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Apple Acknowledges iPhone 4S Battery Problems
bdking writes "After more than two weeks of complaints from frustrated iPhone 4S owners, Apple finally has admitted problems with fast-draining batteries in the new devices. The company blames it on bugs in iOS 5 and promises a fix 'in a few weeks.' But Apple should have spoken up sooner, if only to acknowledge the issue."
But Apple should have spoken up sooner, if only to acknowledge the issue.
It's been pretty quick by corporate standards and Apple don't exactly have a reputation for owning up to mistakes. I think this is a good response by them.
Other users and Apple disagree with you.
Can we keep the blatant opinions out of the articles, and save them for the comments?
My experience from working for completely different companies is that the standard approach to product flaws is to ignore them completely or at least stay quiet until your people in-house have verified the problem and are halfway done with a fix or workaround (or the lawyers have concluded that the company isn't liable in which case it is somehow not a problem anyway no matter what the customers claim).
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
From the summary:
"But Apple should have spoken up sooner, if only to acknowledge the issue."
What a load of shit. The device has been out for about three weeks at this point. How many other companies actually work this quickly to actually determine whether or not a problem exists, determine what the problem actually is, and then start working on a fix? I wish the companies that I regularly deal with were remotely as responsive to issues.
Had this been an issues with a new blackberry, you know they would be crucified. The media loves to let apple getaway with stuff like this all the time, but any mistakemade by RIM and it means the end of the company. If this is a software bug, why are we waiting weeks for a fix? Because apple knows they can do as they please, and these devices will still fly off the shelves faster then they can build them.
-EL
Apple has been asking users for assistance in narrowing down this issue. There is no "finally". They generally don't talk about things that they don't have information on. If they had spoken up sooner, they would have simply been able to say nothing other than, "hey, people, don't buy our phone, wait for some indeterminate amount of time until we can solve an issue that may or may not even exist, and my only affect a small fraction of our customers".
Some people have had problems. Others have not.
...for a replacement battery?
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
Other users and Apple disagree with you.
A small number of users. Haven't had problems myself but it's an x.0 release, so I'm not surprised some people have run into bugs.
"A small number of customers have reported lower-than-expected battery life on iOS 5 devices," Apple spokeswoman Natalie Harrison said in a statement to All Things Digital. "We have found a few bugs that are affecting battery life, and we will release a software update to address those in a few weeks."
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
My outlook does not look good.
I use Gmail, myself...
The cake is a lie.
Have they pattented having a fast-draining battery yet?
My old Nokia from the 90's used to drain the battery fast- perhaps they can retro-actively sue Nokia.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
It's a fact of life that faster chips consume more power, and Apple may have taken a bite the battery can't chew. Faster didn't equate to better in this revision I think.
I don't think there are any issues. iPhone is designed to be used. I use mine so much during the day that I have to recharge it anyway while I'm sleeping. And it's great. I understand why owners of other phones don't really use them, but I love playing while on the move, and listen to music. When it's time for me to unwind, it's time for my iPhone to unwind too, and I put it recharging right next to me on bed.
Really? Apple's saying they've found software issues causing a problem and are beta testing a fix right now. Sure you wanna argue with that?
And although I'm happy with the 4S, and it's not dying on me before I get home from work, it's most certainly worse than the iPhone 4 I had. I can't wait for the update.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Just carry a second (or third) charged battery and switch it when the battery is drained.
a) "A small number of users" is Other users no? Pretty pointless comment. b) Apple says "A small number of customers" and they're completely unbiased here so I should take their word.
You have to say something inflammatory about someone or something.
It has my alarm clock, so it's right next to the bed, but not in the bed.
Jesus wept.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I don't think there are any issues. iPhone is designed to be used
Indeed you are right, but the issue is surrounding the length of time you can use it on a single charge.
I understand why owners of other phones don't really use them, but I love playing while on the move, and listen to music
What an arrogant statement that is. I have a Galaxy S2 and I can tell you that I play games while I'm travelling, listen to music practically all day and download music, videos, apps, etc. While I do all those things, I need to charge it once a day, but a friend who wasted his money on an iPhone 4S when he already had an iPhone 4, his battery life doesn't get him past lunch time on some days.
There is no -1 disagree
" With Apples new iCloud it's never been easier to carry a backup iPhone! "
Has iOS5 really been that much of a battery killer? I didn't notice a different on my ipad, though I'd only been using it a few days prior to the update.
I generally find that Apple gets crucified over the smallest issue because a headline with "Apple" in it will get read.
This is why you had some Android phones literally falling apart being reported on a couple tech sites, but rare iPhone screen cracking was worthy of the Washington Post.
