Why did I upgrade my 4s to 5.0.1. Big mistake! Now a battery issue!

guinnkevinr

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I didn't have the problem before the update and I don't have it after... Knock on wood. Hope they fix it for you in the next update.


Hi Eveyone:

Before upgrading the operating system on my 4s, I had no battery drain issue. Guess what?

After upgrading to 5.0.1, my battery now drains extremely fast. It was at 88% last night and when I awoke this morning it was at 44%. After typing 1 email, it went down to 37%. I have not played any games, surfed the web, etc.

The setting were not changed. No bluetooth or wifi were on for example. What is going on?

Is anyone else experiencing this?

Any suggestions?

Update: I just typed another email of 4 sentences and drained another 5%. This is crazy. I am very mad!
 

ECGcrackberry

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I just spent 4 hours on phone with applecare troubleshooting incl. reset to factory. It didnt work. They told me another patch will come out. I said how do I know my phone battery will work better then. Dont want to reload everything and rest after patch and be back at square one, wasting that many hours again. now have to replace phone. Trying to get an appointment within a reasonable time to pick up replacement.

My intial impressions of Apple are dead wrong. They s--k. I can't go into apple to a replacement phone without an appointment and when I go in with my appointment there may not be a phone available. The last hour is just tring to set up an appointment to replace the phone.

This is worse than dealing with the US government.

When I bought my phones from my carrier, Verizon, if I had to replace a phone or any part, I would just walk in and they would replace it.
Update:

Was able to get an early morning appointment in AppleStore this morning to swap phones. It took the tech almost 1 1/2 hours just to do a simple activation of the phone on Verizon. The biggest time problem was that the replacement phone did not come with a SIM card and I had to use the original card for my new phone. The problem was the SIM card from my original iphone wouldn't activate in the new phone. Finally the apple tech called Verizon and they walked him through it.

By the way, two problems with the AppleCare tech support senior supervisor who helped me yesterday.
First, was that he was dead wrong in that an appointment would be set up without potential replacement phones. The applestore reps told me he had no clue what he was talking about.

Second, the rep failed to help me create a backup before he wiped my phone on my office computer. I discovered this when I tried to connect the replacement phone to my office computer (which contains conacts, calendars, etc)and restore from backup. I could have lost all my settings, etc.
Luckily, I had created a backup on Saturday morning when I installed 5.0.1 using my laptop containing my media library.

More importantly, although I am seeing a nice improvement over my original phone with the update, it is still not giving me as good battery life when i was merely using the original 5.0.(I am down to 63% battey with moderate use since it was fully charged 6 hours ago). Most of the time in my office wifi was not connected and bluetooth was on for maybe a half-hour.

The only good news with the replacement phone is that it came loaded with 5.0.1 and supposedly it goes through extensive testing before it leaves the factory, so hopefully i will not experience other issues.

The bottom line: the devil you know is often better than the one you don't!!!
 

HoLs

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Just read this earlier. Might be of interested to some of you.
(cant post links yet sorry)
hxxp://gizmodo.com/5859278/the-iphone-4s-battery-problem-is-probably-not-because-of-faulty-hardware
 

edd

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I'm also lucky in that the battery life seems decent before and after the update. I was pretty nervous to update for reasons mentioned earlier.

I'm also a bit anal about killing wi-fi or even 3G here at home if there's no point in having it on. Also, this sounds basic but I'm wondering how many folks with power issues find themselves in areas with crappy signals which destroys a battery. Where I work, for example, Sprint inside the building is horrible and if you left any phone on through a 12 hour shift it would be close to dead even if you walked in with a full charge.
 

Eileen89

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My battery was fine before the update...but i have noticed the battery life a bit lower afterwards. I hope this isn't a trend that continues.

Supposedly, Apple is aware that poor battery life continues to be an issue for some and are still working on a fix for it.
 

ThePinkChameleon

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I'm sorry to hear how many of you are having issues with the update. My battery life on 5.0 was decent-I'd get about 5/6h usage with 12/15hr standby before I had to charge from 100%, I'd be at 20/25% at that point. When I upgraded to 5.0.1 on Thurs (ota) I was getting about 3h usage with 6h standby and being at 30-40%. On Sunday, I did a full restore as new from the phone itself, twice. Got it back up and running, sunk my apps and music fresh from iTunes, cloud for my contacts, calendar and photo stream. I can say doing that helped big time for me. I charged last night at 630pm to 100%. Left it off charger over night, and today, at 630pm, I've just plugged in to charge with 3% left. I was at 6h7m usage and 1 day standby.

