Optimise iPhone 4S Battery Life

After all the complaints on the iPhone 4S battery life, I was concerned about the iPhone 4S battery life. However it seems that after further optimisation, the battery life is much better than the iPhone 3GS. You can refer to my previous post on my optimisation of my iPhone 3GS battery life here.

Disable some of the System Services location based settings to stop your iPhone 4S from unnecessarily sending your location. To disable those settings, just do the following:

1. Tap on Settings > Location Services > System Service
2. Turn off Diagnostics & Usage, Location-Based iAds and Setting Time Zone

Set your notifications centre such that the alerts are sorted manually, instead of by Time. This will stop your notification centre from unnecessarily sorting the notifications that come in every now and then. To do that, just do the following:

1. Tap on Settings > Notifications
2. Under Sort Apps section, Tap on Manually

Under the Reminders app, you have the option to set a reminder if you are in a certain location. Use it sparingly as theoretically, it will constantly try to get your location so as to send you the reminder. This will cause your battery to drain even faster.

Last but not least, it's the 3G network coverage in your area, which unfortunately is not under your control. The reason is because for some weird reason, the iPhone 4S by default connects to the 3G network and there is no way to disable it. Take note that you're in the 3G network even though your Cellular Data is not on. As long as you're not on the 3G network, it will constantly try to connect it, and drain the battery in the process.

Not only that, there is also the "fake 3G network effect" that will drain your battery even more. Your iPhone 4S would have thought that it has good reception but due to under provisioning of bandwidth by your ISP to that cell station (in theory), it is unable to get a reliable data connection, seemingly causing the iPhone 4S to drain even more battery life.

Sadly for the last problem, we can't do anything about it. Luckily for me, the 3G network coverage is still quite good in Singapore and I did not face that much problems with the 3G network. I just hope that Apple will either re-enable the Enable 3G option in the Settings, or by default connect to the 2G network when the Cellular Data is off. That will resolve the third issue.

Currently based on when my 3G Cellular Data is on, it drops about 2% an hour on light usage, which I considered OK. Or is it?