With Apple's reality distortion field totally disabled, this can no longer be turned into a feature for the end user.
Nonsense, there was even a article about this earlier on /.
This simply means that Apple is two years *ahead* of the competition.. in terms of electronic consumption.
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
It is obvious that your case is not problematic. My iPhone 4S wastes battery at a 1%/hour rate if left on standby, which I find quite good. The complaints, however, are coming from people whose iPhones are sometimes wasting as much as 15%/hour on standby. I would complain about that myself if that was the case here, but it isn't.
I can, however, imagine that figuring out the conditions in which this happens is no easy task, which to me justifies the delay.
Now this? Is apple even testing these before they go?
For those who seek perfection there can be no rest on this side of the grave.
People who have kept the phone plugged in at all times have never reported the problem at all!
Something happened. I had a 4 and upgraded to a 4S. I noticed that by lunch, my 4S was down to 66% battery when before the 4 had been in the 80s or low 90s still, depending on how much I had used it for voice/data and how good my signal was (buildings that limit the signal seem to increase battery drain).
I turned off a bunch of apps in notification center and disabled some of the system location services and that seemed to reduce the drain about 75% -- I'm still 5-10% lower than I would have been on the 4, but its much better. The notification center changes seemed to help the most, I'm not sure that the location bug was affecting me, or the improvement is just too small to notice.
I assume based on my experience that maybe apps were being allowed too much or too frequent execution time for notifications, maybe coupled with some kind of location services bug.
it has problems with time-travel and mind-reading.
Good people go to bed earlier.
If there is one thing I have learned, nowadays no company will admit that their product has a problem. It opens them up to liability. Due to the litigation-happy society we live in, companies now find it wiser and safer to deny their product has an issue.
Personally, I would much rather a company come out and say, "Yeah, there is an issue we've uncovered and we are working on the fix." I can live with that. If it is an issue they can't fix in a timely manner, of course I would want to return the product and get my money back until they have it fixed. But, to have the company duck the issue when it is obvious? I find that insulting. I would rather bring my hard-earned money to a company that is being fair and honest with me than one that is being evasive and lying.
As much as I am satisfied with the Apple products I own, I usually warn people to never buy the latest and greatest from Apple right off the bat. Often, there is such a glitch in the item. It is best to wait a few months so the bugs can be worked out and then buy the new toy. (Admittedly, I don't always follow this advice, myself.)
Whew! This water sure is cold!
Bullshit, I just installed cpuburn on my smartphone so that I can be ahead of Apple fanboys.
Holy fuck people. Smarten up.
If you're in charge of a big company & reports start coming in that your new product might have a bug in it, you don't immediately run to Twitter / Facebook / Slashdot and scream at the top of your lungs "THERE'S A PROBLEM IN THE IPHONE 4S! RUN! RUNNNNNNNNNN!"
You collect data, analyze it, and then make an announcement.
I'm sure there are more than a few sysadmins that read Slashdot. And sysadmins: how many times is the user right, versus how many times does the user fuck something up / not understand the situation & start placing blame where it doesn't belong.
Yeah. Exactly. So the smart thing to do when something crops up like this is to investigate, analyze and then act. That's what Apple did, and they should be commended for it.
Yes. I'm a pissed off grumpy sysadmin. No, I don't love Apple. But I do appreciate common fucking sense - which many of you seem to lack. You're just out to burn/bitch/complain about Apple. Sad.
I was holding it wrong
There you go, proof that everyone else is just using wrong!
there was some real issues though.
as in, stupid configs in use by default for things. like checking gps position all the time to adjust timezone(WHICH YOU CAN USE THE FRIGGIN NETWORK FOR GENIUSES!).
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
When should Apple acknowledge the issue? When some users are saying they have a problem, when others are saying they don't? (Many people, myself included, have not encountered this issue). Such problems can be very difficult to track down. How does Apple know if it is a real issue? Maybe the people who are complaining have unrealistic expectations, or are using their phones in a different way. After all, the iPhone 4s has new features, which might cause some people to place a heavier demand on the battery. How many people are encountering the problem? is it 10%? 1%? 0.001% (which would still be quite a few phones). Is it a manufacturing defect, or a software problem? Is there any point in acknowledging the issue if all that you are able to honestly say is something noncommittal like, "Well, we've had some reports, but we haven't yet been able to reproduce them, and we really have no idea at all what's going on or how many people are having this problem, but we're investigating the issue"? Or is it better to wait until there is something substantive to say?
