I'm guessing this affects battery life to a degree, just as many new features do.
However, this is likely not the primary culprit, as this would suggest that all 4S's are affected evenly, which they are not.
Since the majority are experiencing battery life on par or slightly below the iPhone 4 running iOS 4 (to be expected with newer location features) with only a minority grossly affected, some other variable must be at work. Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but I've heard of several iPhone. 4 users running iOS 5 experiencing newfound battery problems. These people don't have Siri.
This would be my situation. IP4/CDMA. I installed IOS5 via OTA and ever since I have been having god awful battery problems. I have location services on but with only 2 apps are turned on to use it. I have deleted my email from it as well. I pull it off my charger at 5:15 AM and will be down to 30 to 40% by noon. Before upgrading to IOS5 I could easily get 2 days min out of it.
So what do I do? Just sit back and wait for them so come up with a fix? In the mean time I have 90% of the phones most valuable features turned off. I'm not upset by any means, just very dissapointed.
If the battery problem happens to 4 too as reported, this must be caused by iOS 5. Because there was no such battery problem before for 4. My iPhone 4, however, improved battery life after I installed iOS 5.
Without experiencing or knowing much about the problem, my first guess would be that it is likely affecting the same group of people who were affected by "Antennagate", i.e. a group of people who experience poor network coverage. As far as I know, when in a poor coverage area, more power is consumed attempting to find a strong signal. With features like Notification Center's geofencing and current-location-using weather, the phone is more frequently in need of a data connection. Perhaps something else about iOS 5 exascberates the problem.
For the majority of people in strong cell coverage, no problem exists. For a minority, it means terrible battery life. If this is true, a slight fix may be to turn off Location Services for Notification Center. While not experiencing terrible battery life, disabling this feature rewarded me with better and more consistent battery life.
Just a theory.
Yes, totally agree, and that people just like to complain because they think that Apple is perfect and can do no wrong. Also people are stupid, using their phones as laptops will seriously suck battery current.
The few users who are complaining about battery life can simply go to an Apple store and get a replacement for the iPhone under warranty.
Nearly everyone else is NOT having battery problems on the iPhone.
Thus, this must be a HARDWARE defect in a few iPhones.
The solution is to simply get a new iPhone under warranty.
Or, it may not be a defect at all. We all know battery life varies greatly based on usage. Once I applied the iOS 5 update, I noticed a dramatic increase in my battery life (which was already better than my 2+ year old 3GS was getting). I actually had never noticed the time zone issue the software fixed on any order of significance until the most recent Daylight Savings Time transition. That night, I did not charge my phone because it had nearly 80% battery, and when I woke up 6 hours later it had drained entirely. That was the most severe case. Other times, I would "think" my battery should be lasting longer, but had no real empirical evidence to back it up. Post-update, my battery life is much improved, and blows away what I was getting with my last phone. Moderate to heavy use in a day drops me down to maybe 40-50% before I go to bed.
Which is the problem with the "some people" reports. "Some people" experience just about any problem you can imagine, for any product that's out there. And "some people" like me experience met or exceeded expectations. Unless there is some evidence that there is a common usage factor among these people, it's not really much of a story.
I have 5.1 installed and can tell you from testing that the battery issue is being addressed myself and another developer have seen an average of a 20% to 30% better battery life.
I had read about Apple asking a user experiencing battery problems if they would mind installing monitoring software to help diagnose the problem. Does Apple make this software available to the masses so that more users may help in providing usage data?
I have not experienced any problems with my 4S and absolutely love it. I would also happily provide a positive control if I knew such software were readily available.
Perhaps they need to put Carrier IQ back into iOS? (j/k)
The few users who are complaining about battery life can simply go to an Apple store and get a replacement for the iPhone under warranty.
Nearly everyone else is NOT having battery problems on the iPhone.
Thus, this must be a HARDWARE defect in a few iPhones.
