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iOS 5.0.1 upgrade may not fix your battery woes (Updated)

by Mel Martin Nov 11th 2011 at 11:30AM

iOS 5.0.1 seems a bit of a mixed bag for users, and that's probably a charitable description. Apple support boards are filling up with page after page of reports from users that their iPhone battery life is worse than it was before. Some users say their battery life was fine until the upgrade. Others say it is far worse, and a few are seeing some improvement. Since one of the main features of the update was to fix battery life bugs, it's hard to call this update anything but a failure. Even if the reports are hallucinatory, the PR is very, very bad. Think 'antennagate'.

Here's a sample of some of the comments:

"Was running iOS 5.0 yesterday and had great battery life on my iPhone 4.... Update with OTA last night to iOS 5.0.1 and now just sitting at work and not surfing it is down to 55%. It has only been off the charger for 2 1/2 hours.... I haven't even talked on it today. Wow Apple... what a fix!"

"After installing iOS 5 in my iPhone 4s I noticed that my battery was drying 1% for every 1Min 36Sec. I believe every 1hr 20 Min i will hzave to charge my mobile. And there is no option to downgrade to 5.0. Irritating."

"Yes have the same problem. Was looking forward to having normal battery life on my new phone, but the new 5.0.1 update actually made it worse. I'm about to throw away my iPhone and go back to a blackberry... At least the blackberry held its charge for 2 full days."

In my own experience my battery life dropped dramatically when I installed iOS 5 on an iPhone 4 last month. When I upgraded to the iPhone 4S there wasn't any improvement, and the battery life was certainly behind the performance I had experienced before iOS 5 appeared. One bright spot was when I applied the 5.0.1 update from an airport via their WiFi. What an improvement over tethering to a computer -- the whole process took about 12 minutes.

Of course all the battery life experiences are anecdotal, and it may be that we're all using the new features so heavily that we're driving battery performance down. Of course, that won't explain why phones just sitting by themselves overnight are draining faster the before iOS 5 or iOS 5.0.1 appeared. It's pretty obvious there is some fire under all this smoke.

Apple hasn't commented on any of this new furor so far, but I wouldn't be surprised to see iOS 5.0.2 coming to an iPhone near you soon.

[Editor's note: I'm seeing improved battery life, but it's clear there is something at work here and it'll probably take Apple a bit longer to figure out why some iPhones (mine is an iPhone 4) are draining faster and some are not. - Victor Agreda, Jr.]

Update: Apple confirmed to All Things D that the battery drain issues may persist for some.



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49 Comments

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bplummer

After the 5.0.1 update...

1. Battery Drain: appears WORSE
2. But, to be fair... I can't objectively measure the battery drain. Because after 5.0.1 my iPhone 3GS restarts itself every 5 minutes!!
3. Casual Google searches on related topics show that I am not alone.
4. Ahhh, what fun...

November 25 2011 at 11:07 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
chrisbaker3

For all of you Twitterholics out there using the official Twitter app, try uninstalling it and use another client. My battery life has improved since switching to Twitteriffic. I'll keep an eye on it to see how much better it is. But my initial impression is that the official app is a battery hog.

November 15 2011 at 2:49 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Yuusharo

Just curious, does anyone here who has the battery issue use iTunes wi-fi sync at all? I noticed this morning that my phone was trying to sync all through the night (got stuck at the last part). I cancelled and disconnected it, but I noticed my battery drained 15% on my ride to work while listening to a podcast, whereas normally it only drops a few points. I killed off every app in the app tray and rebooted the phone, and it seems to be fine for now.

This was the first time I had the battery problem since I turned off a bunch of the system location services. I'm going to try disabling iTunes wi-fi syncing tonight to see if that has any affect. I backup with iCloud and use iTunes Match, so I rarely need to sync it with my computer anyway.

November 15 2011 at 1:05 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Xavi

I had the battery problems, updated OVER THE AIR and problems were worse or the same. The Mac geek in me went, "mmmm the update was only 55 MB I wonder what a FULL RESTORE through iTUNES would do? And sure enough it has dramatically improved battery life. Not as good as the iphone 4, which is to be expected, but at least I can make it through the day now!

November 14 2011 at 11:44 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
nomaillist

I have seen Exchange servers run down the battery. It kept getting pushed mail every minute. Deleting the email account then reactivating it fixed the problem

November 13 2011 at 6:30 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Andrew Curtis

dispite the vast performance improvement I noticed when upgrading from iOS 4 to 5 on my 3GS, my battery life took a severe punishing when with in range of an authenticated WiFi. But after disabling the diagnostic reporting which was on, (minor improvement but still noticeably worse than iOS 4) and then disabling the timezone update, my battery life pretty much returned to pre-iOS 5 levels.

Its too early to tell if my battery life is better or worse since 5.0.1 but over the air updating is a SOOOO much better than having to do it tethered!

November 12 2011 at 7:51 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Sperl Viktor

I have an iPhone4. I realized, that the new 'Reminders' app are accessing my location continously. Disabled that, it's better now.

November 12 2011 at 12:52 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
JoshIndy

When I first purchased the iPhone 4S, I noticed the shortened batter life compared to the iPhone 4. I did all of the location-b­ased fixes and the battery still drained quickly (even when not in use). I have installed the latest iOS update and it does not help with the battery drain... Ultimately­, I think this has to do with Siri and the locater.

November 12 2011 at 11:53 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Pedro_C

I tried everything there is to try for my leaking iPhone 4S:

location off
messages of
restore from iCloud
restore from iTunes
restore all settings
iOS 5.0.1
Airplane mode
iCloud off
etc.

nothing works

In standby usage is going up about half the rate of standby.
It is driving me crazy!!!

I decided to sent my iPhone 4S back, and use my old trusty iPhone 4, which I already cleared of all data.
For this i witched the SIM, and miraculously the battery of my iPhone 4S stopped leaking! (no more usage in standby)
It is kind of logical Apple missed this HUGE bug, there are many different SIM's to test, and some of them don't interact well with
the iPhone 4S. But they should communicate better!

November 12 2011 at 11:41 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Pedro_C

Problem with battery is the SIM-card reader of iPhone 4S, they should solve that faster.

I tried everything there is to try for my leaking iPhone 4S:

location off
messages of
restore from iCloud
restore from iTunes
restore all settings
iOS 5.0.1
Airplane mode
iCloud off
etc.

nothing works

In standby usage is going up about half the rate of standby.
It is driving me crazy!!!

I decided to sent my iPhone 4S back, and use my old trusty iPhone 4, which I already cleared of all data.
For this i witched the SIM, and miraculously the battery of my iPhone 4S STOPPED LEAKING! (no more usage in standby)
It is kind of logical Apple missed this HUGE bug, there are many different SIM's to test, and some of them don't interact well with
the iPhone 4S. But they should communicate better!

November 12 2011 at 11:38 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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