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."

Comments

"Apple should have spoken up sooner..."

[steevven1]

Can we keep the blatant opinions out of the articles, and save them for the comments?

Re:"Apple should have spoken up sooner..."

[tripleevenfall]

It's better than the passive-aggressive editorials (i.e., "It will be interesting to see if...") that are normally present in /. summaries.

Seriously?

[alvinrod]

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.

Re:Seriously?

[sunderland56]

Yeah, only been out three weeks. Good thing that Apple doesn't do any sort of beta testing - not only do those guys find problems, they also tend to lose the product they're testing in bars.

Re:Seriously?

[LWATCDR]

You can beta test all you want. When a few million copies hit the street you will find new bugs.

Finally... ?

[nightfell]

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".

That's not a problem

[yacc143]

Just carry a second (or third) charged battery and switch it when the battery is drained.

Re:That's not a problem

[NiteShaed]

Take a piece of double-sided tape, apply it to the back of your iPhone. Firmly press a second iPhone against the first, back to back, and offset so as not to cover the cameras. I got the idea from watching war movies where they'd tape two ammo clips together and flip them when the first goes empty, and it works great for them, so I figure it'll work fine here too. Added benefit that if one iPhone is cool, a double iPhone should be double cool...

Acknowledging the issue

[tgibbs]

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?"

Re:Battery problem?

[StikyPad]

Have you disabled "raise to speak" in Siri settings? That was reported on day one (or two) and solved my problem immediately.