The solution is to simply get a new iPhone under warranty.
It is not a hardware defect. It is a software bug mainly affecting those people who restored from a previous iOS backup. Some were able to fix the problem by restoring and setting the iPhone as a new device. For me this is not a solution. I don't want to go through reconfiguring 50+ apps on my iPhone.
My battery problems began after installing iOS 5 on my iPhone 4. The battery drain was substantial, even in sleep mode I would wake the phone and the battery would drain by more than 10% in less than 15 minutes! No activity!
One solution that worked was simply turning off 3G. But in my line of work that defies the purpose of owning this phone. As a field technician I'm constantly tethered to the phone's 3G network. On 4.3.5 this posed no problem. But now that I'm completely immersed with iCloud, downgrading just isn't an option. I'm currently running 5.0.1.
Or, it may not be a defect at all. We all know battery life varies greatly based on usage. Once I applied the iOS 5 update, I noticed a dramatic increase in my battery life (which was already better than my 2+ year old 3GS was getting). I actually had never noticed the time zone issue the software fixed on any order of significance until the most recent Daylight Savings Time transition. That night, I did not charge my phone because it had nearly 80% battery, and when I woke up 6 hours later it had drained entirely. That was the most severe case. Other times, I would "think" my battery should be lasting longer, but had no real empirical evidence to back it up. Post-update, my battery life is much improved, and blows away what I was getting with my last phone. Moderate to heavy use in a day drops me down to maybe 40-50% before I go to bed.
Which is the problem with the "some people" reports. "Some people" experience just about any problem you can imagine, for any product that's out there. And "some people" like me experience met or exceeded expectations. Unless there is some evidence that there is a common usage factor among these people, it's not really much of a story.
My iPhone battery charge goes from 100% to 0% in 36 hours of standby (no usage whatsoever). That is not even close to normal.
Noise Isolating heaphones use silicon baffles to block out noise. They go directly in the ear canal, and are far better at blocking out white noise than active cancellation. With my Etymotic HF3 headset I can listen to my music on its lowest volume setting even when I am riding a BART train or working in a noisy colo. Overall, lower volume is better for my hearing in the long run.
I have been using Etymotic headphones for about three years, and have always loved them. As of iOS 5, on the iPhone 4/4S, the iPhone's built in noise cancellation completely negates the usefulness of noise isolating headphones because as an artifact of the process the audio picked up by the headset mic is replayed in the headphones. Stupid.
The few users who are complaining about battery life can simply go to an Apple store and get a replacement for the iPhone under warranty.
Nearly everyone else is NOT having battery problems on the iPhone.
Thus, this must be a HARDWARE defect in a few iPhones.
The solution is to simply get a new iPhone under warranty.
Not even close to being true. Some reports indicate that the people who are having problems often have every feature under the sun turned on. Of course it's going to use battery power more if you have location services checking your location ever 5 seconds and so on.
My iPhone 4 doesn't have battery problems. But the camera has been buggy with constant re-focusing while I'm trying to take pictures. The phone is also laggier than when it was on iOS 4.
No, the iPhone has noise isolation, where the second mic picks up any unwanted noise and filters out any frequencies that aren't desired. The bug he is referring to deals with the feedback from that noise isolation through the headphone jack, and by extension, into his noise-cancelling headphones. The person on the other end of the phone hears nothing but his voice, but he hears all the unwanted noise that is being fed back. I don't know if it is a software issue or a hardware issue, though. It could be a faulty analog-to-digital converter, it could be a weak capacitor, or it could just be a bug in the OS that needs patched. That's hard to tell. If I were the OP, I would certainly swap out my phone to try and eliminate any hardware problems.
I wonder if the people having issues also use yahoo email. I've pinpointed one iphone's battery problem to yahoo email being stalled often. Deleting it and using gmail fixed the problem.
Being in a poor network coverage area will definitely affect battery life. The phone is constantly trying to switch antennas and or 3g/2g networks.
