iOS 5.1 May be Required to Fix Battery Drain Issues

iDevice owners are taking to the Apple Support Communities forum to complain about a chronic battery drain issue seemingly caused by inferior power management in iOS 5.

Whether they installed the software on a first-gen iPad or on the iPhone 4, many seem certain that iOS 5 is to blame for their battery drain woes.

Some even say their brand new iPhone 4S is exhibiting the same behavior, which should almost certainly be tied to software, rather than hardware.

A simple search on the Apple Support Communities forum will churn up titles like “Iphone 4S / iOS 5 Battery Drain” and “Please fix batery [sic] drainage with IOS 5. I need those 10 promissed [sic] hours on iPad 2.”

For example, this iPad owner (identified as CaMoBaPuK on Apple’s forum) said: “Disabled everything. iCloud, notifications, location, bluetooth, ping, reset all setings [sic], brightness as I used before 45 %. All aps are closed. Still batery level disapears so fast! I have iPad 2. A friend of mine has same problem with iPhone 4.”

He adds: “4.3.5 was perfect,” which indicates this user has seen a dramatic decrease in battery life since applying the latest software update from Apple.

Another user, Sam, writes: “I am having massive problems using the iphone 4s, it doesn't last a day. I have followed all steps on the forum but it doesn't change the drain rate … Is my phone faulty? Should I take it back? I can't carry on using it if it won't last a day!”

There are many factors that can contribute to the battery drain issue from processes running in the background, to the radio chips working overtime, even the apps one uses.

But clearly these people are seeing a significant change in the behavior of their devices after installing iOS 5.

Apple has traditionally released incremental software updates to fix such problems (by the way, this is not the first time a major iOS update drains batteries), so I’ll be keeping my ear to the ground for any sign of Apple seeding iOS 5.1 betas to developers.

In the meanwhile, use the comments to tell us what your experience has been with iOS 5.

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