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iPhone 4s battery life stinks

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slugg said:
My girlfriend has a 4S on Sprint. I have a 4 on AT&T. I get about twice as much battery life...

When Intel switched to dual core laptop CPUs, battery life went up. Looks like Intel should be making phones...
Click to expand...

A lot more goes into what eats batteries than just the CPU architecture.
 
runawayprisoner said:
In the case of the 4S, though, I'm afraid it's mostly attributed to the CPU.

The whole phone gets hotter as a result, too. The iPhone 4 stays cool to the touch most of the time.
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Processors do not just run their cores at 100% all the time. The iPhone 4s gets warmer because the A5 is still the 45 nm size. But even then heat should only be an issue when the phone is being used. Does the phone become hot in your pocket?

Batter life SHOULD not be as greatly affected. My guess is because a lot of people run many apps that stay running in the back. Which then constantly use up CPU cycles and the cell / wifi chip to check for things such as new messages and things of that nature. No matter how well iOS has power management with multitasking figured out, bad code (in an app) can always ruin power consumption.

Don't forget that the dual core A5 also has a dual core GPU on board. Just another reason for more heat.

I have the 4s and the 3rd gen iPad and I haven't ever had an issue with heat or battery problems. When do you guys notice an issue with either?

I run bluetooth and GPS constantly. Bluetooth for when I get into my car. GPS for Google Latitude.
 
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Turn off WiFi, turn off Bluetooth, turn off animated backgrounds, turn off location services, set push notifications to 1 hour or turn them off, etc.

Other than that, it pretty much comes down to your usage. I probably spend 15-45 minutes total on the phone each day, plus texting and the occasional email check or quick look-up on the browser. I could get two full days out of a single charge if I had to. People that play games during their breaks or spend the entire day texting will get much worse battery life, of course.
 
CurseTheSky said:
Turn off WiFi, turn off Bluetooth, turn off animated backgrounds, turn off location services, set push notifications to 1 hour or turn them off, etc.

Other than that, it pretty much comes down to your usage. I probably spend 15-45 minutes total on the phone each day, plus texting and the occasional email check or quick look-up on the browser. I could get two full days out of a single charge if I had to. People that play games during their breaks or spend the entire day texting will get much worse battery life, of course.
Click to expand...

Animated backgrounds? What are you using an Android device? Haha.
 
So it's Easter and the phone hasn't been used at all. Left it unplugged for the night on purpose just to see how much it will drop. In 11 hours it dropped 16% which is very good!

It's connected to my home WiFi so it's either the 3G radio or the WiFi is trying to connect to something all the time when I'm at work. Will check more next week.
 
I'm impressed with my 4S battery life, first iPhone coming from a Blackberry Bold. They last about the same time. Phone lasts 36 hours with light usage - texting, bit of surfing and calling. 60 hours+ with little usage. If I don't really use my phone much during the day I've seen it at 85% when i plug it in at night.

Wifi on, bluetooth on (but not paired, except when driving), 3G full strength signal. I don't leave any apps running in the tray. I have it hooked to gmail via exchange.
 
It's definitely not the best on battery, but it's still more than enough. I mean I can use my phone for the whole day from 9 AM to about 10 PM and get back to my house with at least 10% or more left over. I'm more of a heavy user with strides of no use.

I'll try it out today actually. I took my phone off at 9 AM, and right now it's at 83% after a little more than medium use (texting, reading articles, FB chat)
 
alfa147x said:
Processors do not just run their cores at 100% all the time. The iPhone 4s gets warmer because the A5 is still the 45 nm size. But even then heat should only be an issue when the phone is being used. Does the phone become hot in your pocket?
Click to expand...

Of course it only heats up under use, but it does so more than the iPhone 4.

And it heats up during charge as well. Especially at lower %. It doesn't help that the battery drains faster (so it gets lower faster) and the device puts out more heat.

Batter life SHOULD not be as greatly affected. My guess is because a lot of people run many apps that stay running in the back. Which then constantly use up CPU cycles and the cell / wifi chip to check for things such as new messages and things of that nature. No matter how well iOS has power management with multitasking figured out, bad code (in an app) can always ruin power consumption.
Click to expand...