My wife took the new 4S, I got her 3GS. I need to keep her wifi completely OFF or else her phone will chew through the battery. Not VERY drastically, but enough that it's annoying. If in a half day under 3G she'll go from 100% down to 70%, with wifi it would be 40-50%. That's inside our apartment with a very strong new Apple wireless router that shouldn't have any "searching for signal" type of problem. I've got all the "extras" turned off, so nothing obvious is draining it...
Comments
I'm guessing this affects battery life to a degree, just as many new features do.
However, this is likely not the primary culprit, as this would suggest that all 4S's are affected evenly, which they are not.
Since the majority are experiencing battery life on par or slightly below the iPhone 4 running iOS 4 (to be expected with newer location features) with only a minority grossly affected, some other variable must be at work. Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but I've heard of several iPhone. 4 users running iOS 5 experiencing newfound battery problems. These people don't have Siri.
This would be my situation. IP4/CDMA. I installed IOS5 via OTA and ever since I have been having god awful battery problems. I have location services on but with only 2 apps are turned on to use it. I have deleted my email from it as well. I pull it off my charger at 5:15 AM and will be down to 30 to 40% by noon. Before upgrading to IOS5 I could easily get 2 days min out of it.
So what do I do? Just sit back and wait for them so come up with a fix? In the mean time I have 90% of the phones most valuable features turned off. I'm not upset by any means, just very dissapointed.
Without experiencing or knowing much about the problem, my first guess would be that it is likely affecting the same group of people who were affected by "Antennagate", i.e. a group of people who experience poor network coverage. As far as I know, when in a poor coverage area, more power is consumed attempting to find a strong signal. With features like Notification Center's geofencing and current-location-using weather, the phone is more frequently in need of a data connection. Perhaps something else about iOS 5 exascberates the problem.
For the majority of people in strong cell coverage, no problem exists. For a minority, it means terrible battery life. If this is true, a slight fix may be to turn off Location Services for Notification Center. While not experiencing terrible battery life, disabling this feature rewarded me with better and more consistent battery life.
Just a theory.
Yes, totally agree, and that people just like to complain because they think that Apple is perfect and can do no wrong. Also people are stupid, using their phones as laptops will seriously suck battery current.
The few users who are complaining about battery life can simply go to an Apple store and get a replacement for the iPhone under warranty.
Nearly everyone else is NOT having battery problems on the iPhone.
Thus, this must be a HARDWARE defect in a few iPhones.
The solution is to simply get a new iPhone under warranty.
Or, it may not be a defect at all. We all know battery life varies greatly based on usage. Once I applied the iOS 5 update, I noticed a dramatic increase in my battery life (which was already better than my 2+ year old 3GS was getting). I actually had never noticed the time zone issue the software fixed on any order of significance until the most recent Daylight Savings Time transition. That night, I did not charge my phone because it had nearly 80% battery, and when I woke up 6 hours later it had drained entirely. That was the most severe case. Other times, I would "think" my battery should be lasting longer, but had no real empirical evidence to back it up. Post-update, my battery life is much improved, and blows away what I was getting with my last phone. Moderate to heavy use in a day drops me down to maybe 40-50% before I go to bed.
Which is the problem with the "some people" reports. "Some people" experience just about any problem you can imagine, for any product that's out there. And "some people" like me experience met or exceeded expectations. Unless there is some evidence that there is a common usage factor among these people, it's not really much of a story.
Any improvements to the music player app in 5.1, particularly on iPad?
What improvements do you desire?
I had read about Apple asking a user experiencing battery problems if they would mind installing monitoring software to help diagnose the problem. Does Apple make this software available to the masses so that more users may help in providing usage data?
I have not experienced any problems with my 4S and absolutely love it. I would also happily provide a positive control if I knew such software were readily available.
Perhaps they need to put Carrier IQ back into iOS?
