iPhone 4S Problem: Battery Issues Blamed on iOS 5

If you don’t think your iPhone 4S battery is lasting as long as it should, you’re right. In fact, Apple has now confirmed it.

The tech giant confirmed this week that the unusually short battery life is due to bugs in Apple’s new iOS 5 mobile operating system.

“A small number of customers have reported lower than expected battery life on iOS 5 devices,” an Apple spokesperson told VentureBeat this week. “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.”

While Apple declined to provide further details, some iPhone 4S owners are claiming that the battery draining problem is caused by corrupted contact data imported from Mobile Me, iCloud, and Google. Some users have reported that clearing the phone’s contact data and re-uploading it has solved the iPhone 4S problem.

The apparent glitch is the second time in a row that a popular, new iPhone model has experienced a highly-publicized problem in its early days. The responses, so far, have been similar in both cases.

The iPhone 4 suffered from what some called the “death grip”, causing users who held the phone a certain way to experience dropped calls. Apple denied that there was a problem before eventually admitting that it did, in fact, affect a small number of customers.

The 4S already has a rather feeble standby battery time of just 200 hours. That’s 100 hours less than on the iPhone 4, and 50 hours less than on the original, first-generation iPhone.

Apple hopes to release an iOS 5 update soon that should solve the problem.

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• Apple confirms iOS 5 / iPhone 4S battery issues (slashgear.com)
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• Apple Promises a Fix for iPhone 4S Battery Issues (pcworld.com)