What's new

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

Status
Not open for further replies.
fair point, but how do you explain the in-ability for some people to ever be able to disable the draining effect. my first 4s had rapid drain, i tried everything, closed all apps, soft reset etc etc and it was still draining, evening in flight mode, which i agree would indicate gpu. However nothing i did seemed to stop the draining once it had started

Good point. I have read a couple of post where restored as new, no apps installed, no mail, nothing, it's still running down 8-10% per hour at idle.
 
Good point. I have read a couple of post where restored as new, no apps installed, no mail, nothing, it's still running down 8-10% per hour at idle.


Mine is running 10% - 12% down on idle .. eeh.
 
Mine is running 10% - 12% down on idle .. eeh.
Have you done a factory reset via the phone? Then restore as new? Does it drain with nothing installed or setup with time zone settings off?
 
Have you done a factory reset via the phone? Then restore as new? Does it drain with nothing installed or setup with time zone settings off?




I have, no change at all.



/
 
fair point, but how do you explain the in-ability for some people to ever be able to disable the draining effect. my first 4s had rapid drain, i tried everything, closed all apps, soft reset etc etc and it was still draining, evening in flight mode, which i agree would indicate gpu. However nothing i did seemed to stop the draining once it had started

The GPU is a dual core device. Once the code is running in one of the cores, unless something resets the GPU, it isn't going to stop running. So even if you did everything short of turning the phone off, it wouldn't fix the issue. Now the act of turning it ON may in fact allow for the condition to start in the first place. I know I have seen weird battery drainage right after a reboot while the phone is still on the charger. At the time the it didn't make sense. Now it is starting to.
 
The GPU is a dual core device. Once the code is running in one of the cores, unless something resets the GPU, it isn't going to stop running. So even if you did everything short of turning the phone off, it wouldn't fix the issue. Now the act of turning it ON may in fact allow for the condition to start in the first place. I know I have seen weird battery drainage right after a reboot while the phone is still on the charger. At the time the it didn't make sense. Now it is starting to.

What you speculate implies that the phone is not capable of a "clean" restart by turning it off and then back on. If true this is a major hardware, firmware and/or software failure. It begs the question under what conditions is one ensured of a clean restart?

Harvey
 
Last edited by a moderator:
When they fix the bug. Otherwise it will be trial and error for the foreseeable future.
 
$image-1248357447.jpg

This is the best battery life I've had in a while, unfortunately it was achieved by setting email fetching to manual. At least I think it is, so there you have it about 6hrs usage & 20hrs standby w/t moderate use and with about 2.5 hours of phone calls.
 
The GPU is a dual core device. Once the code is running in one of the cores, unless something resets the GPU, it isn't going to stop running. So even if you did everything short of turning the phone off, it wouldn't fix the issue. Now the act of turning it ON may in fact allow for the condition to start in the first place. I know I have seen weird battery drainage right after a reboot while the phone is still on the charger. At the time the it didn't make sense. Now it is starting to.

This does not make sense to me, if as you say that is a bug where the GPU keeps running, how does that affect what you saw, in that the battery appeared to drain even when on the charger. If as you say, you were playing a game, which lets presume utilized 100% GPU, show how can the bug use more GPU than 100% ?. Unless somehow the bug overclocks the GPU you cannot have more utilization of the GPU than a 3d game will give it. Therefore if the battery shows drain whilst still plugged in, i would say there is another problem. To see the battery drop whilst plugged in sounds like hardware or the battery meter not behaving. The charge circuit is independent of the OS, hence a complete charge can be done when the phone is off.
 
It's hard to tell but does the update have any effect on the 4 series phones?
Thanks
 
This does not make sense to me, if as you say that is a bug where the GPU keeps running, how does that affect what you saw, in that the battery appeared to drain even when on the charger. If as you say, you were playing a game, which lets presume utilized 100% GPU, show how can the bug use more GPU than 100% ?. Unless somehow the bug overclocks the GPU you cannot have more utilization of the GPU than a 3d game will give it. Therefore if the battery shows drain whilst still plugged in, i would say there is another problem. To see the battery drop whilst plugged in sounds like hardware or the battery meter not behaving. The charge circuit is independent of the OS, hence a complete charge can be done when the phone is off.

Ok lets look at this a different way.

Linpack is a benchmark that is for CPUs only. It doesn't touch the GPU in any way except to update a screen with a few numbers. On an iPhone 4S if you set the Problem Size to 1003 and the Number of Runs to 1000, it will take roughly 2 hours and 55 minutes to run the entire benchmark and the screen will only be updated every 10.3 to 10.5 seconds. That means the CPU will be at 100% utilization that entire time with the GPU only asked to redraw the screen 6 times a minute. I checked it every 30 minutes to see if the battery every dropped below 100%. It never did.

Now if I play any of a number of games that I own, I can get the battery to drop below 100% even though it is plugged in. The only difference now between the benchmark and the game is the fact that the GPU is now also getting used at 100%.

Which means if the user has the phone plugged in and there should be no apps running in background and yet the battery still won't charge to 100%, that means the only device that has shown the ability to drain the battery fast enough to keep the phone from recharging is the GPU.

Which is why the theory, so far, holds up under "real world" testing.
 
Ok lets look at this a different way.

