iOS Questions

I hope you guys don't mind me asking about the iPhone 4S.

Do you guys keep find my phone on along with the other location settings? What about iCloud? With those two features enabled, how's the battery life? I find that my usage is very high (even when I'm not using the phone) and thus the battery life reduced.

I have turned off the system location services such as traffic and what-not.
Also, my push email is off and I don't have any apps installed. I am on fresh software with the latest 5.01.

 

I have find my phone on, iCloud, general location settings, push email and tons of apps. My battery life lasts me a couple days usually but I'm not constantly using my phone.

Usually a few minutes an hour to check messages, maybe 30 minutes of web use a day and an hour with my bluetooth heart rate monitor every other day.

EDIT: 4S with iOS 5.0.1

 

I have to recharge my iPhone twice a day. I have Find my Phone on, iCloud (Photo stream ON, never on wireless), Push Exchange server with contacts, calendar and mail. I have something between 50-100 SMS each day at this time of the year, about 1 hour call, but those are short conversations.. And I have 15GB data usage limit each month, and I've use something between 8-10GB of it. I think that my battery lasts rather good actually, for my usage. This is pretty much what I've also get from my HTC Sensation. I have 8 applications installed, such as Whats App, Find my Phone, my carrier's app and so on. No games or BS.

I will consider myself as a heavy user.


How long does your battery last nu_D? I hope also you know that there is a battery drain bug with iOS 5 that is crawling around.. And no, 5.0.1 didn't fix it for most people..

 

Thanks for the replies.

Well it gets me through the day, no complaints, it's just that I would rather see the battery level higher as I really am not using it much. Doing nothing I'm losing around 3-4% an hour. Overnight for about 8 hours I lose around 17%. It's just kind of disturbing. I haven't hit it with enough usage for it to really matter but I want to fix it obviously. I'm hoping 5.1 helps. Just annoying to use the phone for 4 minutes and then check the usage and have it tell me it's at 1 hour and 10 minutes. What the heck is it doing?

Do you guys have ping on? I read somewhere disabling might help. Tunay and bogatyr, if you could tell me if you've done anything outside the norm to get your battery life it would be great.

Thanks once again.

 

Just the defaults, nothing special. My battery doesn't drop 17% overnight, sounds like you have something eating the battery when it should be sleeping.

If you factory reset the phone, does it still eat that much overnight? Nothing on it.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

How much does it drop overnight? Yup. I have reset it twice, done complete restores twice.

 

I don't know overnight, but I had 3% left yesterday, and it hold for about 3 hours... But 17% overnight, does not sound right. I do not use Ping, I have also Itunes store on my phone disabled. I've read that helps alot.

 

By you do not use Ping, do you mean you have it disabled in the restrictions or that you just don't use it?

I wouldn't mind it losing 3-5% a night... but not +15%.

 

There is a known iOS bug that if the Mail app is left open, it can drastically rain an iDevice's battery overnight. It was affecting iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch users. It still pops up from time-to-time so I would look into completely closing the Mail app before going to bed. The only bad thing is that I don't think you will continue to receive live e-mail updates but you can always re-open the app once you get up. Still, even with push notifications disabled for the Mail app, it has been known to cause problems.

Other apps such as Facebook can eat away at the battery too. You can close Facebook but still receive background updates through the notifications area. Disabling the iTunes Store on an iPhone shouldn't do anything either. It is nothing more than a dedicated app which is a front-end to the music, movie, TV show, etc. sections of the iTunes Store. It isn't constantly checking for updates or new content in the background. That is different from the App Store app which does periodically look for app updates. That shouldn't drain an iPhone's battery though.

There was circumstantial "evidence" that Ping was causing drastic iPhone battery draining (particularly with the iPhone 4) but that was back when iOS 4.3 was the latest version. Apple updated that to iOS 4.3.1 (along with a thousand other updates since then) and the Ping battery issue seems to have gone away.

