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

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Comments

  • Reply 41 of 98
    Based on what I've read in other iPhone threads, I would guess to:



    - Turn off Location Services



    - Turn off Wifi



    - Lower screen brightness





    Just basic stuff. LCD's have always been battery drainers, as has Wifi.
  • Reply 42 of 98
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by neosum View Post


    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.



    That's very interesting, my biggest drains in the first days coincided with having my Yahoo account added. I've had the yahoo account off since then, and my battery life's better. It'd be funny (in a kind of way) if the problem was neither the phone nor iOS5, but a 3rd-party issue such as Yahoo, that affected only certain people.



    (FWIW, I wouldn't be surprised on whit if Yahoo *were* the problem; it's enough of a pain for me to access Yahoo email via a desktop PC with a high-speed connection. I think Yahoo needs to get new gerbils for their servers, or something.)
  • Reply 43 of 98
    I have two Iphone 4..one work and one personal similiar loads on both. I upgraded my personal IOS and the battery life has gone down dramatically...have been twice to the apple store, they changed the battery but still doing the same drain...can't make until 2pm on an overnight charge....there's no notifications or bluetooth or gps on...



    Not a problem for the 4 that I did not upgrade
  • Reply 44 of 98
    cameronjcameronj Posts: 2,357member
    I'd love to be part of this solution search - my iPhone hits 20% remaining maybe 3 hours earlier than my old one did - around 5 PM instead of 7-8 PM.
  • Reply 45 of 98
    cameronjcameronj Posts: 2,357member
    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.



    I guess since you're not having a problem, everyone who is must be an idiot, a liar, or worse.



    Or maybe some phones have a problem and some don't.



    Maybe if you don't have a problem, there's not much reason for you to post on this thread, you think?
  • Reply 46 of 98
    cameronjcameronj Posts: 2,357member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by ConradJoe View Post


    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.



    I took mine to the Apple store and had it replaced, no problem.



    New one has the same problem.



    I've had every iPhone so far, so I know what to expect. This is not up to my expectations. That said, it's not the end of the world, and I can wait a few weeks while they figure it out and send me a software update.
  • Reply 47 of 98
    cameronjcameronj Posts: 2,357member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Goldenclaw View Post


    Based on what I've read in other iPhone threads, I would guess to:



    - Turn off Location Services



    - Turn off Wifi



    - Lower screen brightness





    Just basic stuff. LCD's have always been battery drainers, as has Wifi.



    Turn off Phone. Turn off screen.



    Battery life goes through the roof!



    Dumb advice.
  • Reply 48 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. 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).



    Pretty much the same experience here. I think this is the first thing to try.



    The second thing is to go carefully down the list of Settings > Notifications and Settings > Location Services, turning off everything that you don't use or need.



    The third thing is just to use the device for a week or two -- allowing it to drain well down before recharging. For some reason this new battery seems to benefit from a breaking-in period.



    I personally rebel against more radical solutions, like turning off Wi-Fi, Siri, or Location Services. These are important features that make the 4S such a great device. This is the stuff we're paying for.



    Luckily, the obvious steps above, while undramatic, have made the 4S behave almost exactly like my iPhone 4 in normal everyday use.
  • Reply 49 of 98
    Disabling individual apps' notifications and access to location won't really help your battery life. All of those apps use the same single service for notifications and another single service for location. Even with all them set to be able to notify you or use location they are each taking their turn when the app is actually open, not passively using battery power in the background. Only in the case of a GPS navigation app like for instance Waze, can the app do much in the background and that's simply by it continuing to use the GPS service. Even then it's only going to be using your GPS service in the background when you have it giving you turn by turn directions or things like that. The way multi-tasking is setup on iOS means it's not something you can turn down and get more battery life from, it's essentially doing every possible optimization for you automatically.
  • Reply 50 of 98
    I had an appointment with the Genius Bar at my local store last night about my 4S battery life, random shut downs, and heat. The battery life was the same or a little worse than my 2 year old 3G, the phone would randomly shut down and I would have to use the hard restart to get it to turn on, and anytime I was in 3G range, the phone was like a hand warmer. My wife's identical 4S (both are white, AT&T, 16GB) didn't have any of these problems. They checked it with a diagnostic program and found it was showing a ridiculous amount of usage. The genius suggested wiping the firmware and setting the phone up as new, rather than from a backup. He said he had done this to his 4S as well, with his phone having most of the problems I was having. He also speculated that future updates to iOS might help with power management, but he made sure to say this wasn't an official Apple policy.



    Today's battery life was about the same as before the work, but it didn't shut down or stay warm. Hopefully, Apple will have a solution before we know it.
  • Reply 51 of 98
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by ConradJoe View Post


    Why don't they do that at the factory, before selling the phone? Is QA really that lax?



    Apple has sold about 72M phones this year. If it took just one minute to do the recalibration steps for each device before shipping them out, that would be 72,000,000 minutes. That is 50,000 days of time.



    If the process was only a few minutes, it would probably be incorporated into the testing and burn-in time the device receives at the factory, but because you have to let the battery drain all the way down, it can take hours, even days to complete a recalibration.