I actually had the same problem with my first-generation iPhone. I didn't even bother reporting it to Apple until I had it figured out, because a bug report that just says "Sometimes my battery runs down really fast" is virtually useless. I eventually figured out that the battery died if I left the Clock application in the foreground while the phone was asleep. I filed a bug report with Apple, and after the next system update, I got an email message that said, "We believe that the bug that you reported has been fixed. Can you verify?"
Well, the Samsung S2 is that "feature phone" that managed to switch my 11 years daughter from "I want an iPhone" to "What, this phone is way cooler than an iPhone". And concerning battery life, not even my daughter manages to drain the S2, despite her "instinctive" understanding of battery saving, e.g. using a 3D animated background or watching youtube videos for hours.
So, as hard as it might seem, Apple just lost most if not all it's technological superiority (arguable that this has happened earlier as in some ways even a T-Mobile G1 has been superior to the Apple phone of the day), so I guess Apple fanboys should start to concentrate on it's ugly^H^H^H^Hbeautiful design.
I found the antenna problem on the iPhone 4 quite hard to reproduce. I had to clutch it uncomfortably hard to see anything, and I saw about the same degree of attenuation if I clutched my 3gs tightly near the bottom. My suspicion is the iPhone 4 didn't actually have unusually bad attenuation, and that the true problem was that the visible antenna gave people an idea of exactly where to clutch it to kill the reception.
"Siri, tell me if my battery is about to die!"
-- You are in a maze of little, twisty passages, all different... --
I'm waiting for some guy from Apple to tell people that they are holding the phone wrong or something.....
Huh?
Problem: My Apple product does not appear to be the coolest thing I own. It does not seem to be revolutionizing my daily workflow, shifting the paradigms of my life philosophy or allowing me to think outside the box. Women in bars do not come up to me and coo "Ooh, that's amazing; can I touch it?" Men do not give me jealous looks when I walk down the street. Friends and neighbors do not appear to think I am more interesting than I was before purchasing this product.
Solution: Examine Apple stock price. Watch mainstream media. Indisputably, Apple products are the coolest and the best. Adjust mindset until user is functioning correctly.
The coolest thing you own is probably your ice maker.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
If it's using too much power when it's not supposed to be doing anything, it's probably doing something it shouldn't be doing when it's not supposed to be doing anything.
The question is, what?
I wouldn't mind getting close and personal with this android model, which model iPhone does it for you?
BM3
Exactly.
Which is why I still carry a 5 year old Nokia phone that is just a phone (well, OK it has a crappy camera). It may look boring... but it does what I need it to do.. Ring when someone calls me.
I hope that when it finally does I will be able to find another simple phone only phone, without having to be forced into buying a 'smartphone'....
Huh?
my new iPhone 4S out of the box had a fast draining battery. After messing with it in a completely non-scientific and non-systematic way and switching off some services (e.g., Ping) battery life is "normal" now. So it probably is a software issue.
NO CARRIER
Oh, and the battery still works.
Huh?
This is where whatevr thinkign went into sealing down the battery comes a cropper - there has to be absolutely no chance whatsoever of there being problems with it, such as draining so quickly a spare becomes essential. Whoops!
Keep in mind that with the advent of the interweb and social media, people can be a lot more vocal a lot easier. Suppose Apple sells a million iPhones in the first couple weeks worldwide, and half a percent of people are having an issue with something. That's 5000 angry people, whom a good proportion of which are going to jump on internet forums and such. The end result is that you get a couple of very busy forums and tech sites with angry customers, but the reality is it might not be a very big issue, or an issue at all.
I do think Apple is pretty responsive, though. Yes, they're a big corporate giant, but yes, I do sincerely believe someone at Apple gives a shit. That's partly what makes Apple... Apple. Look at Antennagate - they admitted to this issue fairly promptly (within a month), and ultimately ponied up to make a reasonble resolution. Short of a class action lawsuit, they're not really obligated to do much at all. Caveat emptor. There's no law that says you can't sell a shitty product.
Two weeks after initial reports of poor battery life Apple has found that the problem was cased by the IOS 5 update. A beta of IOS 5.0.1 which should resolve the issue is already available for developers.
iOS 5.0.1 beta contains improvements and other bug fixes including:
Fixes bugs affecting battery life
Adds Multitasking Gestures for original iPad
Resolves bugs with Documents in the Cloud
Improves voice recognition for Australian users using dictation
Contains security improvements
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
I was afraid that the lower battery life was an attempt to try and copy the bad battery life of the top-end Android smart phones...
Blackberry has frequent network issues, iphone battery issues. Let's see what Android issues pop up the next few weeks...