The few users who are complaining about battery life can simply go to an Apple store and get a replacement for the iPhone under warranty.
Nearly everyone else is NOT having battery problems on the iPhone.
Thus, this must be a HARDWARE defect in a few iPhones.
The solution is to simply get a new iPhone under warranty.
It is not a hardware defect. It is a software bug mainly affecting those people who restored from a previous iOS backup. Some were able to fix the problem by restoring and setting the iPhone as a new device. For me this is not a solution. I don't want to go through reconfiguring 50+ apps on my iPhone.
One solution that worked was simply turning off 3G. But in my line of work that defies the purpose of owning this phone. As a field technician I'm constantly tethered to the phone's 3G network. On 4.3.5 this posed no problem. But now that I'm completely immersed with iCloud, downgrading just isn't an option. I'm currently running 5.0.1.
Any other temporary suggestions?
Or, it may not be a defect at all. We all know battery life varies greatly based on usage. Once I applied the iOS 5 update, I noticed a dramatic increase in my battery life (which was already better than my 2+ year old 3GS was getting). I actually had never noticed the time zone issue the software fixed on any order of significance until the most recent Daylight Savings Time transition. That night, I did not charge my phone because it had nearly 80% battery, and when I woke up 6 hours later it had drained entirely. That was the most severe case. Other times, I would "think" my battery should be lasting longer, but had no real empirical evidence to back it up. Post-update, my battery life is much improved, and blows away what I was getting with my last phone. Moderate to heavy use in a day drops me down to maybe 40-50% before I go to bed.
Which is the problem with the "some people" reports. "Some people" experience just about any problem you can imagine, for any product that's out there. And "some people" like me experience met or exceeded expectations. Unless there is some evidence that there is a common usage factor among these people, it's not really much of a story.
My iPhone battery charge goes from 100% to 0% in 36 hours of standby (no usage whatsoever). That is not even close to normal.
Noise isolating == noise cancellation ? Understanding : question_mark
Noise Isolating heaphones use silicon baffles to block out noise. They go directly in the ear canal, and are far better at blocking out white noise than active cancellation. With my Etymotic HF3 headset I can listen to my music on its lowest volume setting even when I am riding a BART train or working in a noisy colo. Overall, lower volume is better for my hearing in the long run.
I have been using Etymotic headphones for about three years, and have always loved them. As of iOS 5, on the iPhone 4/4S, the iPhone's built in noise cancellation completely negates the usefulness of noise isolating headphones because as an artifact of the process the audio picked up by the headset mic is replayed in the headphones. Stupid.
The few users who are complaining about battery life can simply go to an Apple store and get a replacement for the iPhone under warranty.
Nearly everyone else is NOT having battery problems on the iPhone.
Thus, this must be a HARDWARE defect in a few iPhones.
The solution is to simply get a new iPhone under warranty.
Not even close to being true. Some reports indicate that the people who are having problems often have every feature under the sun turned on. Of course it's going to use battery power more if you have location services checking your location ever 5 seconds and so on.
Noise isolating == noise cancellation ? Understanding : question_mark
No, the iPhone has noise isolation, where the second mic picks up any unwanted noise and filters out any frequencies that aren't desired. The bug he is referring to deals with the feedback from that noise isolation through the headphone jack, and by extension, into his noise-cancelling headphones. The person on the other end of the phone hears nothing but his voice, but he hears all the unwanted noise that is being fed back. I don't know if it is a software issue or a hardware issue, though. It could be a faulty analog-to-digital converter, it could be a weak capacitor, or it could just be a bug in the OS that needs patched. That's hard to tell. If I were the OP, I would certainly swap out my phone to try and eliminate any hardware problems.
Being in a poor network coverage area will definitely affect battery life. The phone is constantly trying to switch antennas and or 3g/2g networks.
Just give us the option to turn this 'feature' off!!!
lol you really think apple will give you options?