I'm not a fan of iOS 7 design-wise, but my biggest gripe is the battery. It's bad. Really, really bad. I think it's a combination of an actual decrease in battery life and iOS 7's terrible monitoring of it.
It's not uncommon for my phone to shut down after it's hit 8% remaining battery. Or I'll be watching a video with 45% left, and the next second it'll cut me down to 25%. There have been a few instances where I've gone from ~25% to completely empty in a flash, leaving me with a dead phone much earlier than I'd anticipated. So now I really can't leave my place for more than maybe 4/5 hours without my charger.
I've been using iOS7 on my daily driver since the first beta release and never had any problems whatsoever with battery life. In previous betas I've noticed this problem, not this time though, and certainly nothing close to what you were describing
So you're running pre-release iOS, and expect it to work flawlessly?
I made the same mistake with iOS5beta and it was a nightmare. Power usage was the least of my issues. WHen iOS5 finally came out, I noticed most of my issues had disappeared (the rest got resolved by 5.1).
tl;dr: The use of iOS betas for your daily driver are inadvisable.
Yes, and 'kyro' made comments talking about a trend that could have only been experienced during the beta. Having this many data points on battery life in a few hours would be a pretty neat trick, and a much more damning situation.
However, this review has tested it and found a drastic effect on the iPhone 5's battery life running the released version so it's not limited to betas.
I'm curious, how did you determine that the problem is iOS 7, as opposed to your hardware – or, perhaps, the need for your hardware's power management needing to be reset/recalibrated?
I only ask because I recall reading some complaints during the beta cycle that were resolved in some way without changing the specific version of the pre-release they were running.
It was a very clear change for me. I'm usually at work from 7 to 5. On iOS 6, my iPhone 5 had no problem making it through with moderate use. There were no jumps in percentages. I could use the phone for an entire hour with <10% remaining.
Once I downloaded the beta, I found myself with a dead phone at noon, having to fully recharge it at least once just to have a usable phone by the end of the work day. And I think I've only seen it actually hit <5% all of two times. It'll power down way before it gets that low.
I guess what I'm suggesting is that maybe the act of applying the beta to your phone put your power management hardware in a state that necessitates recalibration or reset.
For example:
"The issue with the battery drain on iPhone 4S was big and we saw the battery drain down in hours. However if you clean install first and then restore data, the issue doesn’t seem to occur."
Make sure to disable all the new location related shit. There are a dozen new things in there that will rape your GPS for all it's worth. Also, the second I installed the Starbucks app it re-activated Passbook and the whole GPS system for that to automatically start itself when you walk into a Starbucks. No thanks. Disabled all of it and my battery has been much better.
I was wondering because I've been having battery issues on the 4S using the beta but when I switched to the GM seed I noticed a change. Might have just been my mind playing tricks on me, it's really tough to measure.
It's not uncommon for my phone to shut down after it's hit 8% remaining battery. Or I'll be watching a video with 45% left, and the next second it'll cut me down to 25%. There have been a few instances where I've gone from ~25% to completely empty in a flash, leaving me with a dead phone much earlier than I'd anticipated. So now I really can't leave my place for more than maybe 4/5 hours without my charger.