Yup, and I admit - we've got battery problems that can affect people too. (Exchange calendar sync bug, Skype, Words with Friends, and I know of one kernel bug that affected a few people which I've fixed.) However we've got far better tools for drain-hunting than iOS, and we don't have to wait for upstream to fix our problems either.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
There you go, proof that everyone else is just using wrong!
Denial as a business model?!?
It's just crazy enough, it might work!
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
If he won't, I might...
"A small number of customers have reported lower-than-expected battery life on iOS 5 devices," Apple spokeswoman Natalie Harrison said in a statement to All Things Digital. "We have found a few bugs that are affecting battery life, and we will release a software update to address those in a few weeks."
That is very different to "saying they've found software issues causing a problem". That's more like saying "Look, we have found a couple of tweaks to slightly lower the usage of some apps, but that's all we can do. People are just going to have to get real with their battery life expectations."
If it's in you sig, it's in your post.
Must Every.Single.Article. relating to Apple get trolled by Android fanbois and vice versa? Is this really worth your time, to argue inane points about some preferred phone OS you use? 90% of the comments on this article are worthless drivel. Sometimes I think the quality of /. commenting is going down hill in a big way, but then I see other sites forums with the same issues on the iOS/Android flame war. Are your lives really that shallow?
/. should do away with AC commenting. Sure you could still do it with a throwaway account but that effort would cut a lot of noise out of the system.
Perhaps
"Daisy ... daisy ... give me ... your ... answ..."
Required reading for internet skeptics
"Siri, tell me if my battery is about to die!"
You can't actually ask Siri that. (Yes, I know it's a joke.)
It's still kind of a weird thing for "the voice interface" to the phone to completely leave out. You really can't ask questions about anything that the phone is doing. If you ask about battery life, Siri offers to search the web for it.
Also, while I was typing this, Siri went down. (I had some other questions about things like storage space left that I wanted to try.) So that's cool too.
I have a feeling that at some point the ability to ask about battery charge left will be added, but right now, you can't ask Siri that.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
Have you disabled "raise to speak" in Siri settings? That was reported on day one (or two) and solved my problem immediately.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
The coolest thing you own is probably your ice maker.
The ice it produces may be cold, but such machinery typically gets fairly hot.
Are you really arguing with Apple about a problem they found on one of their own products? How come?
Oblivion Awaits
I think you've been watching too many Shia LaBeouf movies.
I don't understand.. how.. the.. fuck... this is even possible. The hardware is APPLE'S. The software is APPLE'S. How is it possible that a product that's probably been in development for over a year could be released with a problem like this? Maybe this is harder for non-software types to understand, but this is incomprehensible. It'd be like Ford shipping thousands of vehicles and forgetting to put steering wheels in them. WHAT THE FUCK.
There's GOT to be some kind of subtext. Something weird is going on. You don't make a mistake like this. You just don't.
You keep the same form factor (and thus, the same (or nearly the same) battery) but you change a few chips
- more powerful 3D accelerator... which means more electricity hungry
- dual core processor instead of single core
And some other hardware increase which are electricity hungry. Even when you're on standby, the battery (which didn't change as it would have required a bigger case) will empty faster... and when you're actually USING these new performances, the battery will drain very fast.
In software, Apple can make the phone spend more time in "sleep" mode, with processor speed lowered and some subsystems turned off, but you can't bring it down to what iPhone 4 was. And when you're using the phone for 3D games and such, you'll probably be back to 1/2 day of battery expectancy.
Go to Settings->Location Services->System Services and turning off Setting TimeZone.
The battery is draining from GPS running almost constantly trying to determine your Timezone and is most likely to occur more when you are in a location with poor GPS signal, poor cellular service or both for an extended period of time. Turning off that feature fixes the drain for most people.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
They try not to implement something they know is going to screw things up, like battery-sucking free-for-all multitasking in a smartphone. They wait until they have a workable solution. Same for copy/paste. That's not to say Apple can't occasionally accidently do something that screws things up, like this.
The best way to be able to tell if the location services bug was likely affecting you is to turn on the display option and see how often it is being polled. For my wife's 4S it appeared to be always on for the time setting location service.
I know you're trolling, but anyway, I've got a galaxy S2 running on Cyanogenmod and I charge it only twice in 3 days. Like c0mpliant, I use my phone to play games, and listen to music quite a lot. When it comes to battery life, this "feature phone" makes any iPhone look bad.
Finally, like since Oct 28th
28 Oct 2011
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/oct/28/iphone-4s-battery-apple-engineers?INTCMP=SRCH
Looks like somebody's late for Hate Week
don't be a spelling loser
Jeez, get your non-accusations straight! It was in 1991!
