Apple iPhone users were excited to be liberated from their USB cords on Thursday when the company released its first “over the air” update for an operating system, iOS 5.0.1. The update was also supposed to fix the rapidly-draining battery issue that some iPhone 4S users had reported, but so far, the complaints haven’t died down on Apple’s online support forums.
In fact, some users have actually reported even worse battery life performance as a consequence of the update, with 70 percent battery drain in 6 hours. Apple advertises 8 hours of talk time for the iPhone 4S on 3G, compared to 7 hours on the iPhone 4, and 5 hours on the iPhone 3GS.
The new iOS 5.0.1 update differs from all prior Apple iPhone updates in that it is a smaller file size (only 44 KB compared to several MB for previous updates) and can be downloaded without connecting the phone to a computer (although it still requires a steady WiFi connection).
While users and tech bloggers initially praised the over-the-air update’s speed and ease-of-use, especially compared to the glitchy, slow iPhone iOS 5.0 update released on October 12, the overall attempt by Apple to fix the software bugs it admitted were behind the battery loss issue does not seem to have taken for all users.
That said, other users have indeed experienced increased battery life performance, according to Wired’s Gadget Lab.
Based on the early sales figures for the iPhone 4S (4 million in the first weekend) Apple’s hopes for making the iPhone 4S its best-selling product may still come to fruition. But as the complaints continue to grow, with some users threatening to switch phones, it is unclear how the PR damage will impact Apple’s holiday sales or sales of future products.
We’ve reached out to Apple for more information on what they plan to do about the issue for some users and will update when we receive a response.
(H/T: 9to5 Mac).
