Apple is aware of battery life problem on 4s and iphone 4

[p3unit32]

Your report is not the norm for starting over.

So that begs the question, what apps are you running? Because your original iPhone 4S and your current one have almost zero possibility of being from the same batch of batteries or components.

Would having several apps in notification center or having push notifications active in those apps have anything to do with it?

 

[p3unit32]

I have to side with Rokko here, i work in the mobile handset industry, have done for 15 years, tones of work has gone into battery design, and the move from Ni Cad to Li ion batteries.
Part of the company i worked for actually designed batteries from the chemical level up. And what Rocko said is true, no conditioning is required, Lithium batteries are not like the Ni Cad (which did require conditioning). The full cycle discharge and re-charge people are talking about is to calibrate the battery meter so it has an idea of how much capacity the battery actually holds, its nothing to do with conditioning the battery, that is NOT needed.

Further more he is 100% spot on when he said about small depth of discharge, the chemists who worked in the devision i managed told us that the optimal way to treat a Li ion battery is to keep it cool, and mostly if possible only discharge it to around 40% then recharge, do not perform complete cycle charges (100%-0) each time.

Apple recommends a full discharge to make sure the battery meter is accurate, by doing this once a month is makes sure that as the battery degrades slightly over time the gauge adapts to this. The whole advatage of Li ion is that is does NOT require conditioning !

heres a quote

Lithium-ion is a low maintenance battery, an advantage that most other chemistries cannot claim. There is no memory and no scheduled cycling is required to prolong the battery's life. In addition, the self-discharge is less than half compared to nickel-cadmium, making lithium-ion well suited for modern fuel gauge applications. lithium-ion cells cause little harm when disposed.

This is what the Apple rep was referring to then. He said that the battery doesn't have to be completely drained, or doesn't really make a difference.

 

[AnthemX]

for the battery life and performnace it does not have to be drained, thats only for the gauge to tell you how much you have left, the battery will perform the same, its just that the gauge maybe inaccurate, i.e. it may stay at 1% for ages and quickly drop from 100. The 100% to zero lets the software measure the total dischage usage and average that to make the gauge represent the level better. If you dont look at the gauge you dont need to do it at all

 

[gixxersixxer]

So I erased and reset all settings. Synced only my contacts, calendar, and notepad with itunes. I have weather, stocks and game center off in notifications. Location services are off other than find my iphone and siri, I also turned off setting time zone and diagnostic and usage in location services. Display brightness is about 33%. Push mail is off with fetch mail every 30 mins. Everything in icloud is off except for find my iphone. How does this usage look? Am i still getting bad usage considering everything I have turned off that I shouldnt?

 

[Skull One]

I have to side with Rokko here, i work in the mobile handset industry, have done for 15 years, tones of work has gone into battery design, and the move from Ni Cad to Li ion batteries.
Part of the company i worked for actually designed batteries from the chemical level up. And what Rocko said is true, no conditioning is required, Lithium batteries are not like the Ni Cad (which did require conditioning). The full cycle discharge and re-charge people are talking about is to calibrate the battery meter so it has an idea of how much capacity the battery actually holds, its nothing to do with conditioning the battery, that is NOT needed.

Further more he is 100% spot on when he said about small depth of discharge, the chemists who worked in the devision i managed told us that the optimal way to treat a Li ion battery is to keep it cool, and mostly if possible only discharge it to around 40% then recharge, do not perform complete cycle charges (100%-0) each time.

Apple recommends a full discharge to make sure the battery meter is accurate, by doing this once a month is makes sure that as the battery degrades slightly over time the gauge adapts to this. The whole advatage of Li ion is that is does NOT require conditioning !

heres a quote

Lithium-ion is a low maintenance battery, an advantage that most other chemistries cannot claim. There is no memory and no scheduled cycling is required to prolong the battery's life. In addition, the self-discharge is less than half compared to nickel-cadmium, making lithium-ion well suited for modern fuel gauge applications. lithium-ion cells cause little harm when disposed.

So basically you are repeating exactly what I posted here - http://www.iphoneforums.net/forum/i...m-4s-iphone-4-a-25149/index18.html#post137356

So much for putting this to rest.

 

[gixxersixxer]

So I erased and reset all settings. Synced only my contacts, calendar, and notepad with itunes. I have weather, stocks and game center off in notifications. Location services are off other than find my iphone and siri, I also turned off setting time zone and diagnostic and usage in location services. Display brightness is about 33%. Push mail is off with fetch mail every 30 mins. Everything in icloud is off except for find my iphone. How does this usage look? Am i still getting bad usage considering everything I have turned off that I shouldnt?

I actually waited til the phone died and my last check with 1% was something like 6hrs 15mins...

 

[p3unit32]

I actually waited til the phone died and my last check with 1% was something like 6hrs 15mins...

I almost have those results with the opposite, I have everything on. I'm currently at 3% with 5hrs and 38 minutes usage and 14 hrs 3 minutes standby by.