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
It's fairly easy to drain the battery on SGS2 - just run Skype on it (in background), that alone will get it down by half in a few hours. For the remainder, actively using Maps or playing games will take care of that.
Had this been an issues with a new blackberry, you know they would be crucified.
Research In Motion HAS had plenty of issues lately and they have been crucified for them. Their stock price has taken an enormous beating, their phone offerings are mediocre at best, their strategy is muddled and they have had outages in their email service which is the single reason anyone still even cares about Blackberry devices.
The media loves to let apple getaway with stuff like this all the time, but any mistakemade by RIM and it means the end of the company
Blackberry has made a huge string of mistakes, most of them worse than Apple's missteps and yet they are still around. There is nothing wrong with RIM that a genuinely good phone won't fix. But they haven't produced such a device and don't appear to be in any danger of producing a good phone any time soon. Until they do, Android and Apple will continue to put RIM in the hurt locker.
If this is a software bug, why are we waiting weeks for a fix?
Quite possible because it takes that long to identify and fix the bug. Not to mention you need to actually test the fix before rolling it out to millions of phones. Of course we don't know for certain but it's not exactly difficult to figure out why it might take some time. Furthermore it appears to be something that isn't a showstopper and affects only a small percentage of users. Plus it seems pretty clear that some sort of fix is on the way soon. It's just not that big a deal.
Because apple knows they can do as they please, and these devices will still fly off the shelves faster then they can build them.
Even if true you only get that privilege by building a quality product that people like and trust. RIM has produced crappy phones that nobody really wants. People are buying Android and iPhones because they are quite simply better. While I'm sure they exist, I'm not personally aware of anyone who has purchased a Blackberry for personal use. Literally everyone I know has either an iPhone or some sort of Android device if they have a smartphone that was not provided by their company.
Apples recent* habit of blaming what seem to be hardware issues on the software makes me a little nervous about taking the plunge into what otherwise looks like a cool product. *If it goes back further I just haven't been paying attention.
She's got an eating disorder and she's gobbling down the battery like so many Twinkies. To fix it you'll have to hack into the core and disconnect her brain. She may put up a bit of a fight, but you've got a squishy human meat-brain on your side! Good luck!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
What problem? You're probably just using the wrong phone.
Fixed.
(Submitted from my iPhone.)
I can see the fnords!
Battery life on my 3GS was cut in anywhere from 1/2 to 1/3 when I went to iOS5.
And, of course, Apple doesn't let you downgrade.
ha - i know what you mean - but I have an android (the amazing Sanyo Zio!) which is amazing because it is solid and CHEAP. I can't believe anyone would want to take 600$ with them on a hiking trip or an unexpected downpour on a walk. My point is that I treasure durability and REPLACABILITY with my phones, and cricket+Zio is my personal phone heaven (i really like it! GOLanucherEX is pretty cool!)
CS majors know the time/space tradeoff, but they never get taught the 3rd, crucial, tradeoff of the set: comprehension!
Apple says "A small number of customers" and they're completely unbiased here so I should take their word.
No, it's Apple so you should assume the worse. It's obviously quite different from when it's RIM, whose announcements you should take at face value.
However we've got far better tools for drain-hunting than iOS,
Oh yeah? What's your experience of running Energy Diagnostics in Instruments (One of the tools included with XCode)? Have you used it? Have you even heard of it?
and we don't have to wait for upstream to fix our problems either.
Ah yeah, this fantasy that Android users know how to fix their own OS, and aren't waiting for someone else to fix it for them.
Well, the Samsung S2 is that "feature phone" that managed to switch my 11 years daughter from "I want an iPhone" to "What, this phone is way cooler than an iPhone".
Your 11 year old daughter thinks it's cooler. Well I'm convinced. Is it available in pink then?
So, as hard as it might seem, Apple just lost most if not all it's technological superiority
Really? Because they've got a bug that drains some people's battery quicker on a .0 OS release. A bug which is fixed in the beta version developers are testing right now. Yeah, that's really going to change the tech superiority landscape. Clearly Android has never had a bug.
Oh, they should have "acknowledged the problem sooner". So, basically rather than confirm what is going on, simply shoot from the hip and hope for the best, eh?
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Siri went down.
I had no idea Siri could do that. Talk about the single greatest reason for every guy on the planet to switch phones.
..compared to the reaction to the iPhone 4 antenna problem by Steve 'You're holding it wrong' Jobs.
"..One hosts to look them up, one DNS to find them, and in the darkness BIND them."
