My iPhone 4S after initially seeming better than my old 3GS, has started to run down battery pretty quickly. It barely lasts a day.

I tried minimising notifications, if I turn off data it’s better, but 3G or wifi seem to just chew the battery. It seems worse since installing the last two software updates as well.

I’ve only had the thing about 6 months – narking me off now, but got a 24 month contract with O2.

Anyone else had same issue?

Are you killing off unsed but open apps?

I have a 4 and the g/f a 4S, both seem as fine compared to the 3GS and 3G (before it started to die) we had previously.

3G will eat the battery if the local signal is weak, because it’s constantly trying to maintain a connection, and wifi is fairly power hungry too. Have you got maximum brightness at about 50%? That helps, but it’s a fact of life that smartphones, by their nature, use a lot of power to do the things that make them smartphones. Old Nokia phones lasted for days, mainly because all they did was make calls and text.
I don’t expect my phone to last more than a day in use,and I just make sure I plug it in every night. Just had a look at my iP4, which I use for a bit of browsing, and as an iPod, and that’s on 61% at the moment, as I was on here with it earlier. My iP5 is on 74%, and i’ve not used that very much at all today. Network signal is fairly poor on both networks I use, O2 and 3, which probably hits the batteries hard.

Have a look at which apps are using location services… There are one or two ‘rogue’ apps which keep checking where you are even when you are not using the app… I had one and found the battery drained within 14-15 hrs with minimal use, instead of the two days (36hrs) that I’d normally get with the same usage.

OK, didn’t know that about the poor reception thing. I work in an area where there is really poor signal (O2) – business park out in the sticks. Will be interestng to see if working in the city centre again in a few weeks time makes any difference.

z1ppy – wow. Had no idea, just checked out that link, I thought that home screen just showed the 4 most recently used apps!

My 4S lasted me about half a day by the time I sold it. I am quite a “power user” but 2 charges a day was normal. 3 if I was going out in the evening.

My Galaxy S4 on the other hand, easily lasts from 7am until 12 midnight on one charge, max screen brightness, wifi, 3g, etc

z1ppy – wow. Had no idea, just checked out that link, I thought that home screen just showed the 4 most recently used apps!

Yeah, anything running in the background using GPS sucks the battery life in a few hours.

Have you tried changing location services, such as
Settings -> Privacy -> Location Services -> System Services -> Turn off Diagnostics & Usage, Location-Based iAds, and Setting Time Zone

Turn off fetch mail or set it to not as often; turn off push data
Turn on auto brightness

Also do not charge your phone overnight, only charge when you need to, not just because you are near a charger.

Failing everyones suggestions, the batteries are cheap and to replace them it is two screws and push fit connection.

Yeah, anything running in the background using GPS sucks the battery life in a few hours.

Oh, yeah, I’d forgotten about that one, it’s something I forget all the time, if I’ve had Viewranger, MotionX-GPS or a maps app open, and just click it out of the way. Then wonder why my battery has dropped down to the red line… 😳

OK, didn’t know that about the poor reception thing. I work in an area where there is really poor signal (O2) – business park out in the sticks. Will be interestng to see if working in the city centre again in a few weeks time makes any difference.

Signal strength is woefully inadequate where I work, right in the middle of a large business park by a major trunk route from the M4 to the south coast! I struggle to get above one bar on 3, O2 much above two, most of the time.
Doesn’t help that the building is almost entirely clad in steel sheet.
With strong signals, you might well notice an improvement.

Wow. Just checked mine and I’m surprised my battery lasts as long as it does. Also expalins why my data usage has been silly 😳

Thanks for the tips!

Nokia 520 reporting in. Longest time between charges 3 Days 2 Hours.

Replaceable battery too….

Also do not charge your phone overnight, only charge when you need to, not just because you are near a charger.

This is wrong. Modern phone batteries like to topped up very regularly and don’t like running out of power or even dropping below 50% really.

Conversely they don’t mind being plugged in for a long time (such as overnight) becuase the chargers/phone software is smart enough to prevent overcharging and will switch to trickle charge once the battery is fullish.

Temperature also – keep them cool to prolong the life of the battery itself. Lithium batteries degrade faster in warmer conditions.

I keep spare laptop batteries in the fridge [NOWHERE NEAR FROST!]

Are you killing off unsed but open apps?