Linpack is a benchmark that is for CPUs only. It doesn't touch the GPU in any way except to update a screen with a few numbers. On an iPhone 4S if you set the Problem Size to 1003 and the Number of Runs to 1000, it will take roughly 2 hours and 55 minutes to run the entire benchmark and the screen will only be updated every 10.3 to 10.5 seconds. That means the CPU will be at 100% utilization that entire time with the GPU only asked to redraw the screen 6 times a minute. I checked it every 30 minutes to see if the battery every dropped below 100%. It never did.

Now if I play any of a number of games that I own, I can get the battery to drop below 100% even though it is plugged in. The only difference now between the benchmark and the game is the fact that the GPU is now also getting used at 100%.

Which means if the user has the phone plugged in and there should be no apps running in background and yet the battery still won't charge to 100%, that means the only device that has shown the ability to drain the battery fast enough to keep the phone from recharging is the GPU.

Which is why the theory, so far, holds up under "real world" testing.



agreed, your scenario def proves that on your phone that the GPU will pull more power than the CPU, still doesn't explain how it is possible to show battery drain when plugged in ?, surely what your scenario demonstrates could be a GPU pulling more current, i.e. out of spec hardware fault, or a faulty battery or charging circuit. I am not sure how this reflects against the original battery standby drain issue. Your battery draining when plugged in and peoples standby drain are two different things are they not ?

I have just tried playing all the 3d games i have whilst plugged in and could not get the level to drop at all, i would have said there was a problem with your phone, i cant see how that should be possible, the circuit design should make the power cord be able to support the phone with no drain, no matter what the load (providing the hardware is correct) !. I don't see how they can fix that in software, they cannot down clock the GPU just on your phone, and any error in code (reported by the investigations) would not cause your GPU to run at higher clocks than mine ?. Why would your GPU pull more power than mine when both are max'd out to 100% with a 3d game ?
 
ugh.. i just got an awful pit in my stomach reading this - but I think you're probably spot on. Apple didnt miss anything here. They built a beast here and its just a battery hog. I'm beginning to fear we're not getting a fix either.... boo hoo sad.........

I do believe everyone's got to go through the restore and set up as "new phone" option. Just to rule out app issues.

And in the end all of us put our phones on the charger at the end of an 18 hour day. Even with Push and Fetch on and moderate to heavy use - I get at least that before need of a recharge. The 4s will hold me over to the 5 this June... :)

I wonder if anyone seriously thinks that the Iphone 5 will really be any different with regard to not being a battery hog. Unless they redesign the battery and put a bigger one in (To go with the allegedly bigger screen) Then I can't imagine that the battery life will get better. Just look at all the other phones with big screens and look at the complaints of battery life on those phones (Like the Galaxy S2)
 
Hello Skull,

You mentioned a while back that you don't think that the factory that the Iphone is made would have more than 1000 install stations. With 1 million workers at Foxconn, I would think that they would have as many install stations as they would need to get that O/S out. (True, Foxconn makes more than just the Iphone - in fact much more) As far as whether they did the installation of IOS 5 as after it was released on 10/4 I would imagine that they already had IOS 5 well before then and were putting them on the 4s's before then. I know they would have stocked up on the phones before the phone was released.
 
NewdestinyX said:
Yeah. My standard day is moderate to high use and with PUSH off and FETCH set to Manual I'm averaging 1day + a few hours standyby and 4-5 hours of use. With Push on and Fetch set to 30 min I get about half that. It's interesting how not much of this thread has focused on PUSH and FETCH and their exorbitant drain. Don't know how much GPU they require if this new 'always on GPU' theory is really the issue. ?? But I get darn near iPhone 4 battery use - with PUSH and FETCH turned off - and that's EVEN IF I'm PLAYING my favorite 3D intensive graphics game of X-Plane (best flight simulator on the market!). Don't worry.. Yes a bigger screen will take more battery. But even the battery in the iPhone 3G couldn't run a 4S for even HALF of the BAD battery life we're complaining about now. So iPhone batteries have already gone through upgrades since the 3G. In fact from the 'inside track' I've read about online - the battery life needs of a larger screen is one of the MAIN reasons S.Jobs put the '5' on hold and decided to release a 4S instead. The 'processor' and Siri were both ready -- but the battery drain anticipated from a large screen was a 'deal stopper' by ANY time in 2011. So don't worry -- Apple has SUPER HIGH standards -- and they WILL release a 5 with 'adequate' battery life.

One of the the subtle undertones in this thread that I'm tiring of -- is this notion that people who have HIGH usage and want all the newest coolest gizmos (like Siri) are 'whining' about battery life that doesn't last MORE than '1 day'.. Let's face it, gang -- ALL of use will ALWAYS put our mobile phones on the charger at the end of each day - if for no other reason than to assure that our battery doesn't die mid-day the next day. So we put it on the charger whether there's 5% left or 30% left. What I NEED and DEMAND from any PDA phone like an iPhone is 18 hours of use before next charge is required. That's what we all need 'practically' speaking. I'm not seeking anything 'more'.. why? --because 'practically' it's not necessary. NOW -- having said that - some of you aren't getting through the day with moderate to heavy use and all the 'cool features turned on'. You SHOULD be screaming at Apple. I'm with ya there.. but I AM getting thru my day with 'everything turned' on and moderate use. So 'practically' speaking - I'm fine.... (..sermon over..) :photos: :p

+ 10000!
Great post new destiny. I agree 100%. :D
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top