iPhone battery dying

I bought the iPhone 4s last October and I am oh-so attached to it now. It's my one-stop shop as far as calendar/camera/email and oh yeah, making phone calls.

It has worked so well that I'm amazed that it started having battery problems a couple of weeks ago. I don't know if it's something I'm doing, or is the battery just getting old (at such a young age?) ?

Today, it lasted about 12 hours before shutting off completely. It happened while I was at work and didn't notice it right away. I'd been annoyed at dinner that the battery was down to 20% and then maybe 4 hours later it just crashed. When I got home about 2 hours later I plugged it into my Mac and it took a while, but then came back on. Now, maybe 45 minutes later, it's charged up to 30%.

I haven't changed my charging pattern (plug in at the wall every night when I go to bed, unplug in the morning).

I have added a few apps, but not a lot. I wonder if maybe a recent addition is causing the problem? Let me think, what was the last app I downloaded? Maybe the QRReader.

On iTunes, it says my phone is updated (v 5.1.1). Also says I can reset to defaults if I'm having problems, but I don't want to do that unless I have to. I have the 13.60 gb model and I have 7gb space open.

I made an appointment with Genius bar but not until Saturday. I can get to a Verizon (my wireless provider) store sooner than that, but not sure if they can help me.

Do I need a new battery? I think it's still under warranty, less than a year old. But that seems awfully soon to be replacing a battery.

Is it something I'm doing, that's causing the battery to suddenly be depleting so quickly? I try to click the 'off' button on top when I'm done with it.

Is there a way to change the settings so the apps don't automatically become active (lined up along the bottom of screen when pressing 'home' twice) - I seldom go through and turn off the ones I'm not currently using. Should I do that all the time?

I am very, very fond of my iPhone and am disappointed in it's failure. I hope I can get it back to normal.

Any ideas? Thanks so much. I hate to admit it, but I feel somewhat lost without my phone.

kuwisdelu said:

What were you doing with it? 12 hours is quite respectable for a smartphone if you were actually using it.

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It was mostly just in my pocket as I walked around at work, inside bldg. signal is good there except for inside cafeteria. I do check texts and emails (on the sly) at various times but not much activity on it.

I think something's wrong with phone cuz its only last couple weeks that battery's been draining, and I haven't changed my MO. I,m at Verizon store now typing on their iPad -cool! Will see if they can help.

Yep, they weren't much help. You guys here were much better. The Verizon store is 2 miles away, while the Apple store is about 20, so I was hoping ...

I've turned off most notifications, left on phone, message, reminder. Turned off most location services, left on maps and siri only.

I'll see what Apple says on Saturday. When's the iPhone 5 supposed to come out? I thought I saw some chat on it somewhere but no official announcement.

Medievalist said:

Have you done a complete shut-down-and-reboot? That is, hold the button at the top down until you see the "slide to shutdown" message, and then slid the button to power it down, waited two minutes, and then rebooted it? (This is not a reset, which would reset all your local data on the iPhone).

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I haven't, and it's just because I'm holding off on doing anything else until I see the Apple guys on Saturday. I don't want to answer a lot of questions from them on "what did you try?" because I either won't remember or won't be able to explain what I did.

Yesterday and today I'm off work and can keep my phone plugged in more at home.

Tuesday the battery seemed better, but on Wednesday it drained quickly again, under the same conditions.

At least the phone is still under warranty, so anything that needs to be done should be covered, I think.

I charge my phone at the wall every night when I go to bed. It's my alarm clock.

And my 3 am "oh did i make a note about that?" or 4:30 am "what is it i'm supposed to be doing today?" check before i go back to sleep.

So I went to the genius bar appt. The guy said right off he thought he knew what the problem was and would run diagnostics.

A minute later he said yep, that was the problem, and a similar thing had happened to his 4s phone too after about 7 months.

Problem (paraphrasing here, I wrote it down but won't guarantee this is accurate): A software issue - crashing - code not loading - for these things: mobile safari, data accessD, BT server, and mobile cal.

He said he'd have to do a reset on the phone and that I'd need to back up stuff before then. Fortunately, I'd brought my laptop so he backed up photos, apps, music etc then did the reset.

He'd said I'd lose 4 areas of the phone during this: phone favorites, recent calls, voicemails, and texts. Those couldn't be backed up and would be removed. I said ok.

He said that should solve the draining battery issue. Yay!

Not so yay: Got home and found the Notes had also been wiped out completely, as well as some recurring calendar events. Hmm. Calendar I can recreate but the Notes, well, I don't like that those were erased. A lot of stuff in there for reference and quotes I like and a page with important dates ... Rats.

So I'll watch the battery over the next few days to see if it's lasting longer. I have another appt at Apple Store next Friday for something else so can take the phone back in then if needed.

Well, a few hours later and battery still draining. Plus now the phone seems very warm, something I'd never noticed before. Might have to make another trip to the genius bar, but it'll be several days before I can get back down there.

I never realized how dependent I am on my phone until it started having problems. I'm an addict ...