Iphone battery very poor

[mike1726]

I'm hoping that upon release of new iphone that something is done about the very poor lifetime of the battery. For example I woke up
this morning 6.59am 100% battery left the house at 8.15ish. I turned on sat nav & Bluetooth by the time it got to dinner I was at 36%.coming home at 5pm I was at 7%. This is crazy because I'd only had 2 short conversations and sent 1 text. Unfortunately unlike other manufacturers it is out of our control. Yes there are certain things you can turn off but why should you have to. Your probably talking about ,in my opinion,one of the most popular handsets these days. It's one thing having an all singing all dancing handset but I would at least expect it to last a working day you could do is sort out the poor battery life.

 

[Pinkpoison]

I'm hoping that upon release of new iphone that something is done about the very poor lifetime of the battery. For example I woke up
this morning 6.59am 100% battery left the house at 8.15ish. I turned on sat nav & Bluetooth by the time it got to dinner I was at 36%.coming home at 5pm I was at 7%. This is crazy because I'd only had 2 short conversations and sent 1 text. Unfortunately unlike other manufacturers it is out of our control. Yes there are certain things you can turn off but why should you have to. Your probably talking about ,in my opinion,one of the most popular handsets these days. It's one thing having an all singing all dancing handset but I would at least expect it to last a working day you could do is sort out the poor battery life.

i think you need to check your settings,that isn't typical of battery usage in an iPhone,i have iphpne 5 and get much longer,my son has my 4s and has no battery problems.

 

[willerz2]

Try recalibrating your battery. Generally it would be best if you do this on a weekend or a day where you won't need your phone for the majority of the day.

 

[mike1726]

Try recalibrating your battery. Generally it would be best if you do this on a weekend or a day where you won't need your phone for the majority of the day.

How do you do that? Didn't know you could re-calibrate it. Would appreciate it if you could let me know then I can give it a go.

 

[willerz2]

Recalibrating requires that you completely drain your battery (to the point where it turns itself off). Let it sit uncharged and untouched for a few hours (5-6). Charge it again to full, again untouched without interruptions. After the charge has hit 100%, let it continue for another hour or two, to make sure that it's fully and completely charged. Before unplugging the device from the full charge, perform a hard reset, meaning holding the power and home button together until you see the Apple logo and release both buttons. It may take 2-3 go's before you see the result you're looking for, or to see whether it's actually recalibrated.

 

[Scottysize]

So you ran Satellite and Bluetooth all day? If so, 36% by the end of the day is great. I use mine as a hotspot which is a huge battery drain and I have to charge up once during the day. For a device with a 1400 mAh (or 1440 if you want to get technical) battery, that's awesome! My Razr Maxx had a 3300 mAh battery and it barely made it through a day of my use. You can try the battery calibration, but imo there's nothing wrong. Droids run through batteries at twice the speed. A 1400 mAh battery wouldn't last 4 hours in an Android device with normal usage. My 2 cents. Take 'em for what they're worth.

 

[bowserb]

OK. Here's my deal. My wife and I both have 4s phones bought at the same time from Attila Telephone & Telegraph. Hers has never had the battery life that mine does. We both get our mail from MS Exchange servers and generally have the same other settings, because she doesn't want to mess with that stuff, and I do (working on computers for a living may be a factor there). We have had hers in to the "Genius Desk" at the Apple store for her bad battery life twice, and I just called to get the same company bs line from tech support who remotely determined that the battery showed "Pass".

We had a rare opportunity to compare battery life yesterday. To maximize battery life in a no-wifi area and no bluetooth devices, both those services were turned off on both phones. Our Exchange server polling is set to manual. Both phones were down into the 50% percent range. We charged to 100% by around midnight. The phones were off the chargers overnight. At morning both had received the same single Weather Channel text message, and that's all. My phone still showed 100%; hers 93%. Still Apple says "Pass" for her battery.

Now this is the good part, the Apple tech advised that the battery should be allowed to fully discharged to the point that the phone shuts off AT LEAST ONCE A MONTH. Wow! That was good advice in the days of nickel cadmium and even nickel metal hydride batteries, but for lithium ion, fully discharging is a recipe for reduced battery life--according to every authoritative text I have ever seen. Here is one online article I just found: How to Prolong Lithium-based Batteries - Battery University

In that test example, a particular Li-ion battery was good for 300-500 charge cycles at 100% discharge for each; 1200-1500 cycles for 50% discharge; and 3750-4700 cycles if only discharged 10%. This article goes on to state that Li-Ion has no "memory effect" like older technologies and also does not need periodic full discharge cycles to prolong life. That exactly contradicts what the tech at Apple just told me. A full discharge has only one possible benefit in a modern device: calibrating the battery life meter in the device. Otherwise, each full discharge shortens the useful life of the battery.

So, to the OP, you may or may not have a battery issue. It seems to me that the Chinese company making Apple batteries has some QC issues. The problem is, Apple is not going to admit it in any case. In fact, you may get advice from Apple tech support that will further shorten the life of your battery.

 

[xrayeyes]

Turn off all system services under location services. Turn off iCloud. Turn off all notifications in the notification center (You will get them anyway..they just won't show up in the notification center). There is also the setting to send info to Apple, turn that off. Turn off Bluetooth and Hotspot. Under wifi, turn off automatically looking for networks. Turn off all location services. Turn off automatic downloads in the iTunes store settings on your phone.

