According to iPhone 4S tech specs, iPhone 4S comes with improved battery life for talk time but worse standby time compared to iPhone 4, but when it comes to real world testing it may not be completely accurate.
Folks at iLounge have just published an extensive battery comparison of Apple's new iPhone and iPhone 4, which indicates that iPhone 4 has a much better battery life for 3G data and media compared to iPhone 4S.
As you can see in the graph below, iPhone 4S battery life is worse when it comes to 3G data, audio playback, video playback and video recording, the battery life was almost the same for Wi-Fi and FaceTime and iPhone 4S battery life was slightly better for voice calls.
iLounge concludes:
While it’s easy to claim that you’ll probably still get around a day’s worth of use out of a fully charged iPhone 4S if you were used to getting that sort of life out of the iPhone 4, the reality’s not quite that simple. If you spend much of your day near a Wi-Fi network and only rely upon the iPhone 4S for web browsing and phone calling, you won’t notice a major difference—unless you’re thinking of switching to Sprint, in which case we’d be a little concerned. Similarly, if you use 3G data, plan to record or play videos, or want to listen to hours of audio during the day, you can expect greater battery drain from the iPhone 4S. Our advice for heavy iPhone users would be to keep a charger or spare battery pack handy during the day, as well as on trips.
Surprised by these test results? Let us know your experience in the comments.
[via iLounge]
Siri uses extra battery life, is it off in these tests?
A full charge last around 12hours on my iPhone 4s, with a mild usage…
turn off ping in restrictions, and turn off bluetooth.
i would also suggest and go to apple and tell them your battery life is wrong, they will just replace it.
My 4S battery seems much worse than my iPhone 4 which I gave to my wife. In fact our iPhone 4 was purchased day one and has went through 100s of charge cycles and it’s still lasting longer. I hope this is a software glitch! The iPhone 4S is way faster but the battery life is disappointing.
I disabled reminders under settings, location services and my battery life has improved!
I Always have a spare charger at work and in the car, as I sure most people do… That being said these small differences in the battery life don’t matter once you consider the advantages.
You seem “very sure” of things without backing up your “sureties”.
I was waiting for this post to come up. I thought i had a defective phone. My 4s has 26% less charge time than my 4. I thought it was because i fiddled with it too much. Glad i’m no the only one. (smells software update comming)
this is same as it was with 3g compared to 3gs, stronger cpu and gpu must have some impact.
I’m glad I didn’t upgrade. Even on Apple’s Support forum, there are a lot of people reporting that the iPhone 4S has a horrible battery life. But also on iOS 5.
it does have a horrible battery life i see it i have the 4s i do two charges a day
I always have my iPhone on a charger somewhere anyway, so it doesn’t make much difference to me.
Well it made me laugh when I heard people saying ‘who needs 64GB when we have iCloud’. What did people expect, turn off iCloud or at least expect it to gobble a fair amount of battery on the first sync. I was never in doubt that the A5 chip would consume a little more power, and I’m reasonably happy with battery consumption.
4s speakers speak louder than 4. Must hv consume more power.
My battery life was really bad. I was going through 10% in a couple hours. I turned off all unnecessesary notification and Disabled location services on many of the apps, hide my location in Find My Friends and turned off most of the iCloud features. My battery is way better now. I’ll try turning things on one at a time to figure out which one is the culprit.
sure your battery life is better now, but turning off all those features? how can you fully enjoy the iPhone4s?
all that said, imagine 4S having bigger display. Solar cells and wireless charge could help..
I got 6 hours of heavy usage. Half of that was playing sentinel 2. Phone got SUper hot while charging.
What’s so good about the iPhone 4S? A new chip, camera, and Siri. Is it worth spending another 400 for a iPhone which comes out very year with little improvements. People be smart, apple does this for a reason, they want to know how many idiots will buy a new iPhone with little improvement. If you that person who bought every single iPhone when it came out, did you know that you spend over 1,000 dollars to do the same thing on one device.
Don’t worry about it bitch. I’m not.
Who doesn’t know how much money
Their spending.
Lol @kimk69
Ya but every time I get new iPhone I sell old one for 400
Kim69- shut the fuck up bitch, he was trying to make a point!
Batterygate!!!
I’d like to see them add the 3gs to this report .. just out of curiosity..and mostly to see how standby time compares. It does seem like I have to charge my 4s more than I did with my 3gs
Yeah, I had 3GS, got a 4S, and even though it’s just a few different features, and a faster processor, the battery life was way better on my 3GS
I haven’t seen too many people talking about this, but I suspect the new antenna handling might be the root cause here. I noticed my phone gets hot when I’m on the subway, and don’t have any signal, but I’m listening to music, and have notifications on while I’m riding. It might be that bits and pieces of signal get through, and switching to the other antenna to check for improved signal will probably eat up a good amount of processor and battery resources in the process..
…obviously, not everyone is using their phone in this type of situation, but the fact that older versions of the iphone seem to have handled similar notifications options using less battery life, and the major difference in notifications between the versions is the new antenna management…
My battery loss is way worse when I get home. I went all day at work. In 10 hour the battery dropped from 100% to 60%, which is about 3% an hour. As soon as I got home, it started draining at about 9% an hour. Any ideas?
Do u have wifi at home if so thats why or maybe you use it heaps at home
This 4S owner loses 1-3% every 2- minutes. Everything is disabled. What’s the deal with a Restore – Some posters are claiming this helps. Anybody tried this yet. Did a hard-reset, minimal improvement.
I did a hard reset and a restore. Neither helped.
I have an HTC thunderbolt ……..should l switch to the 4s people?
Yes, switch to the 4s. I had the thunderbolt and now I have the 4s, I made an excellent choice! I love apple!
Well last friday I purchased an iphone 4S at the apple store (reservation pick up). I have been testing my iphone 4S, and to my surprise, my iphone 4S does way much better than my iphone 4. So for me there is a huge battery improvement.
I’m wondering how much a car charger will help. Is it the case in which you have to let your battery drain each time before charging, or are we okay with charging a few different times per day when it’s not out of juice?
Ummm… just out of curiosity, are you guys seeing my email address just above the date, even though it said “your email address will not be published.” ?? Thanks!
Yes…. lol.
My iPhone 4s is taking about 1.45 mts to charge from 18% to 100. And it’s getting very hot when I use the mobile Internet , and battery life about 1 hours if I use it full time so I need to charge it all the time. Very sad is it I have the updated iOS version but no use, let me try turn of the updates…
This worked for me: iPhone 4s 64GB
1. Backup to iCloud
2. Resetting your phone in settings
3. Restore from the iCloud backup u made.
4. Fully charge the phone to 100% and then an hour to an hour and a half after its 100%.
5. I deleted iCloud account after this to save more battery but thats up to you.
After doing this fix and a full cycle charge:
Usage – 4hrs 26m
Standby – 9hrs 6m
And 80% battery left.. Definently a major fix for me, and I even run Dell Voice VoIP app in background all the time..
I have a Samsung windows focus phone, I’ve been wanting to get an iPhone 4s. But I’ve been hearing from a kid in school who knows everything about technology. But the battery is starting to become a factor. Should I get my iPhone 4s in 2 weeks after my graduation or wait till the iPhone 5 comes out?