 

[Rocko]

Wondering if it's normal when I am at home and I have my iPhone 4s on wifi. When it is sitting on sleep mode, and I turn it on. I notice it is on 3G for a second then switches to wifi. When it sleeps does it switch it self back to 3G? Just wondering if that could cause battery drain. I find I have good standby but it drains pretty hard and fast while in use. And i have Everything off cause when I didn't I had bad standby use. Just waiting for a proper update.

Mine does the same. All 3 I have had did this.

 

[Rocko]

So basically you are repeating exactly what I posted here - http://www.iphoneforums.net/forum/i...m-4s-iphone-4-a-25149/index18.html#post137356

So much for putting this to rest.

True, but I think Skull there is so much mis-information out there that most people think the battery itself needs the deep discharge. If we had a detailed explanation of how the battery meter's accuracy is helped by an occasional full discharge I think it would be helpful.

 

[gixxersixxer]

I almost have those results with the opposite, I have everything on. I'm currently at 3% with 5hrs and 38 minutes usage and 14 hrs 3 minutes standby by.

Do you mind sharing all your settings down to the t? I'd like to set it up today once fully charged and do another test to see how it stacks up...

Do you also have everything related to icloud turned on as well as icloud storage and back up? Thanks.

 

[p3unit32]

I'll have to post it later. My phone just died and the usages was about 6hrs and 20minutes. But I had on wi-fi and have been in a wi-fi area a little over 90% of the time. The wi-fi signal was 90%+. I had on my bluetooth option the whole time, location services, reminders, Siri, the Apple diagnostic option on, the time zone thing. Everything you can thing of, I have it on, plus I have about 20 apps using push notifications, probably half of them are using locations services. Oh I don't have my email fetching, I opted to do that manually. I did not play any games, or look at any videos. I had about a 1-2 minute phone called, the rest was posting to this forum, manually download games, checking twitter and facebook. I did use my Bible app and copied a text out of it and post on facebook, but again this was over wi-fi. That's really about it. I guess that's going to be my battery life, guess I can't complain since I have the works operating.

 

[p3unit32]

This stat was taken 30-40 minutes prior to the battery completely dying. It ended up being 6hrs 22minutes usage and 14hrs and some change standby.

 

[gixxersixxer]

Nice! Yeah, mine was just under 6hrs and 20 mins usage and just under 18 hrs stand by. I just took my phone off the charger. Changed a bit of the settings and turned on some stuff. Turned on all icloud except for icloud back up, turned on setting time zone/diagnostic and usage, readded weather in notification. Set my email to push off and manually. I dont have any apps in push since I only have a few apps since I reset the phone. With a 10 minute phone call, checking fb, stop watch for lunch, and messing with the settings.... I'm at 96% with 34 mins usage and 49 mins stand by. We'll see how this holds up today.

 

[p3unit32]

**sigh** - It does.... *sigh*

I just completed my second 100 to 0% discharge battery conditioning. How many times should you this, 2 in a row, or 3 after unboxing?

 

[Skull One]

I was REALLY hoping to avoid this discussion about Lithium-Ion Batteries. Mainly because the topic is usually 100% misunderstood by 99% of the people involved in the conversation. Even people that are "in the industry" get it wrong at times because they forget the "rules" involved.

So to my regret here is the can of worms laid out for everyone.


My last post only referenced the Operating System side of the debate. The reason for that is simple. That is truly the only thing that matters. But still some people say a deep discharge is needed while others say it is useless.

Technically they are BOTH RIGHT.

Yep, you read what I just typed correctly. Now to explain the "why" and hopefully end this for GOOD.

A SINGLE CELL Lithium-Ion battery DOES NOT NEED to be deep cycled charged. End of discussion on that. You can't argue with it. You can't say "BUT BUT BUT". The single cell doesn't have any requirement what-so-ever other than to have a protection circuit on it. The remainder of the rules are; you should never charge it at below 32F, you should store it at 40% charge if the battery is not in a device. And you should NEVER allow the battery to sit long enough that the trickle discharge of the protection circuit allows it to fall bellow the minimum charge level.

A MULTI-CELL Lithium-Ion batter HAS TO BE deep cycled charged every 60 to 100 charges to make sure EVERY CELL reaches BALANCE with it's companion cells. You can't argue with it. You can't say "BUT BUT BUT". Because this is a CHEMICAL process, the individual cells will NEVER be exactly the same on their charging or discharging rate. That means the battery has to be deep cycled to get them in parity. Oh yeah, see above for the rest of the rules.

BTW you can read up on 2 stage vs 3 stage charging of Lithium-Ion batteries if you really want to see why things work the way they do. And Wikipedia only covers about 1/3 of the information on the subject.

OH yeah one last note. This only applies to CONSUMER GRADE batteries. Commercial and industrial Li-Ion batteries tend not to have built in protection circuits. That is because they are allowed to charge above and discharge well below consumer grade batteries recommend voltage levels.