These are a few things to try to narrow it down. Then you can turn services back on that you enjoy, and possibly pin down the one(s) that are draining the battery. You may find a culprit you were not aware of.

 

[bowserb]

I agree. Turn off all services you are not using. My point, though, is even if you do that, you could still have a bad battery. My "test" with my phone and my wife's, with essentially the same settings suggests that not all Apple batteries are the same quality. Chinese manufacturing is famous for its lack of QC. I've seen it in steel pipe, and I've seen it vacuum cleaner batteries, and stuff in between. The fact that Apple seems to use a Pass/Fail approach seems to confirm that there is a wide range of battery quality that Apple has chosen to consider normal.

If the iPhone battery were accessible and not contractually sealed in the phone, I could swap batteries with my wife to see if the short battery life was connected to her or connected to the battery. I could also carry a charged spare battery when I know I'll need a boost later in the day (External battery packs are somewhat inconvenient...I use mine for jury duty, though.)

I appreciate the Americans (speaking English that I can understand) I get on the phone when I call Apple tech support. I'd appreciate it more, if they could do me some good. Apple still has the best 3rd party app participation, but Android is catching up. I've checked, and all my important apps are available for ios and Android. When I'm ready to replace this phone, Apple is going to have to have more to offer in its hardware and support to convince me to buy another one.

 

[Scottysize]

OK. Here's my deal. My wife and I both have 4s phones bought at the same time from Attila Telephone & Telegraph. Hers has never had the battery life that mine does. We both get our mail from MS Exchange servers and generally have the same other settings, because she doesn't want to mess with that stuff, and I do (working on computers for a living may be a factor there). We have had hers in to the "Genius Desk" at the Apple store for her bad battery life twice, and I just called to get the same company bs line from tech support who remotely determined that the battery showed "Pass".

We had a rare opportunity to compare battery life yesterday. To maximize battery life in a no-wifi area and no bluetooth devices, both those services were turned off on both phones. Our Exchange server polling is set to manual. Both phones were down into the 50% percent range. We charged to 100% by around midnight. The phones were off the chargers overnight. At morning both had received the same single Weather Channel text message, and that's all. My phone still showed 100%; hers 93%. Still Apple says "Pass" for her battery.

Now this is the good part, the Apple tech advised that the battery should be allowed to fully discharged to the point that the phone shuts off AT LEAST ONCE A MONTH. Wow! That was good advice in the days of nickel cadmium and even nickel metal hydride batteries, but for lithium ion, fully discharging is a recipe for reduced battery life--according to every authoritative text I have ever seen. Here is one online article I just found: How to Prolong Lithium-based Batteries - Battery University

In that test example, a particular Li-ion battery was good for 300-500 charge cycles at 100% discharge for each; 1200-1500 cycles for 50% discharge; and 3750-4700 cycles if only discharged 10%. This article goes on to state that Li-Ion has no "memory effect" like older technologies and also does not need periodic full discharge cycles to prolong life. That exactly contradicts what the tech at Apple just told me. A full discharge has only one possible benefit in a modern device: calibrating the battery life meter in the device. Otherwise, each full discharge shortens the useful life of the battery.

So, to the OP, you may or may not have a battery issue. It seems to me that the Chinese company making Apple batteries has some QC issues. The problem is, Apple is not going to admit it in any case. In fact, you may get advice from Apple tech support that will further shorten the life of your battery.

Yes. Discharging until dead is a good way to kill your battery for good. The best way to charge it is once a month, turn it off, then charge it fully, but with Apple, you cannot turn it off. As soon as you plug in the cable, it powers back up again. That's the part Apple needs to fix. Allow us to turn off the device to charge.

 

[scifan57]

Yes. Discharging until dead is a good way to kill your battery for good. The best way to charge it is once a month, turn it off, then charge it fully, but with Apple, you cannot turn it off. As soon as you plug in the cable, it powers back up again. That's the part Apple needs to fix. Allow us to turn off the device to charge.

You can turn off your device after you plug in the charger.

 

[topple48]

I've seen a huge decrease in the length of my battery life since I installed the latest iOS update, has this happened to anyone else?

 

[willerz2]

I've seen a huge decrease in the length of my battery life since I installed the latest iOS update, has this happened to anyone else?

Calibrate it once or twice. My personal 4S' battery has a mistaken identity, where it think it's a 1562 mAh capacity battery even though the physical limit of the battery is 1440 mAh. It would drain a few % just sitting idle with everything off overnight as opposed to the device that it replaced (because of power button failure), which would stay at the same % overnight and wouldn't drop until I've used the web for about 5 minutes or about 10-15 minutes of music.

Calibrated twice, now on iOS 7 beta, and the battery life is looking a little better.

 

[Scottysize]

You can turn off your device after you plug in the charger.

Duh. Sorry. I feel stupid now

 

[Scottysize]

I've seen a huge decrease in the length of my battery life since I installed the latest iOS update, has this happened to anyone else?

Since I've only had an iPhone on the current iOS, I can't answer this one. Sorry. All I can say is my battery life seems pretty good.