Apple Promises iPhone Battery Bug Fix

KOMPAS.com - Apple has finally admitted that “bugs” in iOS5 have caused battery life issues for iPhone owners and promises a fix “in a few weeks”.

Sydney iPhone developer Mathew Peterson said Apple had this morning seeded iOS5.0.1 to developers, which purports to fix the issue. It will then be more broadly released to consumers after testing.

Earlier this week this website reported that many iPhone 4S owners – and owners of older models who have updated to iOS5 – were seeing their battery life drain by 19 per cent in 50 minutes and, even while idle with most features switched off, by 10 per cent an hour.

A Sydney Apple store staff member was even stumped at how to resolve the issue until fixes began circulating online. Thousands have expressed frustration in online forums.

Some have been able to resolve the problem by switching off notifications and most of the functions under Location Services. A bug meant that if users did not disable “Setting Time Zone”, the phone constantly polled the servers for the user's location even if there was no need to do so.

But while switching off features fixed the problem, many have complained that you shouldn't need to hobble a new device simply to get it to work as advertised.

“A small number of customers have reported lower than expected battery life on iOS5 device,” Apple said in a statement.

“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 did not clarify further what those bugs were. The issue is reminiscent of the “antennagate” issue that affected the iPhone 4, causing calls to drop out and reception problems.

Antennagate was partly blamed on the fact that because Apple is so secretive about unreleased products, it does not spend enough time testing them in real-world conditions outside of its labs. An over-the-air update to fix the iOS5 bugs is expected to be sent straight to iPhone owners' handsets.