Battery life issues?

[bphelminski]

My main concern is running out of charging cycles. Normally with other phones I would unplug around 7:30 AM, use it throughout the day, charge it in the middle of the day to top it off and by 11 or so I would plug it back in so I would have a full battery in the morning. From what I've been reading that type of routine would use up charging cycles and the battery would only be useful for a little over a year. I know that I have applecare but I don't want to have to go get my battery replaced after only a year. Right now my phone is around 50-60%, normally I would plug it in now but now having an iPhone I don't know what to do.

This isn't how battery cycles work. A battery cycle is a full charge from 0% to 100%. So, if you were to plug your phone in when it was at 50% and charge it to 100%, that is 1/2 of a cycle. Then, the next day if you did the same thing, that would get you to 1 full cycle. It's basically that the cumulative amount of charging added up to 100% equals 1 cycle. Other phones you've used would have had exactly the same kind of batteries and cycles.

 

[rstark18]

This isn't how battery cycles work. A battery cycle is a full charge from 0% to 100%. So, if you were to plug your phone in when it was at 50% and charge it to 100%, that is 1/2 of a cycle. Then, the next day if you did the same thing, that would get you to 1 full cycle. It's basically that the cumulative amount of charging added up to 100% equals 1 cycle. Other phones you've used would have had exactly the same kind of batteries and cycles.

Exactly, and research shows that constantly topping off is actually better than deeper discharges given the same percentage of cycling. Some light reading: How to Prolong Lithium-based Batteries - Battery University How to Prolong Lithium-based Batteries - Battery University

 

[QCityKing40]

Not impressed so far at all with the battery life. I woke up this morning with a full charge, have used the phone moderately (no music, videos, etc, almost all location services off, wifi disabled, good reception area) over a span of 2.5 hrs and I'm down to 65%. For another example, I left the house last night at 6 pm with over 95% after pulling it off the charger and it died at 9:30 pm. Again, no significant usage and all location services were off, both email accounts switched to fetch, etc.

I switched to this phone from a Thunderbolt 4G with the main goal of increasing my battery life, so far I'm pretty disappointed. It's already had multiple full charge cycles through it. Possible defective battery?

I wanted to come back and clear up my comments so that no one is pushed away from this phone because of them. I was running an application called MobileIron, which is required to receive my corporate email, and the location services for this app were absolutely destroying my battery life. I've since turned them off and I'm getting a full day out of my battery easily.

 

[johndhynes]

I broadcast a lot of live video, but I keep the phone plugged in. First time using the 4S, the battery drained completely. The plug probably came loose, but this happens all the time, and it's never drained fast enough to be a problem. I've noticed at other times over the past few days under light usage, like simply listening to podcasts, the battery level seems to go down much quicker than my iPhone 4 under iOS 4.

I think this has been an issue whenever a major update is released. It will probably be fixed in 5.1. There may even be a 5.0.1.

I used to sometimes disable 3G when I could not plug in, but for some reason that option no longer exists. I ordered new charging/sync cords that hopefully won't come loose, and an extra battery.

I also noticed last night that setting location-based reminders keeps GPS on all the time, which sucks juice. I was hoping that if you set both a time and location that it would not turn on location until that time, but no.

 

[jonpferreira]

I've been having an issue with my battery too. For the past couple of nights when I plug my phone in, I've woken up to my battery at 25-30%.

 

[Appletitude]

First few days of usage the batter drained very rapidly! I discovered a possible repair. (Atleast it worked for my iPhone 4s for me) First test day: on at 5 am. Medium usage all day, by 5 pm it was down to 26% The repair is to FIRST backup your info on iTunes! Connect the iPhone to iTunes and perform a "restore". Restoring the phone to system specs seemed the trick for me. Second test day: On at 5 am, medium usage all day and by 5 pm battery life was STILL 78%. A noted improvement. Good luck!

 

[VeXuM]

So last night, at around 3am, I unplugged my 4S and plugged in my iPad. When I woke up, my iPhone was down to 85%. Is anyone else experiencing this type of battery usage? My old iPhone would only be down to 98% when I did this before.

I can understand that during the day I a,using it a lot, but not when I'm asleep. Thoughts?

-John

Mine's doing the same. My battery won't even last all day now. I have to spot charge it when i can..

 

[wdfly]

I've been battling a battery issue for several days but I ran across a post in this thread I believe that said the Facebook app had a problem with push notifications causing a problem so I disabled all push notifications for Facebook. Doing so has greatly increased my battery life almost 2 fold. Might be worth looking into for those having issues that have the Facebook app.

 

[tut00]

Well, I have to say that my battery seems to be doing better now. Right now at 9pm, I'm down to 30%. Not as good as when I had the 4, but better than what this one started with. I dont think it's ios 5. I had that on my 4 for over a month and there was no noticeable decrease in battery life.

On the other hand, my wife's battery life made mine look great. I restored her phone and set it up as a new phone and now she is doing ok. That may be the trick for those who have not gotten any better life out of their batteries.

 

[GibMcFragger]

I've been battling a battery issue for several days but I ran across a post in this thread I believe that said the Facebook app had a problem with push notifications causing a problem so I disabled all push notifications for Facebook. Doing so has greatly increased my battery life almost 2 fold. Might be worth looking into for those having issues that have the Facebook app.

I am going to try that and report back. The FB app is slow and stupid at the best of times, I wouldn't be surprised if that was it.

 

[quacka]

Been having the same issues as most on here. Would charge the phone to 100% and use it and find that it would drop 1% every couple of minutes.... I had it sitting there and it would drop a couple of % every 10-15minutes...

