Batterygate?
That’s what some tech blogs and Twitter users have taken to calling the increasing complaints of Apple iPhone users who say the much-heralded iOS 5 update, released October 12, is causing drastically reduced battery life on their new iPhone 4S devices (by as much as 20 percent.)
Apple advertises the iPhone 4S as having 8 hours of talk time on 3G, compared to 7 hours on the iPhone 4 and 5 hours on the iPhone 3GS. In practice, of course, the actual battery time has always varied widely across users (and networks).
But now Apple itself has confirmed that the iPhone 4S has a battery life problem caused by iOS 5. As an Apple spokesperson told the blog All Things D on Wednesday:
“A small number of customers have reported lower than expected battery life on iOS 5 devices,” Apple said in a statement to AllThingsD. “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.”
The news is doubly bad for Apple customers who purchased the iPhone 4 in 2010 only to experience reception problems due to a design flaw with the iPhone 4. Dubbed “Antennagate,” by the press, the incident mushroomed to the point that Apple CEO Steve Jobs had to give a press conference on it, in which he announced that Apple would be provided free cases, or bumpers, to all iPhone 4 owners.
(Incidentally, according to Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs biography, he was only motivated to tackle the problem when new Apple CEO Tim Cook, then CFO, quoted someone comparing Apple to Microsoft, saying the company was in danger of becoming complacent and irresponsive to customers.)
The free case program ended September 30, 2011, just before the release of the iPhone 4S on October 14, which was supposed fo fix Antennagate.
Now, Apple has a whole new “gate,” to contend with, and still no solution in sight in the near term. We’ll see how customers respond to that. If the iPhone 4S initial weekend of sales (some 4 million moved) is any indication, it won’t be but a small bump in the road in Apple’s plan to make the iPhone 4S its best selling product yet.
