Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

iloveiphone4

macrumors member
Jul 7, 2010
54
0
Very very happy with 5.1 now. I didnt have a serious issue with 5.0.1, but now it is exceptional, almost as good as my previous iphone 4. Standby time is where i see a lot of improvement. I keep everything on except bluetooth and push. Overnight I am seeing 1% drop now(just like iphone 4, used to get around 6% drop on 5.0.1) and I can get 2 days on standby and moderate usage. Overall very satisfied with 5.1 although I think the apple engineers can certainly do more :)

When I did install 5.1, I installed the whole 5.1 via itunes and restored from backup, in case it helps anyone.
 

Stella

macrumors G3
Apr 21, 2003
8,883
6,477
Canada
Not a bit.

First day of 5.1 the battery was having the life sucked out of it.. down arouhnd 30% in two hours of being idle.

Recharging the battery once it reached 2% fixed this and returned to the normal ( albeit ) sucky battery life, that most of us are experiencing - i.e., around 10 to 15% loss over night. Essentially - a day hour life under moderate use.
 

James Howlett

macrumors member
Apr 19, 2008
71
0
Abbotsford
I have a 4S with 5.1. my 4S's was doing ok when on 5.0.1 I would have to charge my phone and it would drop a percent an hour in standby. Today I looked at my phone at 1:00 and it was at 100% I hadn't had it plugged into a charger since 9:30 this morning give or take.
 

waw74

macrumors 601
May 27, 2008
4,767
1,002
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's the cell signal like?
if you're in a location with a low signal, your phone will "talk" louder to make itself heard at the tower.
I used to work in a place that had just enough signal getting in that your phone would pick it up, but really not enough to be useable, everyone (and i mean everyone, smart phone, dumb phone, all carriers) knew to bring a charger to work, since your phone would be almost dead by early afternoon.


http://www.apple.com/iphone/battery.html
All battery claims depend on network configuration and many other factors
Battery life depends on the cellular network, location, signal strength, feature configuration, usage, and many other factors.
 

vtstarck

macrumors regular
Jun 16, 2009
217
7
what's the cell signal like?
if you're in a location with a low signal, your phone will "talk" louder to make itself heard at the tower.
I used to work in a place that had just enough signal getting in that your phone would pick it up, but really not enough to be useable, everyone (and i mean everyone, smart phone, dumb phone, all carriers) knew to bring a charger to work, since your phone would be almost dead by early afternoon.


http://www.apple.com/iphone/battery.html

I can confirm at least some of this. I work out of two locations. One location has great signal and the other has very poor signal. I can use my phone all day and get home with plenty of battery from the good signal area. My phone is usually dead by early afternoon with moderate usage from the poor signal area.
 

iliramove

macrumors newbie
Jan 14, 2009
22
0
For those who have 100% before going to sleep and waking up to an almost dead iPhone, send them back to Apple. You guys have a huge problem. If not, you can try calibrating your iPhone battery to see if it helps.

On the other hand, if you are comfortable with entering your WiFi passwords again, you may try to reset your network settings. I do this after every update, be it restore from backup or setup as a new phone.

If there's anything else, you may try to see if you are constantly in an area where the network signal is bad. If so, turn off your mobile data or toggle 3G off, whichever applicable, and hook on to a WiFi spot.

I understand the phone is a tool to help you get through your day but you need to understand how it works and sometimes compromise to let it help you get through your day. Don't ignore facts. Instead, learn them well. Pure irritating whiny arrogance is something else.

By the way, battery life has improved for me, though not greatly, but better than before.
 

Abazigal

Contributor
Jul 18, 2011
20,383
23,867
Singapore
My batt life actually seems worse. I used to be able to last 2 days of light usage but now, I am down to 40% after just one day. Will continue I serving to see if it is just an anomaly. Just calibrated my battery, if that matters.
 

Menel

Suspended
Aug 4, 2011
6,351
1,356
From yesterday evening, two days of moderate use.

In jersey pocket on bike with some location use and photo taking, lots of texting, some wifi airplay YouTube streaming to appletv, few if any calls.

Seems fine.

a6890dfb-426e-e91f.jpg
 

cadillac1234

macrumors regular
Aug 20, 2010
144
0
My battery life on the 4 is terrible now.

A typical day at work saw me with about 55-60% left.
After the upgrade I have to charge in the afternoon just to make it home.

Not happy as I never had a battery issue with the 4.

My iPad first generation battery seems to have remained the same or has maybe gotten slightly better.

I've tried multiple hard resets, letting the battery drain completely and recharge, turning off location services, etc. Nothing seems to work
 

mullyman

macrumors newbie
Mar 13, 2012
4
0
First post. I'm in Japan. My wife and I both have 4s and an iPad 2. All three are experiencing dramatic battery drain since the upgrade. We both have Mophie juice packs so we usually charge up every other day. We're back to charging everyday like before we got the Mophie.

The iPad was good for 3 or 4 days at a stretch, we don't use it much, but I'm looking at 36% right now and it was fresh this morning. Only watched 3 videos on YouTube, checked mail, checked tweets. Usual usage for this.

Battery drain is horrible since the upgrade.
MULLY
envying those of you that are showing improvement
 

VSMacOne

macrumors 603
Oct 18, 2008
5,908
2,868
Following advice elsewhere I let the battery drain completely and then from drain charged it to 100% without removing power at any time.
I've just streamed an hours worth of live TV and 1/2 hour later battery is showing 96%. Result!