This is also a myth. Killing “open” apps in the taskbar does two fiths of bugger all. Multitasking on the iPhone is much more nuanced than “if its in the taskbar its running in the background”. The taskbar is actually just an app history which shows the order you last opened and app. How the app performs in the background is controlled by the type of app and the settings for that app.

For example Skpe is a real battery killer if you leave it logged in and conected. Removing it from the task bar doesn’t stop this, the in app settings do.

http://appadvice.com/appnn/2012/01/fact-or-myth-killing-apps-in-the-ios-multitasking-bar-boosts-performance

Temperature also – keep them cool to prolong the life of the battery itself. Lithium batteries degrade faster in warmer conditions.

It’s like battery bullshit day!

A Lithium battery may degrde slower in the cold because the chemical reactions are slower. So when not in use they should indeed be kept in the cold.

But phone batteries are always in use.

And when in use they should be kept warm to maximise capacity. Becuase at lower temperatures the chemical reactions are slower they produce less current and therefore reach the point where they cannot produce enough current to power the device more quickly. So if your phone is running out of juice too quickly you should keep it warm, not cold.

This also works for me: occasionally (once a fortnight?) let the battery drain to nothing, until the phone shuts itself down- then charge it.

Seems to add about 50% back onto battery life- I know not why.

Yo – jfletch, I said life of the battery itself. I should clarify, I mean the longer you keep it in a cool place the longer it will continue to hold it’s rated capacity. As you said, the warmer, the faster the reaction, so to maximise output voltage, keep it warm – but if you keep your phone out of the sun and pockets when not in use you will find it works better after a year or two. Hence unused lappy batteries in the fridge.

No problems with mine, it’s about 18 months old If used occasionally phone lasts 2 days easily. Heavy usage especially browsing the web for 30-40 mins, FaceTime/Skype calls or using it as a sat nav in car runs it down pretty quickly.

I can barely get a full day out of mine after having it 18 months but I’ve got poor signal in the office which doesn’t help. I’d love it if there was an iPhone option for my next upgrade that was thicker and heavier with a much better battery

Just to show how much betterer smartphone batteries are, and their power handling, I bough a Nokia N95, because every review raved about how good it was, what it could do, yada yada yada.
It was utter crap. The battery life could be almost measured in minutes, if the phone was actually tasked with anything, and the GPS could only function if the keyboard was slid open, so in order to actually use it for navigation you then needed a BT GPS receiver, which meant having BT on, which meant approximately two hours use on one charge. If you were lucky.
Same with music; I had an 8Gb card in mine, with maps and music on it. If I walked up town playing music, after two hours, the battery was dead, so in order to get any significant use from the damned thing, I either needed four or five spare batteries, at £20+ a go, or a larger capacity battery, which needed an enlarged case back, which couldn’t hold the battery so tightly, allowing the SIM to lose contact, meaning no phone calls…
And the camera was a useless piece of crap that could barely focus on a barn door; it couldn’t focus on a 70 foot sailing ship in Bristol harbour, or my bike propped against a tree!
Compare even an iPhone 3G, let alone a 4 or 4Gs against that woeful piece of crap, and it’s amazing just how far the tech has actually come in a relatively short time.
For which I’m very thankful, considering how much I use my phone every day.
I rather wish Nokia had kept developing their new OS; that phone of theirs with the 42Mp camera is awfully tempting…

I’ve got a Samsung Galaxy S4 mini and have been pretty impressed with the battery; I have to really bash it to get it to run down in a day, it’s usually at 50% by bedtime on a heavy use day.

(Apart from using Chrome, which seems to use 30% of the battery on top of everything else, so I use the standard Samsung browser.)

I think cleverer use of the available power by the OS will be the future change, rather than more absolute power.

Yo – jfletch, I said life of the battery itself. I should clarify, I mean the longer you keep it in a cool place the longer it will continue to hold it’s rated capacity.

Yep – Its all true. But the OP wanted to know what they could do to get more juice out of their battery. So your answer of “keep it cool” is the exact oposite of what they should do. i.e. BS.

‘k

I had this with my Iphone 5, take it to an apple store and they will run diagnostics on it. Found that one of the menus was corrupt, so they changed the phone for a new one without any problems.

Switch of Siri, that sucks the battery life out of my 4S.