I tried numerous things and my phone now seems to be quite stable and the battery is comparible to how my old 3GS was when it was new.. I dont know if its anything I did or just the battery taking a few cycles to settle in. But worth a try if your situation is not improving at all...

First thing i did was turn off all the notifications and location services that i didnt need. kept the ones that i wanted. switched off the set time zone function and turned off icloud. Still had email and my apps as per normal. Didnt have many push notifications on (as i dont like having push notification on anyway) This helped the standby time improve a tiny bit. but not much difference

Second thing i tried was removing the facebook app all together and turned off the auto-brightness function. I set the brightness of the screen to just under a half. This actually helped the battery life quite abit. The drain was barely noticeable when the phone was not in use. I left it on with wifi on overnight and it drained 2-3% in 9 hours. when the battery got to 2% i checked the usage and it was
Usage - 9 hours 10 min
standby - 1 day 2 hours

I then tried to fully discharge and recharge the phone. once this was complete i turned off iMessage (i dont need iMessage as i have unlimited text included in my call allowances which renders it useless). I have now been using the phone quite heavily (made phone calls, sending 15+ texts, playing a few games and checking and replying to email + wifi on) and after 45 minutes use and an hour standby its dropped 2% and im on 98%

Again this could just be the battery starting to settle after a few cycles, or could be something up with the software but it seems to be better then when i got it 5 days ago.
In saying that I agree with others that you shouldnt have to tweak the phone so much to just get more battery life out of it...which is a little disappointing... its kind of like buying an expensive sports car and only allowed to push it because if you turn anything on youll run out of fuel.

 

[GibMcFragger]

I have now disabled Facebook push notifications and the weather notification pull down widget and the high battery drain seems to have stopped. I will use it a bit longer and report again.


Beamed over the interwebz from my iPhone 4S using Siri.

 

[Mr.Mcgoo]

I have not changed yet but was having huge battery drain on my incredible for some reason. I did determine it was the latest update to facebook app that was draining it, so I would not be surprised it is a problem with the iPhones also.

 

[NickBull]

I got my 4S on Friday and restored it from my 4 on Friday evening. Put it on charge overnight as usual and took it off charge around 7:30am on Saturday. As usual on a weekend, I didn't use it much. My 4 would usually end the day (around 11pm) with 70% battery left on a weekend. Weekday it would be around 50%. My 4S turned itself off at 9:30pm because it had run out of battery!

Charged it up again on Saturday night and the on Sunday it lasted a little better even though it still wasn't used much. Finished at 11pm with about 11% left although it had been topped up a little earlier.

It's been pretty much the same every day this week - nowhere near as good as the 4 and I've not been using it any more than my 4. If anything I've been using it less for fear of running out of battery when I need it!

Last night I did a restore through iTunes and set everything up as new - didn't use the backup. Same problem this morning with the battery running down very quickly (currently 92% and it's been off charge for 2hr 20mins).

One thing I've noticed is that the Usage figures (Settings->General->Usage) don't seem right. I've been noticing the "Usage" figure going up even though the phone has been locked. I know it goes up when it does certain background tasks, but yesterday it said "Standby 12hr 1min, Usage 9hr, 29min". There's no way I've used it for 9 hours yesterday.

This morning I've been turning things off one by one - bluetooth, push, siri, notifications, location, email, wifi, until finally putting it in airplane mode. No matter what, the usage still keeps going up (eg lock the phone, then unlock it a little while later and the standby has increased by 9 mins (correct) but the usage has increased by 7 mins). The only thing that stopped this usage increasing was when I put it into airplane mode.

I've also made sure I killed all the processes in the multitasking bar, reset network settings, reset the phone, restarted the phone, turned off location services....

My old 4 never did this and my wife's 4 only increases the usage when she is using it. The battery life I used to get on my 4 was excellent all the way through every beta of iOS 5 and when the final release was put on.

I'm in a really good signal area and I've not been moving around.

It looks to me like there is some rogue process running in the background and using too much power which only seems to affect the 4S. I've made an appointment with the Genius bar so hopefully it's just a dodgy hardware and it will be replaced and all will be good again. I guess it might be something in the iOS though and that will be sorted (hopefully!) in a point release very soon....

 

[liam27]

I always charge my iPhone overnight and I have noticed with the 4S that I'll wake up and rather than being fully charged to 100%, the phone will be at 92, 93%. Seems odd - I never had this problem with my 3GS.

 

[HarryStamper]

ios 5 battery issues

I solved mine (IPOD touch) by doing a restore and setting up as new. Before the battery ran down very quickly, now its incredible. Like all day, with push on email and very little discharge. The only thing i turned off was the location settings. If you have a iphone 4 look at the posts where people did the restore. It works.

 

[lgreenberg]

I always charge my iPhone overnight and I have noticed with the 4S that I'll wake up and rather than being fully charged to 100%, the phone will be at 92, 93%. Seems odd - I never had this problem with my 3GS.

Just curious, what are you using to charge?

The cable that came included or something else like an iHome or other dock?

 

[cr12#IM]

anyone else report on the facebook app?

 

[liam27]

Just curious, what are you using to charge?

The cable that came included or something else like an iHome or other dock?

I'm using an iPhone cable - but the one that came with my 3GS, not the one in the 4S box.

Is the problem likely avoidable if I used the newer charger?

 

[trevorjd14]

anyone else report on the facebook app?

I made those changes this morning...we'll see how it goes.