The ‘battery life’ issue which many users have experienced – in which you moved from a 3GS or iPhone4 that could cope with a single daily charge, to an iPhone 4S that needs a minimum of two charges to make it through a full day of heavy use – has seen no resolution. Apple’s release of iOS5.0.1 was due to fix the issue, but it was more or less immediately evident that it didn’t – and so 4S users have continued in their outcry on the web.
Whilst there’s been no explicit statement from Apple as to the cause (why would there be?), the consensus seems to be it something in the antennae – iOS5 on the 4S (but not on the iPhone 4, oddly) disabled the toggle for 3G, so we’ve been unable to test if its that antenna or something more fundamental to the phone. But I’d guess the problem lies there, as well as the pervasive GPS integration (which at least you can turn off).
Which is a long way around of saying: no-one knows anything at all. There’s no expected release date for iOS 5.1 (not even a tenuous hint at a release date in the form of a media invite to an Apple event), or any indication if we’re going to see an update ahead of the anticipated launch of the iPad 3 – guesstimated for March/April in the US. Although, again, your guesstimate is as good as mine; most of Apple’s production is in China and it might therefore have been less badly hit by the Thai floods and Japan Earthquake supply chain issues, and as the iPhone 4S was outside the regular launch cycle for iPhones, it wouldn’t surprise me if the iPad 3 hits late too. After all, the iPad 2 is still selling like hotcakes…
Has anyone got any hints and tips about extending the battery life on your 4S? I’ve disabled location services on a lot of services (see image below), including the system service for setting the time zone (which seemed to be persistently ‘on’), but other than that, nothing I’ve done seems to have made any noticeable difference.
