Once gain, the public has shown that iPhone and Apple are not perfect. Previous iPhone models had antenna "issues" and death grip. The new iPhone 4S along with iOS 5 have excessive battery drain problems due to bugs in iOS 5. This addiction to power will be fixed with a software update in a few weeks.
“A small number of customers have reported lower than expected battery life on iOS 5 devices,” an Apple spokesperson told VentureBeat. “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.”
iPhone 4S owners reported that they believe the battery drain is from corrupted data imported from MobileMe, iCloud or Google. Some have reported that deleting contact data and reloading it has fixed the problem.
It has been reported that Apple engineers contacted iPhone 4S owners and asked them to install diagnostic software that sent data back to Apple.
It looks like the faster processor eats battery life. Standby time for the iPhone 4S has been shown to be 200 hours which is 100 less than the iPhone 4.
Battery drain is especially evident on smartphones that use 4G LTE networks. Although many were disappointed that the iPhone doesn't connect to 4G LTE data networks like soon to be Samsung Galaxy S II Skyrocket on AT&T or the Droid RAZR on Verizon Wireless. The 4G LTE network access has been known to deplete battery life to extent that users shut off 4G LTE access. Battery life was a major problem with the HTC ThunderBolt.
Meanwhile Sprint is investigating the slow speeds experienced by Sprint iPhone 4S owners.
"We're taking the reports of problems from a small number of customers seriously," Fared Adib, head of product development for Sprint, said in an interview with CNET. "There's nothing of significance to report yet."