I waited until factory unlocked 4S phones were available. I think I clicked on the links within the first hour of availability. I waited until right before Thanksgiving to take shipment (two weeks ago) of the factory unlocked iPhone 4S so that I could use a pre-paid plan. I went through the math, and breakeven is around a year versus the alternative of having the service provider finance the purchase of the phone.
Battery life is a big problem for me. I have been observing about 10% per hour rate of decline. I have bought more chargers for the various locations I spend time to compensate. But this doesn’t make sense. Here is what 10% per hour means - I leave for to work on average at 7 AM, and by some time after lunch, I am at 20 or 30%. After two weeks, I decided to visit the Apple Store Genius Bar at Stanford Shopping Mall. I’ve been there twice now, asking for assistance with battery life. First, I was told to restore it as a “new phone.” I’ve restored the device. No change: 10% per hour. I visited again the next evening, and was told I have too many email accounts requesting data. I reduced email accounts to three and put all email requests to manual. I shut down iCloud, Location Services, WiFi. Yes, i’m running the new 5.0.1. Then, just to make sure, I deleted all apps, did another restore midway through the third day since I concluded battery life still stinks -maybe its slightly better. It is running as a stock phone. This leads me to why I got this phone in the first place. For me, the goodwill of Apple’s marketing and mystique and my sympathy for Steve Jobs’ death has eroded at a rate of about 10-20% per week, I estimate.
I’m wondering now why I got this phone. I’ve spent many hours trying to make it work just like my Blackberry Bold, which polled 6 to 10 email accounts, allowed me to tweet, check facebook, synchronize contacts to gmail. And the BB battery lasted two days, and I could wired-tether. I mean, it did everything I wanted it to, but not quite. Then, it struck me – its because browsing and the camera were lame on the Blackberry. And memory was low, so I couldn’t mindlessly download apps and consume them as entertainment. RIM missed my window. I lost patience with it. Still under contract with T-Mobile, I waited for months and months. Then, the final straw came at a Saturday night party in October. I forgot my business cards, so I confidently drew my BB from my pocket and said, “I’ll send you an email and we’ll connect on Monday.” My new contact literally laughed at my phone – “A Blackberry, c’mon man, are you serious?” I muttered something about battery life and then my evening was over.
I have been under the belief that iPhones have better battery life than Androids. The sales literature has supported that case, as did my first-hand tests: I trialed each a T-Mobile Samsung Galaxy and a HTC G2 for two weeks last year November and they lasted till lunch-time. I told T-Mo to take these bricks back.
So, I fell into the trap. I believed iPhones are better, especially the new ones with dual-core and larger batteries. Now, whether these new tweaks that I’ve put on my third day of remedial action to resolve the battery life problems have essentially turned my phone into a “feature phone.” Yes, I realize I can re-download the apps, or turn on WiFi or iCloud, but it takes time and I’m just not happy with all the tweaking.
So, that is my experience with the unlocked iPhone 4S. I’ll be trying a few more things if this doesn’t resolve battery life, probably in this order:
(a) turn on Airplane mode all day and see how battery life goes
(b) use a T-Mobile SIM and see how battery life goes
(c) go back to the store and try a new hardware
(d) try to return it, and go back to my T-Mobile Bold, which I have in waiting