Do you have your iPhone's wi-fi antenna on as well? What about bluetooth? There would be an easy way to determine if there is an app consuming data overnight causing the battery to drain too much. Put your iPhone into Airplane mode and then go to bed. This will disable all wireless options including 3G/EDGE/whatever, wi-fi, and bluetooth. Now, if your iPhone still drains about 17%, you have problems and should restore it using iTunes, re-sync everything back over, and try the test again. If your iPhone's battery doesn't really drain much, you know that there is some background service causing problems.

One last question: are you in an area that has good 3G/HSPA coverage or is your iPhone constantly switching between different wireless options?

 

I actually have all my apps closed always, except phone. A habit I picked up having multitasking enabled on my 3G.
Also, I don't have any apps open so that isn't an issue either.
Ya, I tried with Ping disabled and it made no difference.

Wi-fi is always on. Bluetooth off. I had data off and it didn't drain much.
I actually performed many tests. Been on this for about week.
See that's the crazy thing. It's doing something, I just don't know what. I swear turning off iCloud and location services doesn't seem to help either. It's like it's sending data always when it can, and that's what's causing the issues. When I turn data off, my issues are gone. I just can't figure out what the heck it's doing. Diagnosis data and whatever is gone too.

I've done three complete restores now.

I dunno.

Thanks for the lengthy post, it's much appreciated.

 

Disabled in restrictions.

Also, try to take a backup, then reinstall your iPhone. But do not restore your backup. Let it sit for overnight and see how much battery it uses? It could be something with your current configurations. But I really doubt it, it is most likely the battery bug.

 

Mine is 1-3% per night. I frequently go to sleep with it under 10% and my alarm still goes off 8 hours later. I usually charge it when I do dishes as we have a speaker dock in the kitchen. That's about the only time I charge it anymore.

 

Ya, I've tried all that. I think I got the bug for some reason.
1-3% per night sounds about right, instead I get that per hour.
Oh well.
Let's see what 5.1 holds in store...

 

I'm actually hoping to get my results better actually... I'm waiting for the 5.0.2.

You going to try to downgrade to 5.0.0?

 

Wi-fi being on could also be an issue especially if you aren't in the presence of a wi-fi network. Your iPhone will constantly look for a wi-fi connection if it hasn't already found one and connected to it. Even then 3G+wi-fi will drain the iPhone's battery a lot faster than if you were connected to just one or the other. Also, you never mentioned if your data coverage was good where you are currently at. Lastly, I still think the Airplane mode test is needed. That would essentially tell you if it is a problem with the iPhone/iOS or if you have something else going on.

 

I got the battery bug after upgrading to 5.0.1 - 5.0 was just fine.

The first thing I noticed after upgrading was that I was losing 5-10% battery life every hour while the phone was completely idle. If I fully charged the phone, unplugged it, then went to bed, it'd be down to about 30% by the time I woke up.

Between this and iTunes 10.5's inability to sync playlists, I'm starting to think that Apple's polish and perfection died with Steve Jobs.

 

Peon, I have actually came across many who has that issue. And most downgraded back to 5.0.0. But, I have no idea why it affects some and not all of the users. Kind of strange, but it has been going on for too long now, Apple has to do something with it quite soon!

 

I have a strong Wi-Fi connection so it's not that. My network connection is pretty good, let's say 4 out of 5 bars although on my Nokias I have full bars. But the problem is I do get "searching for network" from time to time. I think it happens when it jumps from EDGE to 3G. I must say my 3G iPhone never searched for a network. I'm wondering if it has to do with my SIM since I took it to a place with one of those cutting tools, it's not a micro-sim originally. I will be going to get a new sim tomorrow.

I had actually have done a test similar to flight-mode, I just had no Wi-Fi connection and cellular data was off, usage didn't go up and my battery life didn't go down. I know it's something software it's doing. I mean, it's not even sending that much data through the cellular connection. It's like it's taking 10 hours to compile 1MB of data and then sending it. Weird man.