Apps can only stay running for 10 minutes at MOST. After that, they are forced to suspend. No exception. The only way you can mess that up is by jailbreaking, but I don't have any jailbreak tweak that keeps an app running indefinitely.

Poorly coded apps would create memory leaks, though, so you'll constantly run out of memory for other applications and things will start crashing left and right after a long while. But I suspect that is the case here since both phones in my possession have the same apps. The iPhone 4 has more apps, in fact, since it has twice the storage capacity.

Don't forget that the dual core A5 also has a dual core GPU on board. Just another reason for more heat.

I have the 4s and the 3rd gen iPad and I haven't ever had an issue with heat or battery problems. When do you guys notice an issue with either?

I run bluetooth and GPS constantly. Bluetooth for when I get into my car. GPS for Google Latitude.
Click to expand...

The 3rd gen iPad does heat up more than the iPad 2, but not noticeable. The thing is it takes a lot longer to charge, but that's irrelevant to this thread.

If you have an iPhone 4 and a 4S at the same time to compare, you'll find that the iPhone 4 consistently lasts longer than the 4S, at least on standby. I think this is more or less a fact at this point.

That is not to say that the 4S is a slouch in terms of battery life. 4S still compares very favorably to other smartphones I have used. I'm just saying the 4 does even better in that regard.
 
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runawayprisoner said:
Of course it only heats up under use, but it does so more than the iPhone 4.

And it heats up during charge as well. Especially at lower %. It doesn't help that the battery drains faster (so it gets lower faster) and the device puts out more heat.



Apps can only stay running for 10 minutes at MOST. After that, they are forced to suspend. No exception. The only way you can mess that up is by jailbreaking, but I don't have any jailbreak tweak that keeps an app running indefinitely.

Poorly coded apps would create memory leaks, though, so you'll constantly run out of memory for other applications and things will start crashing left and right after a long while. But I suspect that is the case here since both phones in my possession have the same apps. The iPhone 4 has more apps, in fact, since it has twice the storage capacity.
Click to expand...

Indefinite background running
So all apps get five seconds of Background running, to clean things up, and some apps (such as Instacast) can request a ten-minute extension. There are, however, a small number of apps that genuinely need to run indefinitely in the background, and iOS allows this.

There are exactly five kinds of apps allowed to run indefinitely in the Background state in iOS 5:

Apps that play audio while in the Background state. A good example is Instacast while it’s playing a podcast.
Apps that track your location in the background. For example, you still want voice prompts from your turn-by-turn GPS navigation app, even if another app is Active.
Apps that listen for incoming voice-over-IP (VOIP) calls. If you use Skype on iOS, you can receive incoming Skype calls while the app is in the background.
Newsstand apps that are downloading new content.
Apps that receive continuous updates from an external accessory in the background.
Click to expand...

Bad code can kill battery life.
 
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Please read it again. The only apps that can keep running after the 10m extension period are those that play audio (it's unlikely I won't hear anything or even see the "play" icon in the status bar when this happens), or those that track GPS (again, unlikely because there is very little chance of me not noticing the GPS icon in the status bar), apps that receive VOIP (I don't have any installed for sure so no Skype or anything of the sort), and apps that receive updates from accessories (again, unlikely because I don't have anything plugged into my phone). Plus Apple actively weeds code problems in their review process. It's very unlikely they don't catch those obvious bugs.

But all of that aside, I run the exact same apps on both phones, with the exact same setup. There is no difference between the two phones as far as app selection and system settings (GPS, push mails, calendar sync, etc...) are concerned. But the iPhone 4 still lasts longer.
 
alfa147x said:
Please read what I had bolded in the text I quoted. I didn't refute any of your other claims. Just wanted to stop bad information in it's tracks.
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You have a misconception.

What you have pointed out is merely that whatever Apple allows to run in the background will run in the background, which is "expected behavior" and not "bad coding". There is no way you can write "bad codes" by following Apple's guidelines.

In other words, all of the above "exceptions" are only possible following Apple's API, which is completely shut out from developers' controls, so whatever "bugs" that may result from it are entirely Apple's faults.
 
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runawayprisoner said:
You have a misconception.