My advice to those of you that are having issues would be to do a restore as new to your iPhone, it's worth a shot to try to see if it'll improve things even a little bit for you.
 
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Cleveland

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I'm sorry to hear how many of you are having issues with the update. My battery life on 5.0 was decent-I'd get about 5/6h usage with 12/15hr standby before I had to charge from 100%, I'd be at 20/25% at that point. When I upgraded to 5.0.1 on Thurs (ota) I was getting about 3h usage with 6h standby and being at 30-40%. On Sunday, I did a full restore as new from the phone itself, twice. Got it back up and running, sunk my apps and music fresh from iTunes. I can say doing that helped big time for me. I charged last night at 630pm to 100%. Left it off charger over night, and today, at 630pm, I've just plugged in to charge with 3% left. I was at 6h7m usage and 1 day standby.

My advice to those of you that are having issues would be to do a restore as new to your iPhone, it's worth a shot to try to see if it'll improve things even a little bit for you.

This is exactly what I did and restore from iCloud backup and battery life gets stellar almost as good as my 4 :D keep telling everyone to do it as well
 

CalifJewls

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My battery was fine before the update...but i have noticed the battery life a bit lower afterwards. I hope this isn't a trend that continues.

Received a replacement 4S a week ago, battery life was much improved over my original, updated and it seems my battery life is also lower post update....ughh

Did restore and backup from iCloud today, since that's the first thing the Genius Bar tells you to do, worth a try, only time will tell if it helped..

I'm a little shocked an Apple update actually had the reverse effect on the 4S's, things that make you go....hmmmm...
 

ECGcrackberry

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Update:

Was able to get an early morning appointment in AppleStore this morning to swap phones. It took the tech almost 1 1/2 hours just to do a simple activation of the phone on Verizon. The biggest time problem was that the replacement phone did not come with a SIM card and I had to use the original card for my new phone. The problem was the SIM card from my original iphone wouldn't activate in the new phone. Finally the apple tech called Verizon and they walked him through it.

By the way, two problems with the AppleCare tech support senior supervisor who helped me yesterday.
First, was that he was dead wrong in that an appointment would be set up without potential replacement phones. The applestore reps told me he had no clue what he was talking about.

Second, the rep failed to help me create a backup before he wiped my phone on my office computer. I discovered this when I tried to connect the replacement phone to my office computer (which contains conacts, calendars, etc)and restore from backup. I could have lost all my settings, etc.
Luckily, I had created a backup on Saturday morning when I installed 5.0.1 using my laptop containing my media library.

More importantly, although I am seeing a nice improvement over my original phone with the update, it is still not giving me as good battery life when i was merely using the original 5.0.(I am down to 63% battey with moderate use since it was fully charged 6 hours ago). Most of the time in my office wifi was not connected and bluetooth was on for maybe a half-hour.

The only good news with the replacement phone is that it came loaded with 5.0.1 and supposedly it goes through extensive testing before it leaves the factory, so hopefully i will not experience other issues.

The bottom line: the devil you know is often better than the one you don't!!!
I spoke with a senior applecare tech support rep this morning because I was unable to send out outgoing email messages from one of my email accounts.

At one point we discussed the battery drain issue and he said that he found that the first few times the phone is charged, I should completely drain the battery. He said that improved battery performance significantly for him. Who knows? but I will give it a try.

I was charged at 100% before leaving for work. After moderate use, 5 hours later, my battery is down to 31%. What gives? The original phone at 5.0 had much better battery charges.
 

cardfan

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I spoke with a senior applecare tech support rep this morning because I was unable to send out outgoing email messages from one of my email accounts.

At one point we discussed the battery drain issue and he said that he found that the first few times the phone is charged, I should completely drain the battery. He said that improved battery performance significantly for him. Who knows? but I will give it a try.

I was charged at 100% before leaving for work. After moderate use, 5 hours later, my battery is down to 31%. What gives? The original phone at 5.0 had much better battery charges.

IMO, its the software. Specifically your backup.

I know these delta upgrades are all the rage as well as backing up to icloud, but this as resulted in things being much different among users. This makes it difficult to narrow the problem down with multiple ways to do things.

OTA is convenient, but i still prefer installing the full OS over the delta. And being content that my backup in itunes is more complete. Restoring as new is a pain and so I plan to stay away from icloud backup and using OTA updates. Kudos if either works for you, but it makes things simpler for me if i need to troubleshoot and eliminates some culprits.

