Apple is aware of battery life problem on 4s and iphone 4

[sekelani]

I concur wholeheartedly that Lithium-Ion batteries should be conditioned properly and that the general populous is unaware of that fact.

I have installed iOS 5.0.1 and have the phone now charging. I made sure to do a full backup/restore so that I could do a true 1 to 1 compare. I should hopefully have some idea if the fixes worked in roughly 20 hours.

Please keep me informed on how the iOS 5.1 goes. I have work. Got to wait another 6 hours till I instal it

 

[Darkstar2007]

Please keep me informed on how the iOS 5.1 goes. I have work. Got to wait another 6 hours till I instal it

I assure you he'll post his findings. 8)

 

[Col.bris]

I would not rush into this please lets give developers at least a week to test then comment ......

 

[Skull One]

Granted my iPhone 4S has only been off the charger with iOS 5.0.1 for 2 hours and 48 minutes, but I have some really good initial news. With 1 hour and 11 minutes of usage (mixed internet and gaming) my battery is at 88%. That is better than any previous tests I have run since Oct 17th when I started watching and testing the issue.

 

[Skull One]

That's indeed great news, Skull!! So am I to understand that 5.0.1 is now at itunes ready for all of us to download? Or are you on a beta? And are you testing with Location services TIME ZONE SUPPORT turned back on?

iOS 5.0.1 is in BETA only for developers. If you do NOT have a developer account and you install it, you will be LOCKED OUT of your phone due to being unable to activate it properly. Heck I am a dev and I was locked out until I re-synced the phone with my account. A nice little heart stopper at around midnight

And I never turned off ANY of the suggested items in any of the threads. Which is why I am cautiously optimistic about this new version having solid fixes for the true issue.

 

[idave23]

This thread alone is worth the price I paid for membership. LOL You guys and gals deserve much kudos for keeping the rest of us updated and educated about our devices. Thanks.

 

[Skull One]

Ah..ok. Developers only for the moment. And great that you never turned off any functions so you have a true apples to apples comparison you can do!!

The primary reason I never turned the feature off is, I never had the arrow icon next to that subsystem. I believe it was never firing off because I have been within my "home roaming" area (no more than 25 miles from my house) the entire time I have had the 4S.

Which is also why I felt the issue was much deeper than people were guessing.

 

[Skull One]

You bring up an important question.. What DOES that little arrow showing or not actually mean?

Means a lot actually. Which is why I checked it every 12 hours roughly to be sure what I was dealing with.

If purple, that means the app is actively using the location feature.

If grey, that means an app has used it in the last 24 hours.

If none, that means 24 hours has passed with no usage.

 

[Skull One]

Quick update for iOS 5.0.1 and we will call it the "I like what I am seeing " report.

Battery remaining: 75%
Standby: 7 hours and 42 minutes
Usage: 2 hours and 23 minutes

This can be extrapolated roughly to 9 hours and 30 minutes of usage and 30 hours and 48 minutes of standby.

Those number are much more inline with what I expected of the 4S.

 

[Rocko]

I heard the usage time has not been addressed, simply the large idle drain, what are your thoughts on this?

 

[Skull One]

Since I am at work I can not properly test heavy usage. My observation though of strictly internet usage thru web, weather, phone, text, RSS and Words/Hanging with Friends are showing MARKED improvements. Prior to iOS 5.0.1 I would be at 75% and only have about 90 to 105 minutes of usage clocked under the same conditions.

 

[Rocko]

Got it, I hope this pans out. I have great standby, horrible usage times. Thanks for posting this.

 

[DaveM]

Is there anything more to the update than addressing the battery issue? There has been quite a variety of other quirky problems since the iOS 5 release.

 

[Skull One]

Is there anything more to the update than addressing the battery issue? There has been quite a variety of other quirky problems since the iOS 5 release.

From Apple:

iOS 5.0.1 beta contains improvements and other bug fixes including:
– Fixes bugs affecting battery life
– Adds Multitasking Gestures for original iPad
– Resolves bugs with Documents in the Cloud
– Improves voice recognition for Australian users using dictation
– Contains security improvements

iOS 5.0.1 beta introduces a new way for developers to specify files that should remain on device, even in low storage situations.

 

[jpcamaro70]

I had this heavy drain on the battery, but only briefly.

I started noticing heavy drain with minimal usuage so i'm digging around the phone and notice that the location services icon was on. After going into location services, there were gray arrows (not currently using location) and purple arrows (currently using location). The one that was on was siri, siri needs location to work, but wouldn't toggle off when i finished with her, so it stayed on all the time and killed my battery in just a few hours. So.....A simple restart cured all.