iPhone 4S Release Date: Technical Glitches Hinder Apple's Latest iPhone
Apple's latest smartphone model is a financial success but it also has a few kinks to work out.
Apple website forum members have widely commented on the iPhone 4S battery life and its speedy rate of drainage.
The main cause for the low battery life is said to be due to the many applications running, such as iCloud, Siri, Location Services, Bluetooth, Calendar and Reminder Sync, and automated diagnostic transmissions to Apple.
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The iDownloadBlog technology website blamed the iPhone 4S's battery issues on a bug in iOS 5's location service.
Thomas Clabrun, a writer for Information Week, gave his opinion on what may be the cause for this issue: "In general, anything that utilizes network connectivity is going to drain more power than an app that just runs locally. In my case, my battery performance is poor and I have not enabled iCloud, so iCloud isn't a suspect for me."
The Guardian reported that Apple notified iPhone 4S owners and asked them to install performance-profiling software.
Several forum members also took to Apple's website threads and reported on the smartphone’s audio issues. They claim the audio quality on voice calls often depletes after numerous calls. In addition, the voice of the caller on the other end begins to echo.
One user in particular, themacguyver, gave a lengthy synopsis on the issue: "When using the Apple hands free headset with the phone during a call, I get an echo problem. It does not occur immediately. It can vary from 30 seconds into a call and as far up to 9 minutes in before it begins the annoying echo."
"If I unplug the headset it goes away but will return when I plug the headset back in. I have tried 3 brand new iPhone 4S headsets with the same problems,” reported themacguyver.
"So far I have tried rebooting, and also restored phone back to factory original settings as a new phone and still no resolution. I have been told by the other person on the line a screech sound is made then the echo begins,” themacguvyer added.
Another forum member offered a temporary fix: "If the echo happens, press the speakerphone button on and off to get rid of the echo."
Apple provided a statement to AllThingsD on the battery problems for iOS 5 and the iPhone 4S: "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 launched a pre-released version of iOS 5.0.1 that will provide a solution for the iPhone 4S's battery life problems. The company gave iOS 5.0.1 to developers and noted that an iOS 5 update is also coming to their customers.
Several Sprint customers have reported suffering dramatically slow connection speeds with their iPhone 4S. This became an issue almost immediately after the device-hit stores.
Fared Adib, head of product development for Sprint, gave a statement to CNet: "We're taking the reports of problems from a small number of customers seriously. There's nothing of significance to report yet."
The company is currently working with Apple to rectify this problem.
Siri, the voice enabled assistant, recently suffered a widespread outage for iPhone 4S users. Some of the application's features were restored but it is still not fully functional.
Apple's iPhone 4S has sold quite well so far, but this growing list of technical errors may hinder its future sales.