This worked for my iPhone 4S. I did a hard reset (Home+Power held together until the phone turns completely off), then I ran the battery empty and then I plugged in overnight and I can tell a HUGE difference in the battery life. It's all good now.
 

bp1000

macrumors 65816
Jul 7, 2011
1,489
230
Although i disabled 3G on my 4s

I got 9 hours usage and 2days 10 hours standby on a full charge.


3G battery life seems roughly the same. Around 5 - 6 hours with 1 - 2 days standby.

I don't think that will ever improve unless i switch 3G providers as my signal at home and work is quite poor, 1 or 2 bars... which makes a huge difference to battery drain.
 

SuperSnake2012

macrumors 6502a
Oct 11, 2005
824
19
NY
I probably would have had more life, but I think I used FaceTime for an hour. Overall, not bad. I have been losing more battery while idle than I did with 5.0.1.
 

Attachments

  • ImageUploadedByTapatalk1331672566.436624.jpg
    ImageUploadedByTapatalk1331672566.436624.jpg
    100.8 KB · Views: 104

mullyman

macrumors newbie
Mar 13, 2012
4
0
This worked for my iPhone 4S. I did a hard reset (Home+Power held together until the phone turns completely off), then I ran the battery empty and then I plugged in overnight and I can tell a HUGE difference in the battery life. It's all good now.

I'm going to give this a try. Hard reset done, now just need to drain it. Fingers crossed.
MULLY
 

pdqgp

macrumors 68020
Mar 23, 2010
2,131
5,460
Today I see a big difference

Used my phone quite a bit. Calls, texts, emails, tons of music while in the car. I thought it was doing much better. Yeah, I'm happy. I have my email set to retrieve only when I fetch it but the location services is on.

original.jpg
 

SanjeevRana

macrumors 6502a
Aug 2, 2011
607
10
I have always updated any phone (Android/iPhone/Windows) using bootloader and never from OTA. Reason being OTAs almost always end up in silent issues/errors. So fresh update and then you can restore your backup,etc.

Now back to iOS 5.1 ... I believe Apple tests the Standby & Usage Times under "Ideal" conditions which might be (although not limited to) -
1. Full Signal Reception
2. Wifi/Bluetooth Off
3. Location On
4. iCloud On Push (Since they advertise as integral part now)

No other apps at all on the phone so no background push's, etc ...

Now I tested a similar setup -
1. 3/4 to full reception
2. Wifi/BT Off
3. Location On
4. Auto date/time sync off
5. iCloud On with Push
6. All my apps like FB, Tap2Chat, Whatsapp, GoDocs, Evernote, Web Album, iBooks, etc. setup and push enabled in most of them
7. iMessage On

I think thats about it ... and what I noticed overnight was a 1% per hour battery drop with just 4-5 emails coming in ... that would end up giving (theoretical) standby of about 100 Hours ...

Now if you end up adding loads of push apps, all kinds of usage like Games, Apps, Browsing, Music, Videos ... no company can support Standby claims like that.

Bottom Line - IF YOU USE YOUR PHONE, YOUR BATTERY "WILL" DROP. PERIOD !
 

formerpc

macrumors 6502
Apr 15, 2009
378
218
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9B176 Safari/7534.48.3)

I have a 4 and have noticed a small drop in battery life, but nothing to be concerned with because it still lasts me all day.
 

NJFP

macrumors 6502
Feb 18, 2009
358
28
have I noticed a difference? Yes and no. I upgraded on the release day, then two days later I did a wipe and restore. When I'm at work, there's not much difference, but my work place beats your phone up pretty hard. At home on my days off I do notice a big difference. Looks like battery life is better on my iP4. I'm off the next two weeks so I'll see just how long it can go on a single charge. The experiments continue!!
 

velle

macrumors member
Mar 11, 2012
45
14
My battery life has improved quite a bit with 5.1. I didn't experience battery drain with 5.01. I restored as a new phone when I updated.
 

Rootus

macrumors 6502
Mar 22, 2008
376
24
Portland, OR
Pre-5.1, my 4S would last me the whole day of light usage and take 30-40% of the battery before I got home. Now it drops 10-15% an hour no matter what I'm doing with it. Same with my wife's iPhone 4.

Never experienced any battery problems with my other phones, even when a lot of other people were, but now it's extremely noticable. I went from 100% to 60% this morning between when I woke up, and when I got to the office. Sigh.
 

mullyman

macrumors newbie
Mar 13, 2012
4
0
Pre-5.1, my 4S would last me the whole day of light usage and take 30-40% of the battery before I got home. Now it drops 10-15% an hour no matter what I'm doing with it. Same with my wife's iPhone 4.

Never experienced any battery problems with my other phones, even when a lot of other people were, but now it's extremely noticable. I went from 100% to 60% this morning between when I woke up, and when I got to the office. Sigh.

Same here. We're in Japan. I'm glad to see that this issue is happening all over.
MULLY
 

sixteen12

macrumors regular
Nov 14, 2011
222
1
My battery feels more or less the same. It goes down fairly quick at work since we don't have the best reception, but its not the end of the world, I usually get home with about 50% left after fairly intense usage.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.