Question for iPhone 4s owners

[mbriant]

My iPhone 4 was just stolen and I need a replacement.  The "4" worked fine for the most part except for not being able to stay connected to blue tooth devices.  This is/was a known issue that affected many if not all iPhone 4 models from what I can tell from reading the various problems pages on the net.  Apple seemed unable to fix it ( probably a hardware design flaw) and probably never will.  I was thinking I might as well upgrade to the "4s" model for a replacement, but checking the problem sites again, it seems that many people are having serious problems with Wi-Fi connections, battery life, and a few other things.  The 4s has been out for several months now, and since Apple doesn't appear to have fixed these problems, as much as I'd prefer to stay with an iPhone ( I have an iMac, Macbook, MacBook Pro, and iPad) as it interacts with my other macs well, I'm starting to lose faith in Apple's one time great reputation for quality and customer care.  It seems that these days, if they have a defective product, they deny the problem even exists, drag their asses, and wait till they have a new upgrade replacement to make people forget they were ripped off.
 
Anyway, if anyone out there owns an iPhone 4s model ( not 3, not 4 .... but 4s) I'd appreciate any info as to how their experience has been.  Thanks.

 

[Oregonian]

I've had an early iPhone 3 and now a 4...................never had any problems with either the the 4 is as flawless as I can imagine.  Battery life is NOT an issue...............in fact I'm amazed how much better it is than the 3.  Make sure to shut off the background stuff (double click the start button, hold down on an app that appears till the red x shows up and shut down all the battery sucking background noise) and mine will last more than a day, using it a lot for email and running my Equalizer app playing tunes through my Sony XB500 phones.  Wi fi connectivity is never an issue, nor have I even dropped a call.  Maybe I've been lucky. 

 

[ImperialX]

I have an iPhone 4S.
 
Every Apple product will have haters, and the rare people who encounter problems. You have to remember Apple moves more than 100 million iPhones every year and the iPhone 4S is the World's most popular smartphone. They sell more than five every second and of course a very small minority will have problems. Unfortunately, only these people are vocal about it on the Internet.
 
I've never had a problem with my iPhone 4S, just make your purchase if you feel the iPhone is right for you.

 

[mbriant]

Thanks for the advice.  While I don't believe the complaints I have read are necessarily "Mac haters", as they all have purchased Mac products, when I do think of the hundreds of millions of units Apple sells, it does stand to reason that there will be defective batches now and then.  It's just when you yourself are having a certain problem, and you see several sites full of identical complaints, you start to believe the problem must be universal.  Sometimes, like the antenna problem with the iphone4, it is a valid complaint .... otherwise, Apple wouldn't have offered a free case to everyone as a work-around.  So I bit the bullet and picked up a 4s 64gig last night.  So far it seems to work fine.  Many of the complaints of poor WiFi connections apparently occured suddenly after a couple of weeks of use, so hopefully mine will keep working fine.  I haven't checked the Blue Tooth connection yet, and if that works well ( unlike my previous iPhone4 ) I'll be thrilled.

 

[Jmstrmbn]

I've had the 4s for about 3months now and I have not had many problems with it.  The battery life is excellent assuming you don't constantly stream video or play games.  I will occasionally play words with friends or other such games and use the internet and at the end of the day the phone typically has 75-80% battery left.  I have not had problems connecting to wifi or bluetooth.  The phone has hiccuped a few times and when thought a call was still in progress after it was ended.  This was easily fixed by turning it on and off.  I think its a great phone.  That said there are definitely cases in which people have had major issues.  It's kinda a game of chance.  Chances are if you liked the 4 you'll like the 4s.

 

[mbriant]

Coincidently:  http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hardware/iphone-4-owners-can-now-pick-up-15-antennagate-settlement/19372?tag=nl.e539

 

[ImperialX]

Even if they're identical problems, they still can be returned to the Apple store for an exchange. Many people have iPhone 4S, and most of them don't have a problem. If they don't have a problem, they don't need to go on a forums and post about it. That's why there is an illusion there are widespread problems...when there really isn't.
 
If you want a 4S, just get it.

 

[FrankATL]

I am a bit of an Apple fanboy. I have had every iPhone since the 3G and every iPad. Currently have the 4S and 3rd gen pad. I never had any issues with the Bluetooth connectivity on the 4 when I had it, nor the 4S currently. I used both with Bluetooth headsets and speakers often. The good thing about the 4S is it has Bluetooth 4.0, which is much lower power consumption.

That being said, I have noticed much worse battery life, then I saw on the iPhone 4. I can't say whether this is a software issue with iOS 5.XX, or the 4S itself. I got the phone very quickly after it came out, which was the same time as 5.0 released. From all the talk, it seems to be an OS issue. It has gotten a bit better with OS updates, yet I still loose @20% battery overnight. This is without use, and nothing running in the background. I do not turn off Bluetooth or wifi ever either though. The battery has not been an issue for me, as I never spend too long unable to charge.

All that being said, I'd wait for the next iPhone at this point. I would think, with all the battery life complaint, plus the likely edition of LTE, they will have a higher capacity battery. You never can tell with Apple though.

 

[ImperialX]

 
Quote:

It has gotten a bit better with OS updates, yet I still loose @20% battery overnight. This is without use, and nothing running in the background. I do not turn off Bluetooth or wifi ever either though. The battery has not been an issue for me, as I never spend too long unable to charge.

Interesting. Most people charge their phones while at night so I don't know about this. All I know is the battery is more than enough to last a day of heavy use.
 

 

[FrankATL]

 

Interesting. Most people charge their phones while at night so I don't know about this. All I know is the battery is more than enough to last a day of heavy use.
 

Forgot to mention something very important with my battery performance. I receive work emails on it, and need to respond promptly sometimes, so email push is always on, and fetch at 15 mins. This is certainly a battery suck, and one I'd avoid if I could. Also have 5 different email accounts set to it, so the active data transfer while fetching is longer. Like I said though, I'm rarely a place where charging is a problem, so battery life is not a huge issue for me.

 

[ImperialX]

 
Quote:

Forgot to mention something very important with my battery performance. I receive work emails on it, and need to respond promptly sometimes, so email push is always on, and fetch at 15 mins. This is certainly a battery suck, and one I'd avoid if I could. Also have 5 different email accounts set to it, so the active data transfer while fetching is longer. Like I said though, I'm rarely a place where charging is a problem, so battery life is not a huge issue for me.

Why fetch every 15 min? I have push active at all times and it lasts a day quite easily. 3 accounts for me.

 

[FrankATL]

 

Why fetch every 15 min? I have push active at all times and it lasts a day quite easily. 3 accounts for me.

Because push doesn't work with most of my accounts, which are pop3. This includes my work email. You can check this in the advanced push options. I wish I could set different accounts to different fetch intervals, but I don't believe this is an option.

 

[ImperialX]

Quote:

Because push doesn't work with most of my accounts, which are pop3. This includes my work email. You can check this in the advanced push options. I wish I could set different accounts to different fetch intervals, but I don't believe this is an option.

No, I don't believe you can fetch different accounts with different intervals. All my E-Mails use Microsoft Exchange so no problems here, but I can see that's a highly desirable feature for a person in your shoes.
 

 

[iluvmusic]

the 4S is the best iphone so far..  hands down and is also the most desired cel phone on earth.   i have had mine for 3 months and it is golden.  the ipad 3 is also damn near perfect

 

[davidcotton]

Might be worth holding off if you can till september when the new ones are available...