What you have pointed out is merely that whatever Apple allows to run in the background will run in the background, which is "expected behavior" and not due to bug. There is no way you can write "bad codes" by following Apple's guidelines.
Click to expand...

Haha. Yes you can. Trust me. I manage a team of devs here.
 
alfa147x said:
Haha. Yes you can. Trust me. I manage a team of devs here.
Click to expand...

And you can show proof that Apple will allow a buggy app that follows the above "exceptions" into the App Store? Because I have personally not been allowed to do so.

By myself, I can write "bad codes" and use my developer's license to deploy it on my own devices for testing, yes, but that's not something a regular consumer would or could do.
 
I'm not saying that it catches everything, but it does weed out a number of bugs related to multitasking. I have personally had my own app rejected twice because of that so I know at least they don't let just about anything in.

If something buggy slips past that, then it's either a freak accident or an intentional move by the developer, but neither of which is a popular occurrence, so it's not something that you can expect out of just any random iPhone.

And assuming you are right that bad coding can affect battery life, and that it's in at least one application that's installed on any random phone, it still doesn't explain why the iPhone 4S has worse battery life than the iPhone 4 when both have the same apps and same setup.
 
Well, I definitely agree that it could be a reason for battery drain in general.

However, I would think that it would affect all iPhones, iPods, and iPads equally, and not just the 4S specifically.
 
Mines is terrible as well (turned off all notifications, wifi, bluetooth, etc). Had to purchase a Mophie Battery case for $80 and now the phone can last a day finally.
 
Aww those batteries. Wouldn't it be nice to have a month long battery? Yes my 4s battery sucks as well. Only using the 3G. A must to always have a car charger and wall charger handy. Mine sits in my case at work and I typically must charge it twice over 12 hours. And if I do any web or data, three times. I suspect the batteries apple sticks in their phones are all the same over the years. The innards are more advanced as new phones are released, but not the battery. Same-0 battery as iPhone 1. This is nothing new. A lot of iPhone users I know are now using those slap-on battery packs to extend life. I may have to go that route also.
 
*shrug* I have a 4S on Verizon, and my girlfriend as a plain 4, also on Verizon. I'm often a pretty light user on workdays as I can't have my phone with me in the building, thusly leaving it in airplane mode. I don't have any social media accounts, almost never text, no IM accounts, and field perhaps one phone call per month on average. Decent email, web, and app use. I use various GPS applications continually, as well as media streaming (video/music). No fetching; all push.

My girlfriend tends to be a moderate user, frequenting websites, social media, Pintrest, and the like. She'll do some light streaming of Pandora from time to time. Perhaps 10-20 phone calls per month, some light freemium gaming, and moderate texting/email. No fetching; all push.

During work periods -- if I don't use GPS or have any phone calls -- I'll go 2-3 days between charges (keep in mind, light use with airplane mode 9 hours/day). I can eek out 4 days if I have really light use of just some email. Streaming music + online GPS (add'l constant 3G data use) + full brightness + constant bluetooth audio streaming, my 4S will last 3.5 hours. My girlfriend can sometimes go 2 days on her vanilla 4, but that's pushing it a bit. Less if she's on cellular data. She'll normally just charge daily and never really finds herself wanting for more runtime. Similar to me, she can't use her phone during work but I don't think she powers it off or puts it in airplane mode.

In both our cases, most data use is on one of my wifi APs unless we're out and about. I did have an issue with my Linksys that I modded with custom firmware. Anything connected to that particular AP consumes battery at an alarming rate: cell phone, laptop, whatever. That AP is mostly just acting as a standard ethernet router that just so happens to have wireless enabled, and I don't have any battery operated devices automatically binding to it.

In any case, I've never had bad battery life from any Apple product, sans my old PowerBook but it was pretty much on par for laptops back in those days. As an aside, I'm running 5.1, jailbroken, on my 4S. My iPad 2 is running 5.1 also with email push, but recently sees very little use and can go weeks without a charge.
 
There is just one caveat to your true story: the 4S isn't jailbroken on 5.1, or at least the jailbreak is not available to anyone in the public yet.

Are you perhaps either MuscleNerd, ion1c, or chpwn? Or some other jailbreak dev?
 
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