iPhone battery fault linked to iOS5

06:03 PM Nov 03, 2011
CUPERTINO (California) - Owners of iPhones plagued with short battery life will get an update from Apple "within the next few weeks", the company said on Wednesday as it began testing a new version of its iOS software with developers.

The move follows reports by a number of customers using the new iPhone 4S, released a month ago, and also some who have updated their iPhone 4 or iPhone 3GS phones to iOS 5 (released on Oct 12), that they have seen surprisingly short battery life, in some cases lasting only a few hours from a full charge.

Apple issued a statement on Wednesday night in which it said: "A small number of customers have reported lower than expected battery life on iOS 5 devices. 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."

Apple has also provided developers with a new version of the iOS software for testing at the same time. The patch is applicable to the three iPhone models and also for the iPad and the iPad 2, as well as equivalent versions of its iPod Touch device.

In the description for the update, according to news site Apple Insider, it notes that it "contains improvements and other bug fixes including ... bugs affecting battery life".

The version will undergo wider testing with developers to find any outstanding problems or bugs before it is issued more widely.

The Guardian reported on Friday that Apple engineers had begun contacting individual users to try to pin down the causes of their problems.

One who had been contacted said that they had been asked to enter specific keypad codes which appeared to allow Apple to download diagnostic information directly from the phone. One told the Guardian: "I am getting around 10-12 hours standby (without using the phone), and then when I am using the phone for browsing, the battery percentage drops one per cent every minute."

Some users found that turning off certain system location services improved the battery life. But so far no clear reason has emerged for the problem.

Developers who used the iOS 5 "seed" over the summer after it was unveiled did not report any problems with battery life draining - but when the product was finalised and issued, the problems emerged.

Apple's engineers are still actively working with customers on finding the source of the problem, in some cases accessing customers' systems with permission to retrieve log files from the systems.

The new version of iOS5, developers said, also will include upgrades such as adding multitasking gestures for the iPad, resolves bugs with documents in iCloud, improves voice recognition for Australian users using dictation as well as security improvements.

The application of the "security improvements" is not yet known but could be related to the voice assistant Siri, which can be used to dial phone numbers and do other actions even when the phone is locked. THE GUARDIAN