Imagine an ideal product (e.g. a phone) that is advertised as having virtually no bugs. Suddenly a bug emerges and the company's share value drops 1%. What do you think the company should do in the future?
a. Do extensive and intensive beta testing and bug hunting for at least a year before the release of a new model, in order to avoid a future 1% drop (or more) in share value and possible firm reputation damages, or
b. Let the occasional bug leak in a controlled way every few months so that clients and the market get used to it ("oh, it's just a bug, it will be fixed in two-three weeks") and void the risk of share value drop?
Bear in mind that (a) is much more risky than (b), because when the next bug appears (the damned things tend to do that) the drop might be 2%. With (b) shareholders and clients get used to it, just say "oh well, shit happens" and get on with their lives.
To me it's not a bug, it's a strategy.
Are you really arguing with Apple about a problem they found on one of their own products? How come?
It's the fanboy equivalent of divide by zero. The knee jerk reaction to blame improper use or "haters" is so incredibly strong that they perform an act that would otherwise be heresy. Disagreeing with the church.
It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.
Some people have had problems. Others have not.
Given the level of cognitive dissonance that surrounds Apple products, this could simply mean some people ignored the problem because they didn't want to acknowledge that they might have a problem.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Apple has had quite a long history of denial about everything from product defects to the conditions under which its products are made. When I buy a product that carries a 150% (and often much, much higher) brand premium, I expect the brand to stand behind its products. And that is why I do not buy Apple products.
Its not just the 4S having these problems. I have a 4 and upgraded to iOS5 - since that time I've noticed a substantial reduction in battery life. Usually by the time I get home from work I'm around 20% battery, whereas before the upgrade, I'd have to be using the phone pretty heavily all day to drain the battery that much.
Not really, I've been running Skype on my Dell Streak, usually in 5-6hours near nonstop usage sessions, and despite using a non-standard Android image, (that is not even current), and usually sticking maximum brightness plus UMTS, it went into orange seldom before hour 5. Skype did not even show up as battery user on the battery usage screen without scrolling down.
Trust me, 11 years are way more difficult to get happy than even adult females. You can reason with adult ones on technical grounds, at least about major points. 11 years are pure emotional bundles, heavy influenced by their peer group. My daughter went through 4 phones (Samsung Star, Dell Streak, iPhone 3GS, Samsung i5500) before declaring being happy with a S2. So the fact that the S2 is cooler than the iPhone by her implies that her peers at school concur (or a subset, I guess the iPhone carrying subset has a different opinion), and a short sample suggests that these kids usually get the toys they want. (But then what shall I say, I spend over 1K€ in 14 months on her mobile experiments, ...)
Well, let's take a look:
The iPhone 4S is a slightly retouched iPhone 4. It has still the same small screen (which is okay for phones that do have a physical keyboard, but you did notice that the onscreen keyboard eats into screen real estate. On screen keyboards are somewhat okay with screens well beyond 4"), it's still not OLED (which means that many end users when you compare it side by side with an OLED device prefer the OLED device, so Apple being the consumer focused company seems to be doing something wrong), the CPU is now dual core (wow, let me check in the archive when this was introduced on the Android side of the world), it still uses a non-standard connector (irritating if all other phones are standardizing but then, you pay extra do be an Apple fanboy), the case has been modified just enough to make you rebuy accessories, So that leaves us the antenna thing, which I cannot sensibly assess (well, it still has no coverage in our elevator, and outside the house, the expectation in our country has been full coverage since over a decade, guess it might make a difference when you go mountaineering outside the usual places), and Siri where we've got the word of the a board member of Siri that it's a break through. (Hint even if it were so, with the current IP climate you cannot assess the state of art just by looking at peer-reviewed journals, I don't think that the Siri guys published their results before being ready.) Well it's certainly a break through for journalists looking for funny dialogs, or for people with to much time spending their evenings figuring out to which keywords Siri can say something else than "I don't understand that" (to cite some reviews). Plus it's a complete new UI method (people need to get used to it first) AND it has a number of drawbacks e.g. privacy in public spaces. So yes, Apple has been overtaken, and their answer "iPhone 4S" has been not exactly the great leap forwards either. (The current, or let's say the last and current generation of Android devices have reached the point where the UI is not suffering even if you try to abuse multitasking. Enough CPU, enough RAM. So what's Apple reasoning again to not allow true multitasking on their devices? Even on a pad?)
The funny thing is that despite two S2 in the house hold, the 3rd battery that I bought has not yet been used. That shatters somehow my normal usage pattern that relies on having 1-2 extra batteries and an external charger.