But anyway, the next step might be to restore as new and start from scratch if your battery life is unacceptable. It could also be that you're simply seeing this as unacceptable coming from a Blackberry that had better battery life. Our expectations come from previous experiences.

I am down to 63% battey with moderate use since it was fully charged 6 hours ago Most of the time in my office wifi was not connected and bluetooth was on for maybe a half-hour.

What's moderate use mean? Why would you not be connected to wifi...3G only would seem to drain it more. In 6 more hours with "moderate" use you'll be down to 23% or so. That's 12 hours with moderate use. Seems good to me. Since you're in the office, and use your office computer with itunes, why not leave it plugged in?
 
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thebignewt#IM

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"Moderate use, 5 hours later" means different things to different people. We all know the usual suspects in battery life (searching, GPS, etc). The iPhone I think can use location services (GPS) at various times using various programs (like Siri for example). Nothing drains a batter faster than GPS (as anyone who uses a golf course distance program). I suspect GPS has something to do with radically short battery life. WiFi, in my experience with Blackberries and Android, doesn't do much damage. I wish that the "drain it dry a couple times" was the answer, but science doesn't point in that direction. The other thing that I've seen on various forums over the years is that the batteries of new model phones drain faster. That's usually because the owner is using more stuff on the new phone toy. Which makes perfect sense. Nobody had Siri until the 4S, right?
 
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noaim

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I kind of agree that using all this wireless stuff is for the birds and makes it harder to trouble shoot things..
 

thebignewt#IM

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My HTC android has a breakdown on what's been using the battery (display, GPS, WiFi, phone, facebook, etc). Does the 4S have this? (I don't have one my wife just got hers yesterday).
 

Accidental Post

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There have been some tests done and it is the backup causing the issue. Best bet is to backup the phone via iCloud or iTunes. Restore the phone SYNC it not restore. reset network settings and battery should be fine. I went from ok battery life to great.

Good luck
 

ECGcrackberry

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IMO, its the software. Specifically your backup.

I know these delta upgrades are all the rage as well as backing up to icloud, but this as resulted in things being much different among users. This makes it difficult to narrow the problem down with multiple ways to do things.

OTA is convenient, but i still prefer installing the full OS over the delta. And being content that my backup in itunes is more complete. Restoring as new is a pain and so I plan to stay away from icloud backup and using OTA updates. Kudos if either works for you, but it makes things simpler for me if i need to troubleshoot and eliminates some culprits.

But anyway, the next step might be to restore as new and start from scratch if your battery life is unacceptable. It could also be that you're simply seeing this as unacceptable coming from a Blackberry that had better battery life. Our expectations come from previous experiences.

I am down to 63% battey with moderate use since it was fully charged 6 hours ago Most of the time in my office wifi was not connected and bluetooth was on for maybe a half-hour.

What's moderate use mean? Why would you not be connected to wifi...3G only would seem to drain it more. In 6 more hours with "moderate" use you'll be down to 23% or so. That's 12 hours with moderate use. Seems good to me. Since you're in the office, and use your office computer with itunes, why not leave it plugged in?
I thought that having wifi on drains the battery more. By moderate use, I mean preparing 5-6 emails and reading emails plus maybe adding 4-5 reminders.

My backup came from my home iTunes library ( a cable synch)which was made before updating to 5.0.1 on my original phone, which pre update had great battery life not doing anything different from what I am doing now with the new phone.

By the way I tried the wipe before settling on a new phone. It had no effect.


Also, the backup I used to restore settings when I got the new phone was from the wired synch of the old phone pre update, soI do not believe it is the backup causing the problem.
 

cardfan

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I thought that having wifi on drains the battery more. By moderate use, I mean preparing 5-6 emails and reading emails plus maybe adding 4-5 reminders.

My backup came from my home iTunes library ( a cable synch)which was made before updating to 5.0.1 on my original phone, which pre update had great battery life not doing anything different from what I am doing now with the new phone.

By the way I tried the wipe before settling on a new phone. It had no effect.


Also, the backup I used to restore settings when I got the new phone was from the wired synch of the old phone pre update, soI do not believe it is the backup causing the problem.

Would seem to me that instead of easy wifi to hook onto, it'll just try for 3G since you can't turn that off. I'd rather have mine using wifi than 3G.

No idea on your backup or what not. I can only suggest restoring as new and checking battery life with that, input some settings to make it somewhat usable and try that. If still bad battery, you at least rule that out. It's a fairly new phone right? You couldn't have done that much to really need that backup restored.
 

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