it (both of them, I guess) will be replaced with ones that are not defective.
  • Reply 37 of 98
    I was also contacted & had a 24-hour log installed after making some postings in the Apple community boards. I thought it was great that Apple was following this issue so closely; I only wish the log had been active when I had my most extreme battery problems (96% to 4% in 12 hours with fairly minimal usage). By the time they'd contacted me I had turned off push and most notifications, was linking to only one email account (work) only in the evenings, etc.



    I hope they come up with an OS fix or partial fix; I really like my 4S, but feel like I shouldn't have to turn off half its features to have a reliably charged phone.
  • Reply 38 of 98
    conradjoeconradjoe Posts: 1,887member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Maltz View Post


    I had this problem, but it doesn't do it now. It turned out to be a calibration issue for me. I have pretty much every feature you can think of turned on. Bluetooth, Siri, push email, etc. I use them all, so turning them off kind of defeats the purpose, imo.



    Anyway, to recalibrate:



    1) Drain the battery until the phone shuts off on its own.



    2) Charge it non-stop back to 100% (Should take 2 - 3 hrs)



    When I first started draining the phone, I was losing about 5-7% per hour in standby. As the battery drained, the rate the percentage was dropping got slower and when it got to 1%, it sat there for almost an hour. Then it finally shut itself off. I recharged back to 100% in one sitting, and now it's got the same or better battery life my 3GS had that I was upgrading from.



    Why don't they do that at the factory, before selling the phone? Is QA really that lax?
  • Reply 39 of 98
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by MacInsider2 View Post


    Ridiculous. Reading the people with problems, most of them don't understand their settings -such as turning on iCloud which during first backup will use lots of battery as it uploads your data to apple which will use battery on wifi!



    Otherwise, people need to stop doing restores and do "setup as new phone"



    6 hours since last full charge i am at 77% left with occassionally email etc.



    Overnight, lost about 8% charge.



    All great to me.



    It's not clear from your post what you did in those 6 hours. If you lost 23% in 6 hours on standby, while not using the phone, I don't think that's anything to be pleased with. But if you were using the phone a lot over the course of 6 hours, then that's probably a reasonable drain.



    I tend to lose 4% overnight, and then about 20% in the 25 minutes I'm on the train, checking news sites (via apps, not Safari) via Sprint's 3G. Battery usage then slows down again once I'm at work & on wifi.
  • Reply 40 of 98
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Maltz View Post


    I had this problem, but it doesn't do it now. It turned out to be a calibration issue for me. [...]



    Anyway, to recalibrate:



    1) Drain the battery until the phone shuts off on its own.



    2) Charge it non-stop back to 100% (Should take 2 - 3 hrs)



    When I first started draining the phone, I was losing about 5-7% per hour in standby. As the battery drained, the rate the percentage was dropping got slower and when it got to 1%, it sat there for almost an hour. Then it finally shut itself off. I recharged back to 100% in one sitting, and now it's got the same or better battery life my 3GS had that I was upgrading from.



    My battery life seemed to improve quite a bit after I had 2 days in a row of draining to 4%, then charging to 100%. of course I did other things at the same time (turn off push, etc.) so hard to say if this 'battery calibration' alone was beneficial.
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