Not THE users. SOME users. Cyanogenmod, Streakdroid, and a number of adhoc images come to mind.
So it's not a fantasy. It's only a fantasy if you misquote it. It's not about "you know how to fix it", it's about "you can fix it, or someone else with a shorter cycle than your carrier can fix it or you can pay someone to fix it".
Furthermore it's also about user choice (so if you want your iPhone, throw away your money, it's yours :) ):
From a price comparison site I usually use, UMTS phones without contract:
Windows Mobile (19) Symbian Series 60 (89) Android (238) Maemo (1) WebOS (5) Bada (18) Symbian^3 (30) Symbian Belle (7) Windows Phone 7 (15) iOS (18) MeeGo (6)
Beside suggesting that model-wise more than 50% of the offered phones are Droids, the interesting part is that I can get 200 more or less different phones. (the rest are only carrier rebranded).
The display size goes the range from about 2.5" to 5.3", with resolutions up to 316ppi with 4.65" screen. The technologies go simple LCD to 3D display.
The CPUs go from 400MHz to 2x1.4GHz (with different generation CPUs), 29 devices have a physical keyboard. The weight goes from below 100g to 250g. Prices range from 90€ to 630€ without contract.
And the funny part is, when an user knows how to use one of these devices, he is proficient with the next one in minutes, be it kids or retirement age people.
I mean, iOS is clearly the odd one here, with less functionality and less customizable. And naturally, if you have been using phones with a physical keyboard for the last decade, well, please visit the back office of your next Apple store for reeducation, touch screen keyboards are best and even better with average sized screens, no point in seeing more than the entry line and the keyboard at the same time, context information on what you are entering is worthless.
If you have big hands, 3.5" is the perfect screen size. If you have small hands like a small kid, 3.5" is the perfect size. We also know how much you should use your phone during the day, so why would you want to carry a second battery for switching? And as you are a cool kid, and you only associate with cool kids, any where you go, the local cool kid will have an Apple dock connector to recharge your phone (never mind that over 50% of the above Droids have already the new standard connector, also called microUSB). Nor do cool Apple users like to print out their photos, hence there is no need for a SD card slot. I mean waiting half an hour at the photo service booth to transfer the files via Bluetooth is COOL. And should somebody claim that it's uncool, well, it's the photo service fault, they should pay big bucks to Apple so that they are allowed to use the holy Dock connector (never mind that the dock connectors are not 100% compatible between generations).
Not THE users. SOME users. Cyanogenmod, Streakdroid, and a number of adhoc images come to mind.
So it's not a fantasy. It's only a fantasy if you misquote it. It's not about "you know how to fix it", it's about "you can fix it, or someone else with a shorter cycle than your carrier can fix it or you can pay someone to fix it".
In what way is waiting for the Cyanogenmod or Steakdroid teams to find, investigate, test and distribute a bug fixed version any better than waiting for Apple to do so? They are unlikely to be faster, unless they don't test. And when they are done, it's a lottery when you'll actually get a build for your particular phone.
The rest of your phone seems to be a rant about choice. Which is odd, because I think everyone is well aware there is a large choice of mobile phones available.
When it's time for me to unwind, it's time for my iPhone to unwind too, and I put it recharging right next to me on bed.
Please tell me this is a subtle troll, and not just the ravings of a madman.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
It has my alarm clock, so it's right next to the bed, but not in the bed.
OP said "next to me on bed" which, while bad English, sounds more like it is on the bed (perhaps withi its own little pillow and blanket, hey now there's a great marketing idea) rather than on a bedside table.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Your 11 year old daughter thinks it's cooler. Well I'm convinced. Is it available in pink then?
You obviously don't have any daughters. The infatuation with pink stops at about seven. By the time they're eleven they're bitter veterans of dozens of love affairs and thinking about settling down.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
My daughter went through 4 phones (Samsung Star, Dell Streak, iPhone 3GS, Samsung i5500) before declaring being happy with a S2.... these kids usually get the toys they want.... I spend over 1Kâ in 14 months on her mobile experiments, ...
Why would you choose to spoil your child in that way? That's no life lesson to be giving.
So what's Apple reasoning again to not allow true multitasking on their devices? Even on a pad?
Battery life. Always was. When apps go to the background on iPhone they still consume memory. They just don't consume CPU cycles and therefore power. Apple had a bug in iOS 5.0 that caused poor battery life for some people. The fix will be generally available soon. But generally speaking iPhone battery life, for a given weight of phone, is much better than Android.
Siri went down.
I had no idea Siri could do that. Talk about the single greatest reason for every guy on the planet to switch phones.