I'm not going to 5.0 with 5.1 around the corner... at least not yet. Maybe if I get frustrated enough I will. Which will probably end up happening.

I just looked into it... seems like I can't. It came with 5.01 so I guess I'm stuck.

 

I think you missed the point.

 

Right. Either way, wi-fi + 3G is still going to consume a lot more power than just 3G alone. I know a few people who have iPhone's on a limited data plan (both Verizon and at&t). The first thing they do when they get home is disable 3G and turn their wi-fi on. That way they can still receive phone calls and text messages but all data aspects are handled by wi-fi (so they don't eat anything out of their 2GB of service). Their iPhones seems to do fine with a daily charging (which is common for smartphones). However, with 3G on as well as wi-fi, the battery is going to be drained a lot faster even if it is connected to a strong wi-fi signal.

 

Ya, I misread that.
See I don't think Wi-Fi is doing all that anyway. When I turned off data services and tested it over night I actually had Wi-Fi where there wasn't a signal, and it still did great.

I'm going to sit tight till 5.1. Then, well, I will take it from there.

Thanks for all the help guys.

 

I've now figured out I lose about 2-5 % overnight… That is with 3G, and WiFi + Bluetooth off.
I have no idea if this is normal or not, I've usually close all the applications each time before I put my phone to sleep…

I have also glowing backlit logo, keep in mind, on standby however it should not do a impact on battery at all, but you never know...

 

Which is a lot better than your previous ~17%. Of course, you should know that the iPhone's battery indicator (pick a generation and version of iOS, it won't matter) is highly inaccurate. Either way, an overnight drain of 2% (if it really is 2%) doesn't sound bad. My iPad 2 will drain about 1-2% overnight as well in standby mode but that is with wi-fi on and connected to a network. Either way, I think there is some background process consuming your data and battery.

You may have already answered this but is your iPhone synced with iCloud? You also mentioned something about your phone switching from EDGE to 3G quite a bit. To me, that would indicate that you aren't in a strong 3G covered area. The constant switching between two different types of networks will cause a phone's battery to drain faster. Even newer "4G" phones suffer from this. I have a friend who purchased an LG "4G" phone and he gets about 3/4 through the day before needing to recharge it. His phone is constantly switching from "4G" to 3G, EDGE, back up to 3G, "4G," 3G, etc. However, his phone can go a full day without needing to be plugged in when he is home in a well covered "4G" area.

 

This wasn't meant for me, was it?

 

Whoops, I thought you were the OP.

 

Hehe, it happens my friend, no problem.

 

UPDATE:

I used to use my old SIM that I cut to micro-sim proportions but I went and got a proper micro-sim hoping that would do the trick. It didn't. Then, I signed up for a data plan. Oddly enough, ever since doing that, my battery life has been pretty good I think. Charged it completely before I went to sleep, I was down to 97% battery life 8.5 hours later. I had wi-fi on and connected, all my location services on except a timezone, traffic, and iads, pushing to two email addresses, icloud on with syncing to everything except reminders and photostream. I will say, ibattery pro said that my battery was at 94% but whatever. My usage was at 14min, obviously I didn't use it at all but I will take it.

How does that sound?

Oddly enough, it must be a combination of the microsim and the data plan. Because before I was on a data plan but with a cut down sim card, and I still had the battery issues.

Weird.

 

That is seriously Weird. I've also cut my SIM card first when I've switched to iPhone 4, got Micro SIM very soon after that. I, personally do not trust those battery reading, calibrating applications. But whatever…

I don't understand how data plan could possibly affect your battery draining as you 1. in this case is connected to WiFi 2. data is transmitted without a plan too.

 

I don't know man. Also, seems at night I lose 3% every 8 hours but during the day, maybe 2% an hour. My phone is a vampire that hates light? lol.
Only thing different during the day is that I have a few meeting notifications showing up.

Very strange indeed.

 

Try to upgrade your software nu_D. 5.1 is out.