Apple admits iPhone battery suckage, promises fix Apple has admitted to battery-sucking bugs in its recently released iOS 5, has promised that a fix will be forthcoming, and has seeded a beta of iOS 5.0.1 to developers. Apple's admission comes to us via AllThingsD. Before The Reg told you about the battery suckage and a few suggested fixes, we asked Apple for confirmation and …
Carrying a spare battery is a lot more sensible than carrying a charger... And if battery life is a problem then it's even more sensible to select a phone with good stamina.
It seems that iPhones have reached the point where they won't last long enough for quite a large fraction of their normally enthusiastic user base. It doesn't matter how shiny a phone is; people *can't* use it if it goes flat on them. And there's nothing like unavoidable loss of service to put people off what is actually a quite expensive device.
@Jedit am I the only one that's noticed that there was little mention of Android being a copy of iOS until some dead drug addled mad fucker was quoted as saying it was?
iOS? Even the name is ripped off from somewhere else. Except of course in the Big Jobs revisionist history of the world it was Cisco that ripped it off from him, because he thought of it first but never mentioned it to anybody.
Apple even copied their company name from somewhere else for fucks sake. It's not like that was very original was it? And they kept it up from there.
Nothing's perfect - why not try and get things in perspective for once? This was the 5.0 release, after all, not the 5.01, and anyone who knows anything about technology knows that getting something absolutely without any errors on the .0 release is never going to happen. The fact that this is the only problem that is attracting any complaints, and even then only for a small proportion of users, is almost as good as it is ever going to get. Is there any other platform that is closer to perfect with its .0 releases? Honestly?
How about because all of the Apple faithful like to carp on about how fantastic Apples are, how they never break, just work and have no bugs?
I use Apple machines and Windows (and iPhones and Android ones). They are all the same - full of bugs and annoying as hell. The difference is that when you have a problem in Windows and Android you can generally find help, when something breaks in an Apple you can generally find lots of people telling you that Apples never break and it must be some external problem.
Not in my experience...
Yes Apple provide hotfixes like everyone else.
But I've yet to see a friendly forum. When searching for answers from previously asked questions I've been put off from answring by the vindictiveness of posters towards anyone who suggests that there may be a problem. When I requested help from an Apple user I know for a MacBook Pro not talking to a router (that I had attached lots of other kit to without a problem) I was simply told - Macs just work, your router must be broken.
When looking to find out why the print quality options were not turned on on my own MacBook Pro when using my printer from the built in driver (something that I was told is an advantage of Macs - all of the drivers are built in and you never need to install anything - yeah, right...) I found a forum with the same question and the user was told to go learn how to use a computer before coming and asking stupid questions. Not one single person had an answer for the poor soul that asked the question and I now print exclusiuvely from my Windows machine as they Mac still refuses to print anything except draft.
Very helpful friendly people...
They have had years to make this work right, and its not excuse that its new, because its not.
If Siri (a new app) had issues I could see this argument. However this is not the first version, and they should not be introducing NEW problems to their products, it shows a poor quality of engineering, and even worse testing/vetting procedures for their products.
Uh, over 3000 posts on a support thread? Let's not forget many folk won't report to an Internet support forum, many will go to an Apple store and many more will just assume it's a "Non issue." and they should "Just avoid holding it in that way."
3000+ posts is rather significant even if half are replies or duplicates by people who have already posted.
Do you mean Galaxy S or S2, because the GPS on my S works just fine thanks.
Great phone and the battery life isn't a problem as I do carry a fully charged second one (occasionally I do swap it over though -el cheapo chinese one - two quid works fine) ....not actually NEEDED it though.
When my contract is up I'm thinking about the S2 purely on the strength of the S.
Frink out!
Contrary to the article, my opinion was that my 3GS was actually lasting longer between charges. But it's just gut feel.
It is kcertainly slightly slower, but nothing I can't live with.
At least they seem to have fixed the problem of the 3GS rebooting three minutes into a call. Not had one crash yet.
I thank you el reg for just reporting the news. Sure you make up units, but you didnt this time at least jump on the everything-gate bandwagon. Thank you. It's just a glitch in a dam iphone - not a presidency ender.