    If find it rather interesting that Apple is taking the extra effort to seek out users having troubles and trying to get to the bottom of these issues. Perhaps that is why they get such high marks for customer service.



    Some Android phones are never updated from the original software that they leave the factory with. At least Apple seems to attempt to fix bugs and release updates.
  • Reply 52 of 98
    Have a iMac, Mac Air, iPad 1, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4 & iPhone 4S... First all I put iCloud on all of them, a sheer disaster... All would be fine when I would go to bed... In the morning, Cal would multiply from 5 mini calendars to 23 & double & triple events, similar issues happen to the address book... It was shock to have none of your hardware working right in the morning... At the same time battery life for iPhone 4's plummeted, bought a battery backup, which is used almost daily... Stripped iCloud out of everything, battery life improved, however still can not get the iPhone 4S to last till dinner...



    Also put IOS 5 on phones & iPad... It too, sucks the battery in record time for the phones, but not the iPad... I write a few texts & make two call, 13 min & 22 min my battery goes down about 20% in less than an hour... I have turned off almost everything, which begs the question what is the point of these great features if you can't use them... iPhone 4 battery was great until I put in IOS 5...



    Therefore my conclusion is the battery problems revolve around a very incomplete & untested IOS 5 update...



    Now I find myself looking for places to power up my battery during the day, something I never use to think about... SAD SAD SAD Apple
  • Reply 53 of 98
    Battery life on my 4S was the pits for the first week... but after having it drain to near zero a couple of times and then recharging fully it seems to be improving quite a bit... and I never changed any settings.



    I thought I'd give it a couple of months before pressing the panic button... and that seems to be working out for me so far.
  • Reply 54 of 98
    deanbardeanbar Posts: 113member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by mactoid View Post


    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...



    I've found exactly the same since I installed iOS5. My iPhone 4 used to last between 2-3 days, or over 1 day at worst if I hammered its use - long phone calls and web browsing.



    Since reading these posts on AI, I've deselected iCloud and document data as others said they have done. I'll wait and see how this pans out, but this seems to defeat the object of upgrading to iOS5 if you can't leave the features switched on.



    Come on Apple, you should have tested this out better than this.
  • Reply 55 of 98
    I was expecting a slight bump in battery life over my 4 but instead it seems to die 10-20% sooner. I could usually run a full day with a mid day car charge boost. Now I am nearly out by mid day (then car charge the same amount as I did before), then need to charge at 8-9pm instead of bedtime.



    I have less apps now, and my old 4 was jailbroke, the 4s is not. Hopefully a bug fix/change is forthcoming.
  • Reply 56 of 98
    I called Apple 48 hours after receiving my new 4S due to terrible battery performance. The battery was going down 10% every 40 minutes. When I called to lodge my complaint, they said my phone must have been shipped with a defective battery. They employed Express Service and I had a new phone 24 hours later. But, sad news; I was charged $29 and still have terrible battery life. I have temporarily solved the problem by getting a battery case which has extended my battery life to more than a day but, im still hoping for a fix from Apple Hopefully, we'll find out soon.
  • Reply 57 of 98
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by navpro33 View Post


    I called Apple 48 hours after receiving my new 4S due to terrible battery performance. The battery was going down 10% every 40 minutes. When I called to lodge my complaint, they said my phone must have been shipped with a defective battery. They employed Express Service and I had a new phone 24 hours later. But, sad news; I was charged $29 and still have terrible battery life. I bought a new PhoneSuit battery case here http://www.phonesuit.com/. I now have a day and a half of power. Great investment. But, why the poor battery? Hopefully, we'll find out soon.



    Your first post here was to lay down some fake story and shamlessly plug something?



    Go sell crazy somewhere else, we're all stocked up here.
  • Reply 58 of 98
    solipsismsolipsism Posts: 25,726member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Woodlink View Post


    Your first post here was to lay down some fake story and shamlessly plug something?



    Go sell crazy somewhere else, we're all stocked up here.



    Don't quote it, report it.
  • Reply 59 of 98
    cameronjcameronj Posts: 2,357member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by solipsism View Post


    Don't quote it, report it.



    But then the spammer will only get one link posted, not two!?!
  • Reply 60 of 98
    big kcbig kc Posts: 141member
    I started out with a 64GB 4S on Sprint, after deciding to defect from AT&T. Battery life was horrendous, and performance was worse (I was getting dialup-like download speeds). Also I was constantly connecting to foreign (Verizon) towers, which show "Extended" in the carrier area on the display. On either Sprint or Verizon towers I'd often only show 1-3 bars in central Tempe AZ, and also often only 1G data connections.



    I dumped Sprint in a week and crawled back to AT&T. My new phone has NO battery life issue at all, and I have everything turned on all the time except for iCloud, which I haven't moved to from MobileMe yet. Everything else that people theorize is causing the problem - location services, Bluetooth, notifications... all running all the time. No problem with battery life. My conclusion is that all the roaming and low-bar connections when on Sprint were eating battery life, as the phone's radios have to increase power when signal is weak.



    Something weird is up here. I doubt my Sprint situation is the cause of all the reports of crummy battery life. Bad batch of batteries? I dunno. I'm sure they'll figure it out soon.
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