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maccuser

macrumors regular
Original poster
Aug 28, 2007
116
14
so far, I have not noticed any difference in battery life with OS 5.1 on iPhone 4s..what am I missing here? its pretty much the same if not worse.. Is it possible that my phone came w/ a battery at a lower capacity? by the end of the day, my phone is down to 10-15 percent, and I talk not even 10 mins on it...

What are ur impressions?
 

eternalife

macrumors regular
Jul 21, 2011
159
0
Unfortunately not.

I came from the Android world with a Droid X and got two days (easy) on my battery (typical work use - no gaming, videos, etc.). I'm an Apple fan (love my MBP) so i thought I would give the iPhone a try. Overall, I'm disappointed. The battery is constantly on my mind now. While at work I plug in. While in the car I plug in. While at home I plug in. I can have a fully charged phone at 8pm and wake up in the morning to either a dead or almost dead phone. I took it in to the 'Genius' bar and they ran all sorts of tests on the phone and told me everything was fine. They then proceeded to tell me to turn everything off that I had on because that was what was killing my battery. This pretty much reduced my phone to a Black Berry device :eek: I gave it a go but no such luck. Same behavior. They said if that didn't work to factory reset the phone. Same behavior.

Sorry for the rant. Back to commenting on the point of your thread - No, I see no improvements at all. I think the 'Battery Improvement' release note is just thrown on to most updates as a standard 'fix'. If they are really improving battery life why don't they tell us what they changed so we can target that in our usage. You never see that do you?
 

bp1000

macrumors 65816
Jul 7, 2011
1,489
230
Now I have the 3G toggle I've noticed a huge difference in battery life.

I can enable 3G when I'm out and about but edge is fine when in at home or at work.

I'm getting like 30% more battery life now. But wi 3G its probably the same
 

itsjustmeee

macrumors 6502a
Dec 28, 2008
603
7
I updated my wife's iPhone 4 OTA instead of syncing to iTunes and now there's something seriously wrong with her battery life. She can have it charged at 100% and by the afternoon it will be down to 10% ..... and this is with minimum usage. This all started a couple of days ago right after the update. She's going to applecare this weekend to see what they say. If it's anything interesting, I'll post back the results.

The jury is still out with my 4s. It sucked before the update and it actually seems about the same right now, or possibly a bit better. Time will tell.

One question I do have for someone in the know about this. What does wiping your iPhone, setting it up as a new one and then restoring from a backup actually do to help this? I see people here recommending it, but I don't see how that could possibly affect the battery and its interaction with the phone. You still have the same settings and the same apps. I would love an explanation. It might be something I'll end up trying.
 

maccuser

macrumors regular
Original poster
Aug 28, 2007
116
14
Before I got to sleep last night, I had the iphone charged to 100 percent, played withit for 30 mins and it was down to 98%. After 7 hours of sleep, woke up with battery at 92%. 6% in 7 hours on standby. that means the standby time is only 116 hours but apple claims 200 hours, thats pretty much half.

FYI, bluetooth is off, I had turned gmail to manual sync, and only one of my emails has fetching on (not push, had to turn it off as it drained the battery within hours)

Im just wondering if everyone else is noticing the same? maybe my battery has a lower capacity
 

DotCom2

macrumors 603
Feb 22, 2009
6,315
5,623
I see no difference. Still pretty bad. I only get 4 1/2 hrs with light usage. :(
 

Risco

macrumors 68000
Jul 22, 2010
1,956
313
United Kingdom
16hrs standby and 1:hr 10 mins usage with 80% battery left. I would say there has been a substantial improvement in battery life. Not quite iPhone 4 levels, but damn good for the 4S.
 

penguy

macrumors 6502
Feb 20, 2007
379
8
CA
My 4 is about 1.5 years old...so I am sure there is some degradation just due to the number of cycles, etc. I consider myself a fairly heavy user, though I don't stream much at all...I average about 1.3GB/mo...so 40-50mb/day plus 12-1500 min/mo...so almost an hour of talk...plus 14 hours of standby...most days I have 20-25% left by end of day.

I haven't seen much of a change since 5.1...but I have seen days where my battery will drain by mid-day...and it has usually been related to some new app that added itself to my notifications list...I find if I keep that list to my must haves...it's workable
 

Archer1440

Suspended
Mar 10, 2012
730
302
USA
No battery performance change on my gen 1 iPad or iPhone 4, but the keyboard lag and Safari crashes after the first 5.0.1 update seem to be entirely remedied.
 

Mlrollin91

macrumors G5
Nov 20, 2008
14,172
10,181
16hrs standby and 1:hr 10 mins usage with 80% battery left. I would say there has been a substantial improvement in battery life. Not quite iPhone 4 levels, but damn good for the 4S.

Same here. I'm getting probably double the battery life I had with 5.0.1. Before I would barely get through the day with 12 hours of standby and about 4 hours of light usage before I hit 0%. Now, I'm getting about 6-8 hours of heavy usage and 16+ standby hours and still have some left over at the end of the day.

My iPad on the other hand has not changed a bit. I'm still getting 8+ hours so I'm fine with that. I'm just happy I don't have to plug my phone in every time I get into my car JIC.
 

dmrowley

macrumors 6502
Aug 4, 2010
455
194
Dortches, NC
Add me to the "it got worse" camp. Spent about 7 hours outside in full "4G" coverage, hardly touched the phone....down to 27%. Never seen performance like that before....
 

davidra

macrumors 6502
Oct 12, 2011
413
4
Mine seems worse too...in looking around, the update automatically turned all location services on. Fixed that, now let's see if it makes a difference. My battery life wasn't great before the update but it was better than it was today.
 

adder7712

macrumors 68000
Mar 9, 2009
1,923
1
Canada
I've been noticing my iPad seems to drain the battery a lot faster ever since iOS 5.0.

Honestly, I can't tell a difference in terms of battery life.
 

stickybuns

macrumors 6502
Oct 22, 2011
384
0
I believe my standby battery life has improved. I'm at 90% with 37 minutes of usage and 20 hours, 31 minutes of standby.

The last time I checked with 5.0, I was at 85% with 1 hour, 40 minutes of usage and 3 hours, 57 minutes of standby.

Apple's web site estimates up to 200 hours on just standby , so I'm on target for that.
 
E

ernest3

Guest
I have a 4s. The new 5.0.1 software update is bad. The battery drains like crazy now. sucks.
 

pdqgp

macrumors 68020
Mar 23, 2010
2,131
5,460
Not really

I charge my 4s at night, up and off charger come 5am and put 3-5 hrs of use per day on it and have plenty of power left come 11pm at night. My 4s outlasts my old 3Gs by several hours.
 

eternalife

macrumors regular
Jul 21, 2011
159
0
After 7 hours of sleep, woke up with battery at 92%. 6% in 7 hours on standby. that means the standby time is only 116 hours but apple claims 200 hours, thats pretty much half.

Count your blessings. At 100% charge at night I'm between 40% and dead by morning.
 

slw23

macrumors newbie
Oct 11, 2011
24
0
I was averaging about 5 hrs of usage prior to the update. While its still early, I've noticed a little over 6 hrs of usage on a full charge. So far so good.
 
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