Just came from http://www.theaustralian.com.au/australian-it/apple-admits-to-iphone-4s-software-bug-that-drains-the-battery/story-e6frgakx-1226184443383
A fairly normal article until you get assaulted with "Antennagate" and "Batterygate" ... really? That's as stupid as "Utegate": http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/utegate-cops-put-malcolm-turnbull-in-clear/story-0-1225744498449
Watergate was a long time ago but the stupid Baby Boomer reporters here won't get off it. Stop smoking those things and stop making lame, unnecessary, words up and then injecting them into your report.
This whole wordgate affair smells of a ripe conspiracygate.
>>Thank you. It's just a glitch in a dam iphone - not a presidency ender.
My girlfriend charges her iPhone 4 every night, despite the occasional long day and heavy use the battery was fine, but now, since iOS 5 a long day with heavy use means a dead phone at the end of the day, inability to respond to urgent call outs, phone for ambulance/taxi etc. this is totally unacceptable, if 5.01 fixes it, great, otherwise, it's a useless phone.
The iPhone is a great phone, but even Apple recoginsed that it's not a business/professional one (their terms of use even excluded business use - has this changed?)
I have had real audio problems since using iOS5 on my 3GS. Distortion on bass heavy music and I'm convinced they have changed the default "no EQ" DSP setting to make the output hotter and more bassy. There are a couple of workarounds (and perhaps some bugs relating to per track volume adjustment contained in the XML file) but I would love to see a fix (or back to what it was in iOS4.
...watching the two camp duke it out as to which of their platforms is crapper.
Jeez you two - chill the f* out.
Droidbois - if your beloved Android was so damned perfect, you wouldn't need ICS would you? And it will be a .0 release forever will it? No bug fixes? Let those without sin...etc etc. And some people *prefer* the simplicity of Apple devices to the complexity/freedom/tinkerability of Android devices. Just accept it.
Fanbois - enough with the denial - *every software manufacturer* has f*ed up at some point, and invariably needs *at least* one bug fix release. Apple are no different. Andriod *does* do some things better than IOS too. Just accept it.
Now, if my world view is correct, I shal recieve copious downvotes from both now-affronted fanboi camps (because what I said is complete lies, naturally). While receiving a smidgen of upvotes from the more rational human beings who still have a firm grasp of reality - who's lives are not defined by which phone OS they use.
I've used both 'droid and iOS.
I like them both. I find iOS is slicker, 'droid more tweakable. Currently running Gingerbread on a Galaxy S. I'm quite tempted to have a go with WinMo 7.5 next now it's been out for a bit, although ICS might delay that.
It's only a phone and if I don't like it then meh I'll move on to something else after a while.
I also had an iPad but now have an Asus Transformer because I needed more of a netbook-style device without wanting to lose the tablet element. They're both brilliant, but in slightly different ways.
This sort of tribal rubbish has been going on forever (ZX Spectrum vs C64 vs Acorn anyone?) and sadly it will never end. It's usually the people spouting the venom who miss out because many of them are closed off to new experiences.
lag on virtual keypad (and sometimes system wide) and random app crashes (utterly random, works for days then crash), both Apple (particularly Safari) and others, even those updated for ios5.
Not so annoying I've bothered restoring to new and reinstalling everything, but seriously considering it.
I had the battery problem, coupled with a 'you have used your data allowance' message from O2? My iphone 4 battery would go from 100% to off overnight! Suddenly stopped without me doing anything? OS update has not brought it back! Strange........................
Seems to be pretty common. When on a call hands free I start getting loads of distortion on the call. Looking at the Apple forums, it seems that the microphone in the handset is sometimes turning on even though I'm handsfree. In the short term, I can get around it by turning speakerphone on and off but as an everyday phone its already getting on my tits!
Oh, and Siri's about as much use as a chocolate fireguard!
I rested my iPhone 4 onto my 4S and was ready to demand a refund when the battery would fully discharge whilst I slept every night (and I don't sleep that long!).
I was serious upset and not happy to turn everything off to try and make it work, as what would be the point of upgrading.
Anyway, I tried lots of the solutions and as with a previous upgrade (may have been the 3 to the 3S) a lot of the problems seem to come from restoring settings made for the previous model onto the new one.
I found that if I did a 'reset all settings' (you don't lose any data/contacts/media) that after a further power cycle of my phone I'm suddenly getting good battery life (well similar to my iPhone 4) without turning off all the nice new features.
I can now easily go a full day again with my normal usage without worrying and lose about 1% an hour overnight (the phone checks email every 15 minutes), which I'm happy with.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