No wonder the battery lifes's so crap.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Heh! I guess it varies. A friend's 11 year old is still wearing a mix of pink and purple clothes. Come to that I know a couple of women in their 30s that are still infatuated with pink.
My daughter went through 4 phones (Samsung Star, Dell Streak, iPhone 3GS, Samsung i5500)
Sounds like your daughter is a spoilt brat. Sorry. :-|
"They are unlikely to be faster, unless they don't test."
Utter bullshit... AT&T, for example, is notorious for holding up releases in the name of "Testing" only to release a bloated piece of crap that has bugs added compared to the international firmware that was ported to an AT&T device with only 1-2 weeks of effort.
As an example of a drain bug:
https://github.com/Entropy512/linux_kernel_sgh-i777/commit/fc9eb85807302583259e27013ed184a43107bb67
Saw fuel_alerted in /proc/wakelocks causing someone's device to stay awake for multiple hours
Grepped for fuel_alerted to find the relevant source code file
Read the file
Had a fix implemented within 30 minutes in my own kernel of reading the wakelocks dump
The fix was deployed to Cyanogenmod kernels within 1-2 days for the I777
Numerous other kernel developers picked it up within 1-2 weeks
Apple users, on the other hand, had at least 2-3 weeks of complaints before the company even acknowledged there was a fucking bug. They'll be waiting at least another week or two more, if they're lucky.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Denial as a business model?!?
It's just crazy enough, it might work!
No, it would never work...
Utter bullshit... AT&T, for example
I meant unlikely to be faster than Apple fixes their OS. Not the carriers. For sure the carriers are very slow in passing versions of Android on to users.
Apple users, on the other hand, had at least 2-3 weeks of complaints before the company even acknowledged there was a fucking bug. They'll be waiting at least another week or two more, if they're lucky.
The bug is fixed in v5.0.1 which went out as a beta to developers 2 days ago. As I said Android is unlikely to be faster with fixes unless they don't test.
How long before normal users who didn't pay $99/year to be a developer get the fix?
As I said - in one case, we had a turnaround of less than a day from seeing something odd in /proc/wakelocks to kernel fixes being deployed. Really, how much testing do you need for changing an == to the >= it clearly should have been in a fuel gauge driver?
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
How long before normal users who didn't pay $99/year to be a developer get the fix?
We'll soon know. The point is it's being widely tested before being sent to end users.
Your attitude of "it's only... so we don't need to test" has resulted in so many broken software releases over the years. And in any case, just because your example bug is only a wrong comparison doesn't mean this Apple bug is that simple. Plus the iOS 5.0.1 features more than just the battery fix.
As I said - in one case, we had a turnaround of less than a day from seeing something odd in /proc/wakelocks to kernel fixes being deployed.
Fixes from one kernel dev to another. It's likely the Apple dev who was working on that bug had a fix in a short time from when the bug was reproduced. And it was available to other devs in Apple. The only difference is that what's happening in teh Android case is visible. There's not a difference in speed. Android devs are not somehow faster workers than Apple devs.
How long before normal users who don't know what git is, and can't compile their own version of Android. Who are on some random model of Android phone, on some random carrier somewhere in the world get it? Six months? Never?
All iPhone users will have it available for auto-download the same day of release. Once it's been properly tested. The average end user always gets new versions of iOS faster than Android users.
Funny, but the MacBook Pros, if left plugged in ruin the battery in about half a year. I wonder if Apple used the same shoddy charge circuit in the iPhone.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Considering that Apple has a long history of covering up problems, then downplaying them when they become impossible to suppress, whereas RIM doesn't have the same issue, I have to agree with your comment at face value, but disagree with the sarcasm I am sure was meant by it.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
I would honestly expect the iPhone 4s to get worse battery life compared to the iPhone 4. Most likely they use the same battery, while the 4s has a dual core processor, which I would expect to draw more power.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
1% per hour on standby would be an inordinate discharge rate according to the specs which state 200 hours standby...
http://www.apple.com/iphone/specs.html
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Anyone running Cyanogenmod - already has it available if they're on a Galaxy S II (note, that particular bug is GSII specific)
Anyone running a custom GSII ROM - depends on how often their ROM dev pulls in kernel updates. Most of them are pretty good about pulling in updates when a significant kernel bugfix is found.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
How long before normal users who didn't pay $99/year to be a developer get the fix?
Just to follow up, v5.0.1 is out today. All users will get it today, if they chose to accept, via the iTunes app, or as an OTA download.
So the answer to your question is 1 week. Seems like a reasonable time period for beta testers to make sure it works and for developers to check it hasn't broken their apps.